22 Oct 2023

New Minnesota law cracks down on organized retail theft

by | posted in: News | 0

Charlie Anderson went from St. Paul patrol to investigative police work in 2011 and, as he followed up on shoplifting reports, he realized some weren’t as simple as a person slipping merchandise into their pocket and walking out the door.

“There’s something else going on here,” he thought.

As he talked to other law enforcement and retailers, he said his eyes were opened “to this world” of organized retail theft, Anderson said.

Organized retail theft — stealing to sell goods to other people — isn’t a new problem, but it’s in the public eye more. Target recently announced it was closing nine stores in four states (none in Minnesota), saying that theft and organized retail crime have threatened the safety of its workers and customers.

Charlie Anderson (Courtesy photo)

Anderson’s experiences more than a decade ago led him to start an organized retail crime association that grew into a statewide nonprofit, and he and others in the field have been pushing to change state law to distinguish shoplifting for personal use from stealing with the intent to resell items. After legislative approval last session, Gov. Tim Walz signed it into law.

“It separates a petty theft or a theft of necessity, a mom who steals baby formula, from career criminal activity in our laws,” said Bruce Nustad, Minnesota Retailers Association president.

The new law that took effect in August spells out that a person is guilty of organized retail theft if they’re working with at least one other person in “a retail theft enterprise,” they previously were involved in at least two separate retail thefts in a six-month period and they attempt to sell the merchandise or return it for anything of value. It increases the penalties compared to other theft. If stolen merchandise exceeds $5,000, a person who’s convicted could receive a prison term of up to 15 years, rather than 10 years.

No one had been charged in Minnesota under the new law as of Tuesday, though Anderson said it will take some time for police and prosecutors to build cases.

Cases don’t follow city or county boundaries and because individual law enforcement departments have limited resources, Minnesota Organized Retail Crime Association President Cody Johnson said what’s needed next is a task force in the state to allow investigators to work together on organized retail crime.

Local shoplifting trends

There have been some high-profile local cases of organized retail crime, such as grab-and-run thefts from Best Buy locations in Maplewood, Burnsville and Blaine on Black Friday in 2021, but theft rings in the Twin Cities aren’t usually as visible to the public.

While there aren’t official counts of organized retail theft, statistics show some of the picture. Local law enforcement report shoplifting incidents, among a myriad of crimes, for FBI statistics.

Shoplifting incidents across Minnesota, during the first nine months of each year, increased 13 percent from 2021 to 2022 and 2 percent from 2022 to this year at convenience stores, department/discount stores, grocery/supermarkets, shopping malls and specialty stores. The Pioneer Press didn’t analyze earlier statewide numbers because the FBI changed crime reporting requirements in 2021, and earlier statistics wouldn’t represent an apples-to-apples comparison.

The current patterns vary by metro-area counties: Across Washington County, for instance, there were 606, 648 and 579 reports respectively in the first nine months of 2021, 2022 and 2023. Ramsey County law enforcement recorded 1,087, 1,295 and 1,287 reports during those same time periods. In Hennepin County, shoplifting reports jumped from 2,968 in the nine months of 2021 to 4,089 in 2022 and 4,228 so far this year.

Retailers take varying approaches of reporting shoplifting and theft, which Eagan police say is reflected in reports from Twin Cities Premium Outlets, for example. This year, there were 287 police calls for service about shoplifting and theft from stores at the outlet mall through the end of September, compared to 206 throughout last year and 224 throughout 2021. But Eagan Police Detective Sgt. Mark Kritzeck attributes this year’s increase to Nike changing its loss-prevention policy. “They now call quite frequently,” he said.

Nike media relations didn’t respond to messages.

Twin Cities Premium Outlets said in a statement that they’re “not seeing significant crime trends.” The outlet mall has “trained security professionals who patrol the property 24/7,” the statement continued. “These professionals are supported by the Simon Operations Intelligence Center, where highly trained specialists use purposefully built algorithms to monitor real-time risk and conduct local, state and national intelligence gathering.”

How organized retail theft works

The focus of the new Minnesota law is on people stealing items to resell on the black market. Such “markets” aren’t necessarily hidden — they could be someone selling merchandise from the trunk of a car, on social media or on websites as common as Amazon or eBay, Anderson said.

It’s not a city vs. suburban problem — in fact, suburbs often have dense shopping areas where people can steal from multiple stores before leaving on a nearby highway, according to Johnson.

Organized retail theft runs the gamut from sophisticated to not.

Some people who’ve been arrested multiple times for shoplifting may have a chemical dependency problem, which they’re funding by stealing merchandise and reselling it, said Anderson, who is a St. Paul police commander on military leave as a Minnesota Army National Guard military intelligence officer.

In some cases, people work with friends or relatives to create a “customer base” using social media and they’re essentially “fulfilling orders” when they go out to steal, Anderson said.

There are also “state or national crews” that travel through regions of the U.S. with fraudulent bank or gift cards — they have funds on them through scams, stealing or other means — that they use to buy large quantities of merchandise and resell it, according to Anderson.

The items stolen in any of these cases can range from pricey steaks and seafood to cellphones to household items. Razor blade refills or teeth whitening strips are being locked up at stores, for example, because a lot of them can be quickly swiped and the dollar amounts can add up.

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Some merchandise is stolen by concealing it, but retailers say they’re concerned about seeing increasing brazenness from people who grab an armload of goods and walk out with them.

In the past, shoplifters would usually drop the merchandise and run if an employee or asset protection worker told them to stop, “but now what you see is a willingness to square off, threaten violence or use violence,” Anderson said.

Johnson, whose previous work included confronting shoplifters, said more stores are telling employees to take a “hands off” approach for safety. He’s worked in retail security for 18 years and is certified in organized retail crime investigations and loss prevention. He volunteers for the state organized retail crime association and spoke at the Legislature in favor of the new law.

The new state law includes an enhanced penalty if, during an offense, there is “a reasonably foreseeable risk of bodily harm to another.”

Locking up merchandise

Leo Pichardo, left, a store associate at Gristedes supermarket, retrieves a container of Tide laundry soap from a locked cabinet, Tuesday Jan. 31, 2023, at the store in New York. Increasingly, retailers are locking up more products or increasing the number of security guards at their stores to curtail theft. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

At a busy Target store — on University Avenue in St. Paul’s Midway — a look at police calls for service categorized as shoplifting or theft shows ups and downs; it’s not publicly known what the business’s reporting practices are.

From 2018 to 2019, shoplifting and theft reports at the store doubled from 154 to 306. Then, the numbers dropped to 133 in 2020 and 117 in 2022. This year, there were 190 calls for service for shoplifting or theft as of Oct. 12.

The Midway Target didn’t always have everyday-type merchandise — such as body wash, laundry detergent and vitamins — behind lock and key, but now there are aisles with locked-up merchandise. A reporter shopping in the store during a weekday lunch hour saw an employee working in those aisles, offering to unlock cases for customers as they shopped. A squad car was parked outside because the store often contracts with the St. Paul Police Department to pay overtime for an officer to be present.

Target spokesperson Joe Unger says they use, on a limited basis, “theft-deterrent merchandising strategies, such as locking cases, for categories that are prone to theft. While we don’t share specifics on these strategies, these decisions are generally made at a local level.”

Walgreens on St. Paul’s Grand Avenue also has similar merchandise locked up, as do Walgreens locations in Burnsville and Eagan.

“We are focused on the safety of our patients, customers and team members, and have programs in place to reduce organized retail theft in our stores,” said Kris Lathan, Walgreens spokesperson, in a statement. “We continue to take measures, like installing anti-theft devices and security personnel for example, to deter theft and ensure safety and security in our stores. These steps are taken in response to theft data and for that reason only, and these additional security measures allow us to improve on-shelf availability of products to customers.”

After Teresa Boardman headed out of the Grand Avenue Walgreens recently, she said she’s seen products locked up there and at the downtown St. Paul location. When she asks a worker for products to be unlocked, “It’s usually pretty fast,” she said. But, Boardman added, “I’m concerned about the future of retail stores” and, when it comes to theft, “somebody’s paying for that and it’s probably us.”

Johnson said he noticed stores in the Twin Cities locking up merchandise over the last year and he saw it earlier in other parts of the U.S.

George John, a University of Minnesota marketing professor, said stores wouldn’t be locking up merchandise without carrying out a cost-benefit calculation.

“Retailing is a very thin margin business, and it’s very, very competitive,” he said. If retailers are securing merchandise, it’s “not because they want to aggravate the customers, but because they think that’s a better approach for them than to just simply have the product and display as they used to have it.”

Smaller manufacturers or brands trying to get off the ground are hurt most because consumers are less likely to ask a store employee to open up a case to peruse products they’re not familiar with, John said.

State task force?

In Minnesota, top concerns for retailers in recent years have been finding workers, supply-chain troubles, and protecting their businesses from theft, said Nustad, the state retailers association president. He lobbied for the new state law.

During the next legislative session, Nustad said he plans to push for an organized retail crime task force in the state. That would get “prosecutors, financial investigators, law enforcement, retail loss prevention and store owners to all work together to identify these career criminal networks faster than we’re doing today,” he said.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said he, prosecutors from his office and prosecutors from cities in the county are planning training around the new law, developing plans to work with police investigators, and utilizing industry-led resources to help with uncovering organized retail theft operations.

“One of the biggest challenges will be to find the investigative capacity as this new law did not provide funding,” he said. “The good news is that there are strong partnerships and interest in solving this type of crime in Ramsey County.”

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22 Oct 2023

St. Paul writer launches new novel and talks about her process

by | posted in: Adventure | 0

Mona Susan Power (Courtesy of the author)

Mona Susan Power introduces her new novel, “A Council of Dolls,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24, at Plymouth Congregational Church, 1900 Nicollet Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with her friend and fellow writer Elizabeth Fletcher. They will talk about the part intuition plays in their writing practices and how some writers surrender to the mystery of a process that is accessed by a trust in the intelligence of our connection to all beings, past and present. Part of their conversation will focus on “A Council of Dolls,” longlisted for a National Book Award. Power says the book felt like a gift from her ancestors rather than a project she chose to write.

Power, who lives in St. Paul, is the author of three previous works of fiction: “The Grass Dancer” (PEN/Hemingway Prize), “Roofwalker” (Milkweed National Fiction Prize), and “Sacred Wilderness” (Electa Quinney Award). A member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, she is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Elizabeth Fletcher’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in literary journals and elsewhere.

Presented by Literary Witnesses reading series and the Eye of the Heart Center, Tuesday’s program is free and open to the public.

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22 Oct 2023

Torivio Fodder: The true crime story of the Osage Nation would take a century to tell

by | posted in: All news | 0

Director Martin Scorsese’s new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” tells the true story of a string of murders on the Osage Nation’s land in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Based on David Grann’s meticulously researched 2017 book, the movie delves into racial and family dynamics that rocked Oklahoma to the core when oil was discovered on Osage lands.

White settlers targeted members of the Osage Nation to steal their land and the riches beneath it. At least 60 Osage people were murdered or disappeared between 1921 and 1925. From a historical perspective, this crime, made possible by federal policies from the 1880s, was just the tip of the iceberg.

From the early 1800s through the 1930s, official U.S. policy displaced thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homes through the policy known as Indian removal. And throughout the 20th century, the federal government collected billions of dollars from sales or leases of natural resources such as timber, oil and gas on Indian lands, money it was supposed to disburse to the land’s owners. But it failed to account for these trust funds for decades, let alone pay Indians what they were due.

I have roots in the Comanche, Kiowa, Cherokee and Taos Pueblo tribes, and from my perspective, this story of murder on Osage lands is just one small chapter in the much larger story of an entire nation built on land theft and stolen wealth.

In the standard telling, the American West was populated by industrious settlers who eked out livings on desolate land, formed communities and cities and, in time, created states. Most Americans still know little or nothing about the hundreds of Native nations who already lived on those lands, each with their own unique forms of government, culture and language.

In the early 1800s, Eastern cities were growing and dense urban centers were becoming unwieldy, and Indian lands in the West were seen as a solution. Starting in the 1830s, Congress pressured Indian tribes in the East to sign treaties that required the tribes to move to reservations in the West. This took place over the objections of figures such as Tennessee frontiersman and congressman Davy Crockett, humanitarian organizations and, of course, the tribes themselves.

Forced removal touched every tribe east of the Mississippi River and several tribes to the west of it. In total, about 100,000 American Indians were removed from their Eastern homelands to Western reservations.

But the most pernicious land grab was yet to come.

Even after Indians were corralled on reservations, settlers pushed for more access to Western lands. In 1871, Congress formally ended the policy of treaty-making with Indians. Then, in 1887, it passed the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act. With this law, U.S. policy toward Indians shifted from separation to assimilation — forcibly integrating Indians into the national population.

This required transitioning tribal structures of communal land ownership under a reservation system to a private property model that broke up reservations altogether. The General Allotment Act was designed to divvy up reservation lands into allotments for individual Indians and open any unallotted lands, which were deemed surplus, to non-Indian settlement. Lands could be allotted only to male heads of households.

Under the original statute, the U.S. government held Indian allotments, which measured roughly 160 acres per person, in trust for 25 years before each Indian allottee could receive clear title. During this period, Indian allottees were expected to embrace agriculture, convert to Christianity and assume U.S. citizenship.

In 1906, Congress amended the law to allow the secretary of the Interior to issue land titles whenever an Indian allottee was deemed capable of managing his affairs. Once this happened, the allotment was subject to taxation and could immediately be sold.

But Indian allottees often had little concept of farming and even less ability to manage their individual lands. Even after being confined to Western reservations, many tribes had maintained their traditional governance structures and tried to preserve their cultural and religious practices, including communal ownership of property.

When the U.S. government imposed a foreign system of ownership on them, many Indian landowners simply sold their lands to non-Indian buyers, or found themselves subject to taxes that they were unable to pay.

In total, allotment removed 90 million acres of land from Indian control before the policy ended in the mid-1930s. This led to the destruction of Indian culture; loss of language as the federal government implemented its boarding school policy; and imposition of a myriad of regulations that affected inheritance, ownership and title disputes when an allottee passed away. All of these destructive policies were forced on the Osage people.

Today, about 56 million acres remain under Indian control. The federal government owns title to the lands, but holds them in trust for Indian tribes and individuals.

These lands contain many valuable resources, including oil, gas, timber and minerals. But rather than acting as a steward of Indian interests in these resources, the U.S. government has repeatedly failed in its trust obligations.

As required under the General Allotment Act, money earned from oil and gas exploration, mining and other activities on allotted Indian lands was placed in individual accounts for the benefit of Indian allottees.

But for over a century, rather than making payments to Indian landowners, the government routinely mismanaged those funds, failed to provide a court-ordered accounting of them and systematically destroyed disbursement records.

In 1996, Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to force the government to provide a historical accounting of these funds and fix its failed system for managing them. After 16 years of litigation, the suit was settled in 2009 for roughly $3.4 billion (direct payments to each member of the class amounted to $1,000).

“We all know that the settlement is inadequate, but we must also find a way to heal the wounds and bring some measure of restitution,” said Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians.

In 2011, the federal government settled for $380 million a longstanding lawsuit brought by the Osage Nation to compensate the tribe for losses to its trust funds and interest as a result of the government’s mismanagement of trust assets. In truth, that amount doesn’t come close to full reparations for the crimes committed against the Osage people by the government over two centuries.

Torivio Fodder is the manager of the Indigenous Governance Program and a law professor at the University of Arizona. This article was produced in partnership with the Conversation. He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

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22 Oct 2023

Sources project value for Patriots’ trade deadline candidates

by | posted in: sport | 0

There’s not much left to salvage for the Patriots this season less than two weeks out from the NFL trade deadline.

At 1-5, ravaged by injuries and underdogs in their next two games, the Patriots are obvious sellers ahead of the Halloween deadline. And they know it.

“Given where we are, if I’m another team, I’d be calling on the availability of all of our upcoming free agents,” a source said.

And the Patriots are willing to listen to offers ahead of the trade deadline, per sources.

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The Patriots should be looking to acquire draft capital in the event they could move up for a quarterback in the 2024 NFL Draft as Mac Jones continues to struggle under center.

So, let’s take a look at some of the Patriots players in contract years and assess their value with the help of team and league sources.

OLB Josh Uche

Uche, 25, is the most logical trade candidate on the roster. Another team would value Uche, a situational pass rusher, more heavily than the Patriots.

Pass rushers get paid a premium, and the Patriots historically have not invested in players who cannot contribute on all three downs. Even with other edge defenders on the roster injured, Uche is 16th on the team in defensive snaps but leads the Patriots with 17 pressures.

One league source called Uche one of the Patriots’ best trade pieces. Most sources polled believe teams would offer a third- or fourth-round pick for the former Michigan defender. One source specifically projected a team offering a third-round pick for Uche and a fifth- or sixth-rounder, while another believed a second-round pick for Uche and a fourth- or fifth-round selection would be fair. One source believed Uche could be valued as highly as a third-round pick if the acquiring team wanted to sign him to an extension and he was amenable to that.

The biggest issue is that he’s injured and being held out of practice with knee and foot injuries.

Value: Third/fourth-round pick

S Kyle Dugger

Dugger was another player pegged as one of the Patriots’ most valuable trade assets. No one polled placed a value lower than a third-round pick on Dugger, a versatile safety who has proven to be a playmaker in the past. One league source believed Dugger would be worth a second-round pick if the acquiring team believed a contract extension was likely.

Sources believed the Patriots could get offers anywhere from the first to the third round for Dugger. Belichick places a high value on safeties, and there’s a lack of certainty at that position on the roster on the roster in the future.

Would the Patriots consider franchising Dugger, 27, if they can’t reach a long-term deal?

The idea of trading Dugger didn’t seem unreasonable from team sources polled.

Value: Second-round pick

G Mike Onwenu

Onwenu was viewed as the Patriots’ best offensive lineman heading into the season, but injuries and penalties have led to a disappointing start.

Onwenu, 25, has positional versatility at guard and right tackle. Team and league sources believe other franchises would offer anywhere from a third- to fifth-round pick in a deal for Onwenu. It’s hard to gauge how much money Onwenu could command on the open market, but the Patriots are set to enter the 2024 offseason with the most salary-cap space in the NFL.

One source noted it’s uncommon for a starting offensive lineman to be traded at the deadline because it can be difficult for an offensive lineman to come in and start at midseason.

Value: Fourth-round pick

WR Kendrick Bourne

Bourne, 28, has drawn trade interest in the past. He’s currently the Patriots’ best wide receiver with 28 catches for 307 yards with two touchdowns, and he’s coming off of a 10-catch, 89-yard performance in a Week 6 loss to the Raiders.

One source believed Bourne could be worth as much as a third-round pick. Most other sources placed his value around the fifth or sixth rounds.

Value: Fifth-round pick

TE Mike Gesicki

The undersized tight end didn’t have a major market in free agency, signing a one-year contract worth $4.5 million with incentives. Gesicki, 28, hasn’t made a major impact, catching 15 passes for 144 yards through six games in a Patriots uniform.

Franchised by the Dolphins just one year ago, Gesicki’s value has plummeted since. Sources believe the Patriots could be offered anything from a sixth-round pick to a late-round pick swap for Gesicki.

Value: Seventh-round pick

S Jalen Mills

Mills, 29, moved from cornerback back to safety this offseason and has seen his snap count nosedive.

One source believed Mills has no trade value whatsoever. Another source thought a team would offer a future seventh-round pick, at best. A third source said a team could offer a “very late-round pick swap.”

Value: Future seventh-round pick

QB Mac Jones

This is the trickiest one. The most damning response: “No trade value.”

One team source believed a trade would only work on paper if he was included in a deal for another quarterback — Kirk Cousins was used as an example — “where (Jones) can’t be here anymore, and they just want someone to take snaps for them the rest of the way.”

Another league source also mentioned the Vikings as a potential destination.

“Mid-round pick?” he estimated. “It just depends on a team that needs QB in the future but doesn’t think they will be picking high enough. Maybe Minnesota if Cousins isn’t in their plans?”

Value: Player swap toss-in