By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
Organized Retail Crime (ORC) has become a pressing issue for retailers in America, particularly here in Washington state. The National Retail Federation recently reported that retailers considered ORC a higher priority in 2023 than in 2022 (78.1%).
In response to the increase in ORC in recent years, the King County Prosecuting Attorneys’ Office (KCPAO) is making a point to find solutions to aid in the protection of community retailers, large retailers, and their staff who bear the brunt of the consequences. The office aims to bring those involved in organized and non-organized retail crimes to justice.
“This is something that we are very aware of and very concerned with,” says Douglas Wagner of the KCPAO Communications Team. “The KCPAO has always prosecuted retail crimes as part of work prosecuting all crimes. In the middle of the pandemic in June 2021, it became an exploding issue. The office designated a specific deputy prosecuting attorney (DPA) to work full time on these cases. Prior to that, we had several deputies working on retail crime as part of their caseload, but in 2021, we switched to having one person whose primary responsibility was these cases.”
To further increase their efforts and bring more people to justice, the KCPAO recently established a new Economic Crimes and Wage Theft Division (ECWT) to deliver a unified focus and approach to economic crimes. The Economic Crimes Unit is now housed within that new division, and the Retail Crimes DPA is working in close partnership with the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and local law enforcement to strengthen the collective response to retail crime.
A new Forbes Advisor report analyzed all 50 states and the District of Columbia to find which areas are the most and least affected by retail crime. Washington ranked as the #1 most impacted area by retail crimes.
The findings in the reports related to the state of Washington include:
• Washington ranks as the state most impacted by retail crime, and Wyoming is the state least impacted.
• Washington state ranked third highest in our retail theft index metric, accounting for 48% more retail theft than expected based on its share of the U.S. population.
• Washington ranked third worst in the total value of stolen goods, averaging $347 lost per resident (our study average is $173).
• Larceny-theft incidents in Washington are the second highest in our study, averaging 2,306 instances per 100,000 residents.
• The state also placed second highest in our larceny-theft growth rate metric (up 24% growth between 2019 and 2022).
According to Wagner, transitioning to a DPA working on the cases has allowed the Prosecutor’s office to file more than 150 felony cases involving retail theft, which is a significant increase over previous years.
The increased effort to deter retail crimes and prosecute offenders involves constant communication between the Prosecutor’s Office and the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, including weekly calls about the most prolific behavior referred to their two offices. The collaborative efforts between the two offices have resulted in multiple cases where what would have been individual misdemeanor cases were turned into charged felony cases. Officials believe this allows them to seek stiffer penalties more in line with the collective number of offenses committed by the suspect(s).
“There are multiple statutes, ultimately, that we can prosecute someone under, but one of them is the Organized Retail Crime statute,” says Nicole Lawson, a KCPAO retail crimes prosecutor. “As part of that statute, an individual can be charged with felony organized retail theft if they have committed multiple instances of theft that aggregate above $750.00, which is the threshold for a felony in Washington.”
“There are instances where three, four, five, twelve thefts that would otherwise have been misdemeanors, under the $750.00 threshold independently, where our office will aggregate those into one felony charge, assuming that the thefts happen within 180 days of each other.”
“The idea of aggregated smaller level thefts, which on their own wouldn’t qualify for felony prosecution but aggregating them into a felony charge under the Organized Retail Theft statute, is not anything that is new for us,” says Patrick Hinds, Chief of the KCPAO’s Economic Crimes and Wage Theft Division. “The KCPAO has been doing this for years, ever since that statute went into effect.”
“Part of what happens is we, King County, don’t work just with the city of Seattle; we work with all of the municipalities in the county, as well as unincorporated King County. I think the thing that has changed recently has been under [new Seattle City Attorney] Anne Davidson, [and her department’s] aggressiveness of going after misdemeanors brings that concept to the forefront and shines that spotlight on the practice that has been going on by the King County Prosecutors’ offices for quite a while,” added Hinds.
According to officials, part of the success of the initiatives stems from the outreach efforts of both offices. Working with retailers, retail associations, and law enforcement agencies to let them know that KCPAO and the City Attorney’s Office take these cases very seriously and want to work with them to ensure that they get cases that can be prosecuted has been instrumental in the process of building cases.
“Retail crime is a problem that obviously impacts retailers,” says Hinds. “Some of those retailers are big box stores, but others are mom and pop corner stores and the other small businesses that are drivers of growth and industry for the region. But it also impacts the people who work there, who don’t feel safe because they are having to react to this.”
“There are people who shop there, and certainly if a store pulls out of the neighborhood, it can cause food deserts where communities don’t have access to shopping resources anymore because the retailers can’t afford to stay there,” continued Hinds. “This is not just about a big box retailer; this has a real-world impact on communities, many of them communities of color, that are suffering the consequences.”
Lawson agrees that the impact of these crimes leaves a devastating trauma on the human aspect of these crimes.
“I think there is a public misconception when people hear about retail crimes. People think these are victimless crimes that don’t impact our communities and that it’s really big box retailers that are being harmed,” says Lawson. “What I hear consistently from retailers is how much this impacts them, and not just the bottom line, corporations experiencing financial loss. I am talking about the human being aspect of it. Retail stores are made up of human employees, and so many of these people have expressed to me how demoralizing it is to go to work every day and feel like they have nothing they can do to stop these thefts. We don’t want people to put themselves in harm’s way, but certainly, people are affected by this.”