Hundreds of representatives from the business sector, law enforcement and government across the country gathered in Vancouver on Thursday for a forum focused on retail crime.
The event came amid a growing focus on organized retail theft and incidents that have increasingly resulted in violence.
“Theft will always be around, it’s as old as day,” said Rui Rodrigues, executive adviser of loss prevention and risk management at the Retail Council of Canada.
“The issue is the volume of theft. Not the single items — multiple items, entire shopping carts full of items … it’s also the violence, assaults, the number of illicit marketplaces where items are being resold.”
Vancouver police say shoplifting reports have increased by 12 per cent year-over-year, with nearly a third of all incidents happening in the city’s downtown core.
Police argue the problem is actually far worse, with many incidents of retail crime going unreported.
“It’s really bad,” said Vancouver police Insp. Marco Veronesi, district commander for the downtown core.
“It might start off as shoplifting, the person gets challenged, all of a sudden they punch a loss prevention officer or a store clerk, they pull a knife or some other kind of weapon … all of those other things are loosely related to the actual act of shoplifting, so that’s why it’s such a big deal to us.”
Among the retailers at the forum was London Drugs, which has recently said it could close its store in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside due to crime when its lease expires.
General manager of loss prevention Tony Hunt said some of the company’s stores have seen losses double in the last four years.
The company has particularly noticed an increase in larger-scale theft, with people taking multiples of a single item.
“Take vitamins or laundry detergent,” he said. “Fifteen or 20 would be stolen at the same time, which is the type of thing going to illicit markets as opposed to personal use.”
Vancouver police have spent more than 100 days on multiple waves of a shoplifting crackdown called “Project Barcode” in recent years.
They’re now instigating a new retail crime task force which will focus on lower and mid-level organized crime.
“Trying to target more the fences, and the people that are actually getting the goods and actually ordering the goods,” Veronesi said.
B.C.’s provincial budget also laid out plans to launch a new pilot program dubbed the Community Safety and Targeted Enforcement Program aimed at targeting robbery, shoplifting, theft and property damage — part of a $325 million package focused on crime and public safety.
“We’re doubling the amount of recruits for police officers trained at the Justice Institute,” Finance Minister Brenda Bailey said.
“This pilot program will help small businesses.”
However, the province has simultaneously ended a rebate program that helped small businesses pay for added security or repair damage and vandalism.
Rodrigues, meanwhile, said changes are needed to the justice system to ensure prolific and repeat offenders are treated as more than just petty criminals.
“It should be an escalated level of punishment. Individuals who get a break initially and take advantage of that can’t continue to see the same thing,” he said.
“Then we need to see more severe consequences.”