From Theft to Violence: Crime Data Points to Holiday Retail Challenges

Hi, everybody. This is Matt Plantier with Innovation Obsessed. Thank you for joining us today as we go over a special holiday episode on the retail market and the security challenges they're facing. I have with me today two guests, Baja Petroski. She has fifteen plus years in the consulting space dealing with retailers, crime analytics and more, and Patrick Welsh of Usto. I'll let you two jump off with an introduction. Baja, if you wanna start. Thank you, Matt, and thank you so much for having me on this podcast. Like you said, I have over fifteen years of experience with my expertise being primarily in risk assessments, crime analysis, and working with different industry associations within retail, restaurants, and banking, and then directly with the clients or members of those associations to help, first of all, assess their risks, specifically in a data driven perspective because I am all about data. But then also help them, optimize their programs, policies, procedures to hopefully mitigate the risks that so many of them and us are facing, especially right now getting into the holiday season. Thanks, Basia, for joining us. Patrick Welsh. I'm the GM for the Americas for Oosto. We've been at what we do for about a decade. Large retailers turn to us when they're trying to protect the privacy of their customers, but also at the same time balance the safety and protect their workers and their customers while they're in their, places of business. So we've been at it for a while. We're we're very good at it. We look forward to sharing some of those stories with you today. Great. Thank you very much. So, let's kick off our panel here. And, Baja, with the holiday season coming up, you you mentioned a big part of your job is mitigating the risk. What are some of the unique challenges that you see during the holiday season? There there are plenty. That's for sure. I think I'm gonna just start with a backstory of, you know, what happened with the pandemic and post pandemic. And the one trend that we have been seeing in retail and other industries is just a general increase in violence. And that doesn't only apply to the traditional criminal, if you will, the professional. We're seeing a lot more cases of irate customers. People just generally getting more angry a little bit quicker, which then translates into their behaviors as consumers, as employees even, at the retail locations. And oftentimes, unfortunately, leads to escalation. So now when you think about the holiday season, when you think about, just the general increase in traffic because everyone is prepping for the holidays, everyone is shopping. At the same time, a lot of people are struggling with, financial issues and wanting to provide for their families for holidays. When you combine all of those things together, we can definitely expect an increase in shoplifting, in violence, in fraud, and many other types of crimes. And I say that because I do work with retailers and other businesses, and I often analyze trends throughout the year trying to identify what are some some of those hot periods of the year where we're seeing increases, and that is definitely the holidays. That is number one. Some other spikes take place around the summertime, and there are a couple other upward trends here and there, but the holidays are definitely a concern. Now if you take those concerns and the sort of height heightened issues, more irate customers, more criminals in general, and think about retail and the staffing aspect of retail. During the holidays, retailers hire a lot more seasonal employees. And one of the most effective ways to mitigate some of these issues is proper training. I do strongly believe in that, and studies continue to show that physical security measures are obviously important and efficient as well, but training is such a big piece of that. But if you're dealing with seasonal employees that kind of come and go, there's really not a great effective way to train them, or there are some that are better than others, but that is also an issue. So you're not only dealing with increased risks internally, externally, but also a challenge as far as preparing employees to, or for these risks. And, really, the primary concern is to avoid escalation. Even if theft goes up, the one of the biggest concerns that I'm hearing about from my clients is just a general escalation of violence that comes with those what used to be just theft through shoplifting. Now they're getting much more serious in nature and really have much more of an impact, on employees and customers. And finally, I do wanna bring up organized retail crime because that is one of the number one topics right now in the industry. And over the years, we also have seen an uptick in organized retail crime incidents around the holidays. So that is something that I know a lot of my retail clients and beyond, are preparing for. And we have seen stats showing especially spikes in November and December. That's that's very interesting. Just to stay on the ORC topic, have you noticed any trends that are helping to combat that? In terms of trends, and and I know we'll get into this probably a little bit later as well, this is a challenging topic because part of it is the pure definition of organized retail crime. Many retailers define it differently. So in terms of gathering intelligence, proper data to track trends, and mitigate, and catch these guys before they get to the next location, that is limited because of, again, definitions, but also information sharing among retailers. I am seeing a trend, especially from the National Retail Federation, NRF. They're trying to work with retailers. They're trying to work with law enforcement agencies and the congress to change that and to improve that collaboration. I do strongly believe that when you think about the nature of ORC, it is organized retail crime, and it involves a lot of collaboration amongst those criminals. And the same has to happen on the retail side. There needs to be better collaboration as far as information sharing so, so we can be more proactive. We can better analyze the routes that these guys are taking and hopefully catch them before they get to the next target. Great. Thank you. So so Patrick Boggio mentioned that crime goes up during the holidays. That's a trend she's seeing. Why is this year or time of year, such a critical opportunity to identify, these security gaps? Well, this is their Super Bowl. Right? So this this is, this is the time of year that will stress everything about the organization. It'll stress with temporary workers, high turnover, long workdays, not a lot of time for breaks because, typically, the flow through the stores is pretty high. We see a lot of managers working all those extra hours, and you get a little frazzled dealing with the public sometimes to Basia's point after COVID. You know, people's fuses are a little bit shorter. We see a lot more people, verbally or physically assaulting, in these environments. Through college and high school, I used to work for one of the larger jewelry stores in Philadelphia, and I used to open the gallery on weekends. And this time of year is one of the most stressful times of year for anybody that has keys to an organization that has a high margin product. So you're stressing your people, you're stressing your systems, and you're stressing all your processes. So security just being one of those is under an unbelievable amount of stress. You know? The the organized they are organized. They know what they're doing. They're looking for gaps. They're looking. They're probing. They're gonna find those soft spots. You also have just looting. You know, people just started recently. You know, we're starting to see it in the news now where large crowds of people are going in and helping themselves to things, and the retailers have to respond to those. In many cases, they're turning over data after the fact to detectives to try to do some analysis. There are others that are taking a more proactive approach. We have retailers that have hundreds of locations that are sharing information across their stores and working closely with law enforcement to try to stop and break up some of these retail, groups. And that puts it it puts their workers in a much safer environment because they're not the easy target that the criminals think they are. They're using that data proactively, which is allowing people then to do the tough work this time of year, but do it where they're safe, where they're able to stop these people before they get into the store. So the workers are not being assaulted. The customers don't have that bad experience of somebody stealing all this stuff out of, say, a tool corral. When you're standing there, you don't wanna shop in that place when you're seeing this kind of theft happen, in an environment. So it it all works together this time of year, but it is their Super Bowl, and and this is a good time to find the gaps. Hopefully, it's not too late, and there's not any serious consequences. But we see a lot of people now taxed, in all parts of their business, security just being one. Yeah. And if if I can add to that, I think part of the challenge that we have when it comes to mitigating, which is, again, having a good understanding of the magnitude of the problem. In order to mitigate, you need to understand that, oftentimes, these incidents are not properly classified. I know some of these groups like to recruit homeless individuals that are, you know, around the location to go and steal the goods. So that sometimes is a little bit harder to track and assign to the ORC category and to report properly. And another challenge is just, you know, the types of merchandise that gets stolen, specifically with an ORC. It could be the sort of lower end goods. It could be something as simple as beauty, household products, maybe some electronics, apparel, obviously, very popular, but you could also have the more high end, products that are targeted designer stores. So there's a lot of variety in, in terms of what is stolen, which again makes it that much more difficult to to analyze and understand. And I one of the positions I hold right now is a company called Lowers and Associates, and I serve as their senior industry adviser. And I they are actually very heavily involved in some of the higher end investigations of some of these stolen goods, that are out there, that they're searching for. And the problem is a lot of times these not only cross from one state to another, a lot of times they cross country borders, which, again, another challenge. And not to paint a negative picture, but I think as an industry, we need to get better at identifying what needs to change so we have better intelligence to work with and, hopefully, some level of mitigation in the future. Yep. Great points. You know? And and the patterns is it's it's important to bring up and understand. You know? You can have all the the best patterns, and then you get into a venue that's mixed. Right? So we have a lot of outdoor malls. We have a lot of, you know, casinos that have retail, and and they might have a threat in one part of their business that spills over into another. And, you know, that's one of the things that when they look, they they see there's no pattern here, but then they're starting to detect something in another part of their business Mhmm. Which is impacting their customer's experience, their guests. You know, recently, it's been in the news that casinos, the people in the, the discotheque at night are getting robbed by people that were there to do retail crime, but they found that the people that were inside of the the casino or the other venues, they had much more expensive merchandise on them than they would ever be able to lift out of the stores. So they would confront them trying to come out of the bathroom in groups of three or four and steal their watches. Some of these watches are worth a hundred, two, three, four hundred thousand dollars. Right? So they're they're opportunistic, these organized retail, thieves. They do use homeless people. They use other people, to get these goods. And to Basia's point, there's not really a pattern unless it's per customer. You'd see a dollar store where they would no longer carry undergarments because that's the thing that gets stolen the most in their locations. And then you see different people stopping certain products because that is what's bringing people in to then, you know, go at them. So it's interesting when you put this all together and you take that holistic approach that Fazio mentions that, you know, people do need to take a look at it this time of year. I think there's gonna be a lot of after action that happens through q one about what can we do to prevent this next year. Yeah. Baja, I I really liked your point about, you know, that we need to do better. I I was wondering, you know, besides the data sharing, are there any other avenues that you would recommend for retailers as a whole to really kinda do better to to stop ORC? I think cross agency collaboration, establishing relationships with your local law enforcement. But, again, because these these incidents cross state lines and country borders, also establishing relationships with federal agencies. I think that is critical. Even if there's not enough data to share, just having that partnership and understanding who to reach out to, who to get information from as far as what might be happening in your area, I think, is critical and very often overlooked. I think some of that is because of some of the I don't wanna say loss of trust in law enforcement, but there is a bit of a challenge with that right now where law enforcement, their resources are limited, and they don't always respond to, these incidents. But when we when we talk ORC, a lot of times, these incidents are turning into the more violent sort of flash mob type of situation. So these guys do wanna be involved. They do wanna hear more. I work with them, and they often actually express their frustrations to me saying that retailers don't share enough, don't collaborate enough. So that's something that I think needs to change. And really getting involved within some of those industry associations like NRF. I like I wanna applaud NRF for everything they're doing as far as ORC because they have been working so hard to to start changing the law and start creating national level agencies that would bring multiple parties together to collaborate and be more efficient at mitigating these incidents. But there's also more local associations, the organized retail crime associations, so called orcas, that a lot of retailers know about, but there's many that do not. And I think they have really amazing resources that are not just about information sharing, but they also provide a lot of great, guidance as far as training and how to prep your employees for these incidents. For me, honestly, financial loss, that's that's that's huge when it comes to ORC, and that's a massive loss and that's a big problem. But the one thing that retail needs to be very aware of is, again, the increase in violence associated with these incidents. And that's where I strongly believe that training your employees properly, on how to handle them and especially when it comes to engaging with these criminals or not engaging, which is what they should be doing, it's at least one way to prevent escalation. So I think that is also very important to not overlook that part, the sort of people element in this whole thing. So, again, getting involved with law enforcement, getting involved with these associations is an amazing first step. That that's great feedback. And, Patrick, I understand, you know, you do some work with or some of the customers at least will work with law enforcement. Can you expand on that? You know, a lot of times, and it it depends on the threat level. You may have certain retailers that see very high level threat, you know, people looking to do the worst things to other people, and and they'll try to build a case to find these individuals in the community. They may be going in and out of different stores, looking for things to do, criminal acts. It doesn't involve stealing, but, you know, it it could be that person that law enforcement has been trying to get ahold of, and they work closely with them to to identify them properly and make sure that they're able to communicate with law enforcement whenever they're inside their retail establishments. When you hear reports of things like the In N Out Burger closing, a profitable business that is making a choice to shut down, you know that there is an issue, you know, in the community. Right? So that closes down, and then you hear from retailers across the street, you know, running a gas station that they had a hundred people come in and basically steal everything in the store. And the response from the nine one one to the police was, by the time we get there, most of them will already be gone. So, essentially, file a report online. So you're kinda leaving these retailers to themselves to protect their businesses and their workers, which I I think it's a breakdown in the contract in the communities, right, that we're not gonna steal from each other. And if we do, there's gonna be consequences. And, you know, I I think in the next year, hopefully, we'll see a little bit better improvement in that, that that not as many people are, apt to do that type of crime. A hundred people going into a store. We saw it downtown in Philadelphia in Wawa where they basically went in and took over the whole store. And and, you know, you spend your time after the fact trying to figure out who did what. And then what do you do, Basia, to your point? What do you do with that information? Do other retailers get to benefit from that as a threat coming to them, or is that information that's not shared? So I I think over the next year, we're gonna see some efforts to improve that even more than it's been, because, you know, people have kinda had enough. When you see stores closing down, you know, Matt, you live in the city. You know, that's one less place you can go. Right? So you start to see these grocery stores, the bodegas up in New York, hundreds of them. And we see this all the time. You know, they they would rather close their business down than put their workers' lives at risk. Yeah. And and to add to it, because I know we we're talking about retail primarily, but when we when I when I say collaboration, I think it has to go beyond retail. And I'm personally very passionate about this sort of crossover from retail to restaurant to financial because these guys are dealing with a lot of similar issues. And, while a bank doesn't deal with other issues that are similar. And a lot of times, these crimes kind of crossover. So being aware of what your neighbors are experiencing even though they're not traditional retail is key. So I know there are some initiatives forming behind the scenes in the industry that are going to help facilitate that, which I think is very important. And there's a lot to learn there because when you think about collaboration with law enforcement, I always say with the three industries I primarily work with, restaurant industry is the one that is most satisfied with their partnerships with law enforcement. And we all know about those programs like coffee with a cup or donuts, and it it really does work. It it really helps helps to get connected with your local guys. So that's another thing I would love to see retail consider a little bit more to find a way to get these guys more involved, almost on a personal level, if you will, because I think that is that is key and to really make them understand the magnitude of the problem. Even if it's not for our seed, obviously, any other problem. Homelessness is another number one topic right now. It's not always crime, but it's disturbance to to the business, affect sales, affects perception of safety, discourages customers from coming in. So, I think, again, those partnerships are key. Yep. That's a great point. We do a lot with high end restaurants, typically, that have, you know, other venues dancing and different things associated with them. We also deal a lot with banks and local branches of large chains around the world. And this time of year, sticking an empty police car in the parking lot is not sufficient. Right? The criminals are smart enough to know that that's an empty police car sitting in there. They will be dissuaded from crime if they see there's an off duty officer still in uniform, you know, either in that car or in that location. Some of the restaurants in Philadelphia used to leave a seat in the back in the kitchen for the police to come in and and have a meal at a discounted rate, but it put and and people knew because they would see the car parked outside that there was an officer or two in the building. Bookbinders was notorious, down by you, Matt, for for doing that. And this time of year, especially, because there's a lot of cash back then that was moving. There was a lot of people with gifts and bags, and they just wanna make sure they sent the message that this is not a soft target, you know, especially this time of year. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Baji, I hope I don't betray any confidences, but, you told me a story that I loved, and I wanna share it with Patrick. So Baji was studying criminology at University of Penn, and she would take the bus the long way to get a good look at some of these, you know, high crime areas. So she was really passionate about this for a long time. So with that, Bhaji, besides, you know, the theft that's occurring at these retail stores, what what are other impacts associated, with theft? Again, I think I'll just keep coming back to violence. And and, honestly, last week, I was in New York City visiting a couple of retail locations, and out of seven of them within a two hour span, I witnessed verbal arguments from customers. And it was in the middle of the day, so that is a lot for two hours living locations. I really did admire how the employees reacted. They just simply did not engage. They listened. And for one of those cases, a guard had to get involved because the woman, regular customer seemingly, was verbally aggressive and started getting physically aggressive. So I think violence, it's absolutely the number one concern right now because it affects the employees. It affects them wanting to come to work, which I hear that from a lot of them. I do a lot of site visits with customers while I actually speak to employees on-site. And oftentimes, they will open up to me because I'm not with their company. I'm sort of an objective, you know, researcher, if you will. And that is their concern. A lot of times, they're thinking about changing their jobs because they just don't feel safe going to work, especially in big cities. And then ultimately, how that affects customers. I I've done some surveys on that earlier this year, and just the general perception is people are switching more to online shopping because they're not comfortable going to stores. Going to a mall, going to a store in a big city is oftentimes associated with a potential risk, which that is extremely concerning. So, obviously, that affects perception, reputation, and potentially sales. So it's not only shrink. It's not the loss in shrink, but it's also what you're potentially losing and what you could be, selling, and ultimately just losing the trust of the customer. So and, Patrick, I know you mentioned some of the closings of stores, restaurants. So it's just a trend that we're continuing to see that is so much more than theft. And going back to what I said earlier, de escalation is key. That's why it's so important to train employees. And, you know, when that situation happens with a potential theft or even a homeless individual, being able to not get engaged or being able to communicate properly and know how to speak to these individuals could prevent a theft, escalating to a robbery or, you know, an interaction with a homeless person escalating to an assault. And, also, homeless, population, I think that's another issue during this holiday season because, obviously, with temperature changes, especially in areas where it is getting pretty cold, you're starting to see them trying to migrate over into the businesses, into the restrooms. With banks, it would be ATM vestibules. So that is also another, risk that I think we need to be aware of in sort of the winter months. And that's forcing, you know, some banks, for instance, closing their ATM vestibules early, which again, potentially lost customer because customers are not happy about that. So it's honestly such a chain reaction of sort of one thing affecting another. And, again, I don't mean to paint a very negative picture, but I think we just need to be aware of all of that because it's gonna require probably a a very different approach as we move forward to mitigate these or at least to some extent in the future. Yep. I mentioned I worked at the gallery through college. I used to take the subway down Broad Street early morning Saturday, early morning Sunday, and leaving late in the day, you know, back to LaSalle. Right. And back in the day, you you didn't think much of it. But today, you do. Right? And they are interconnected. So if the ridership feels unsafe to take the subway, the train, the bus, the whatever, then you don't have customers coming into your retail locations because they don't wanna take the transportation that's required to get there. If they're driving their own or even Ubering in and they're coming into a parking facility that they feel unsafe in, then you're losing even more customers. So you see a lot of the retail brick and mortar being affected by everything else around them. Asya, to your point, they're all interconnected. If I don't feel safe in transit to your location, I'm probably not gonna shop at your location. Right? So I think what we're gonna see is people going from that reactive posture where React Stream is a shutdown of the business. The, you know, in a now burger. It's what happened with Target, what's going on in San Francisco. You see these malls closing in mass. They're gonna go from that as a reactive, worst case, to we have to do something more proactive. And that's why I think these federations and others are doing great work to try to share information to become more proactive, to do a little bit more of how can we prevent this. Right? How can we make transportation safer in these cities so that our large malls, you know, down in Atlanta and all the other big cities? We know these phenomenal malls, the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. You know? How do we make these safer destinations so that these retailers can thrive as they should be during this time of year? Yeah. And and, also, how do we make the job of the criminal more difficult? So, like, again, like you said and what I said earlier about these associations working more closely with the government to to change the law, a good example of that is the inform consumer act, that was passed not too long ago that NRF was very heavily involved in. And the goal of that is to make the resale of the stolen goods more difficult online and require these online marketplaces to verify identity, of the sellers, which it's not gonna solve the issue fully, but it's gonna make it a little bit more difficult for the criminals as well. And then finally, just thinking about the impact of really any kind of an incident that is reported at location, it's not just loss of merchandise. It's not just financial loss. It's also potentially other operational expenses or an increase in insurance premiums. There's just, again, so much more to the whole story that, unfortunately, is affecting the business and making some of these retailers make the decision to close because it was just not profitable. Yep. And you you touched on, the restaurants, even hospitals. You know, same problem. Same people targeting them. Right? The people that are targeting the CVS are also the people that are going in targeting the pharmacy inside of that hospital because they think everybody's distracted and the security guard's getting sixteen dollars an hour and he doesn't care and isn't paying attention. Right? So organizations that take a more proactive approach are using technology to to make them less of an easy target when those people are coming at them. You look at the restaurants. You've got, drugs, prostitution, human trafficking. You've got these types of issues, that other large venues would have. They have it at a restaurant level, at at even grocery stores. You know, there are predators that will prey on cashiers. Right? And if you can't get those cashiers or you can't keep your long term most experienced best workers, you're replacing them with people, you're increasing the turnover, and it's impacting the customer's experience. When you walk in and say, do you know where I could find product x? The person that doesn't wanna work there because they don't feel safe, they knew where everything in the store was because they were there for ten years. Well, they're not there anymore. So now you have somebody that doesn't know. So the customer's experience suffers in almost every one of these cases, and then they move to either online because they get to make a choice or delivery at home or, you know, other means that are just further harming, and and this spiral kinda has to stop. And I think as people get more proactive and they are no longer willing to accept the reactive, then I think that's when it'll really, really start to change. Yeah. And I I think that's where the technology that you guys provide has so much potential from what Matt told me about it. I mean, this is just one of the many ways to be more proactive. So I would definitely encourage everyone to look into that more. Yeah. You mentioned, the importance of de escalation, and I just want we'd like to hear from Patrick. You know, if you're getting proactive data, how does that help you with the a de escalation? Yeah. So a lot of times, it starts most commonly with loitering. So, you know, de escalation in our business varies by customer. Some people are trying to deescalate, a potential shooting. And you've got people coming into the lobby of a hotel that three days before someone noted they had a gun on their hip. Well, that could be a problem coming into a crowded lobby, especially this time of year. So you wanna deescalate the situation with data. Right? I I know that person. I know them three days ago to have had a gun on them. I wanna make sure that we share that information with the professionals so they have an appropriate response. If I'm in a university setting and I'm looking at the kids in, you know, frat row and we're having a bit of an altercation and we're taking a look at this situation and we see a fight, one person hits one person, it it it will very quickly escalate into two people hitting each other and then four and then five. So the quicker we can get information to the professionals that are providing safety and security, the less likely we are to see that escalate. We see it on the tracks at bus terminals all over Latin America, where the second that something happens where we have individuals hitting each other, you know, we're able to get people to to deescalate that before it turns into something much larger. We see it move from words to fists to then knives or guns. There are situations where people come back into retail. Unfortunately, we saw that in Philadelphia where, you know, someone was confronted for stealing something, and they came back with a knife, and and they harmed a security professional. We see that a lot. And and that type of information, if you're proactive, you can deescalate that second instance where they're coming back in to do harm, bad harm. We don't wanna see people getting stabbed. We don't wanna see people getting beat up or shot and killed over clothing. So using data to try to deescalate, I think it's one of the approaches that's working in many places. We see it around human trafficking as well. It starts with loitering. If we're able to deescalate that person that's casing a hospital or casing a bank branch, We will prevent that person from being able to then act on, you know, their escalation, which would be to grab a child, which we've unfortunately seen in in some states around the country. So, you know, we we wanna use data proactively to stop these things from getting worse. Absolutely. Thank you. Sabaja, holiday season are coming to a close. The rush is over. What are the most critical steps when you're talking to a customer? What what should they be looking at to review and, you know, help their performance, for the next surge? Yeah. I think this is a very important one because, you know, the issues that we're seeing during the holiday season are not necessarily different from the ones we're seeing throughout the year. It's just the volume is much higher. Right? So there's a lot to learn, a lot of and, again, I keep going back to data because that's the core of who I am. Being able to go back and look at whatever intelligence you were able to gather both from, you know, the incidents, the shrink numbers, security measures in place, testing what worked, what didn't, taking as objective of an approach as possible to arrive at lessons learned and what needs to be adjusted and modified moving forward, I think, is the most powerful thing you can do, because you you could potentially have access to a large volumes of data. And I think that would be the sort of number one step for me because that can be applied not just during the search, but it could be applied throughout the year and prep you for what might be coming, next year. And, again, collaborating with your peers, trying to share some of that information, but also get that information from them so you can understand. Even if you were not a target, you you could have been. So how do we put that sort of together in an aggregate fashion to better understand these trends and better understand what might happen to you next time? Maybe you were lucky this time and someone next door was not. So that's another thing I would definitely, I would definitely recommend. And I think that's key, and we keep saying this data because it is. It's just unfortunately a bit of a challenge in the industry. There's not a single perfect data source, but I think the more we combine together, the better. And along those lines with the partnerships with law enforcement, also reaching out to your local law enforcement, to gather some of their data. What I noticed over the years, it used to be very difficult to get crime data reported to a local police department that would be address level. They wouldn't just tell you, oh, there were two hundred incidents or homicides in the city a year. They're getting so much better at it. So there's so much power in that that I think a lot of businesses don't even realize. When I was at my previous company, I would have my team collect this information daily, and they would actually break it down by retail, restaurant, and other businesses. So so much intelligence that could be gathered from that that many are just not aware of. So I would also recommend that post holiday season to better understand what, you know, what's happening at your locations or near your your locations. That's that's really interesting. So you're advising, let's say, a manager of a restaurant, they can call their local police station and just get data on, you know, the amount of crime that's happened in the area. Is is that right? It could be through a phone call, but oftentimes, they actually now make it available online. There's sort of data portals where you can go and literally download however many years of data or months or days, whatever is of interest. And it could be done by a local manager, but a lot of times, it's done by, the loss prevention department, the corporate level, to then analyze not just just one city or just one area, but also compare and contrast and identify where your hot spots are. And it's also oftentimes a very good lesson to to see how much of your internal incidents are actually not reported to police department, which is obviously a big issue and another potential lesson learned, especially around this time of year. So that's another thing I would recommend. Patrick, any any recommendations for people after the holidays, the the surge? You know, when the rush is over, I think people sit down and they take a look back. I think when you hear retailers, hospitals, transit systems saying, can it get any worse? Right? So we hear them in these meetings saying we don't we've never seen it this bad, not since the seventies, early eighties. Can it get any worse? So the fact that they're having those realizations means it's about time for everybody to get to sit down at the same table, the retail federation with the mayors, and say to the mayors, this is all interconnected. Right? If I can't get people into my stores, I can't get you the tax revenue you need to not raise citizens' taxes to offset all the programs and things we need to do in the city. If the ridership's not there in transit and they're running at a loss, the state taxpayers are picking up that tab. The unions don't have leverage in their negotiations. Workers don't feel safe and don't report they have high turnover. So it impacts everybody, and I I think these conversations are probably gonna be happening in the next year or two where more people at a higher level are gonna sit down and say, if we let this guy back out for the forty ninth time, do we think he's not gonna rob for the fiftieth time from that particular retailer? Right? I I think they're gonna have those conversations. They need to because and until you get to some of the root causes of these issues, nobody's gonna feel safe to go into stores and shop, especially this time of year, you know, let alone later when it's, you know, slim pickings and and people are still doing the same type of crime. But, you know, there's less of a crowd. The the odds are not in your favor, I'll say. Right? So I think these conversations need to start happening at a higher level, and I think after this season, hopefully, they will. Yeah. And one other challenge I will add is, oftentimes, this is the time of year where budgets are set or planned or finalized. So it's also an additional challenge again for the loss prevention department. So being able to even look back at last year's data because that could could already give you a lot of intelligence so that you can set yourself up for success and provide you with more tools to speak to your c suite level, your leadership, when you're asking for more budget for security, which is a challenging conversation to have. But being able to demonstrate these issues with objective information could help with that conversation. So that's just another sort of side note, something that definitely correlates with this time of year. So we will recommend that all of the customers we speak to call Basia as soon as possible. Get your risk assessment done, especially during the holidays. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me, and, really happy to, you know, get this in before the holidays. I hope you guys have a good one. Thank you. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, everyone.