The top 10% of offenders account for 60% of total retail crime value globally on Auror, and those same repeat offenders are 2.5X more likely to involve a weapon in an incident in North America.
In grocery, where perishable evidence disappears quickly, store teams often don’t have asset protection (AP) professionals. Keeping shelves accessible is a competitive priority and identifying and stopping those repeat offenders before harm occurs is structurally harder than in almost any other retail format.
In a recent webinar hosted by The Loss Prevention Foundation, AP leaders from Meijer and Northeast Grocery (Price Chopper) share what is working in grocery LP right now, how organized retail crime (ORC) has evolved, what connected intelligence unlocks for grocery retailers, and the cases that are only possible once the silos come down.
Key takeaways from this session:
- Grocery ORC is structurally different from other retail verticals: perishable evidence, high foot traffic, and a workforce that is not AP-trained create a vulnerability gap that demands proactive intelligence rather than a reactive response.
- The retailers getting consistent law enforcement engagement are the ones arriving with connected cases, not isolated incidents. Cross-store, cross-banner, and cross-retailer intelligence is what changes the conversation with law enforcement.
- Building an AP program from scratch does not require a large team. One person managing and organizing intelligence, getting it into a shared system, and bringing it to law enforcement is where most successful programs begin.
ORC in grocery is a different problem
Raul Aguilar opened with a case that illustrates exactly how far ORC networks travel. A $1 million beef theft in Omaha led investigators to three individuals indicted out of Miami and ultimately uncovered 45 connected thefts totaling $10 million. The case surfaced through a state and local investigation.
"The fact that these crews can operate in multiple counties, the fact that they can go state-to-state in a single afternoon and that they know that jurisdiction, any law enforcement can't piece those [incidents together], can't get those nuggets of information fast enough."
Grocery compounds this challenge in specific ways. Stolen perishables move quickly, evidence deteriorates, and high foot traffic makes surveillance harder to preserve. Store teams are not LP professionals, which creates a different exposure profile than formats where asset protection is embedded in daily operations.
The combination of fast resale velocity, hard-to-preserve evidence, and an untrained frontline is the vulnerability gap grocers are working against.
What changes when cases are connected across retail organizations
When Jim Simpson joined Northeast Grocery, two recently merged supermarket chains were effectively blind to each other's offenders. The data existed, it just lived in separate systems never designed to share it. Connecting both operating companies through a single platform changed the picture immediately.
"Northeast Grocery is obviously made up of two separate supermarket chains. We have the ability, using Auror and being from the parent company, to be able to see and link threat[s] of violence issues or see cases, shoplifting problems across both operating companies as a result."
Northeast Grocery has seen a 50% year-over-year increase in incident reporting since implementing Auror for threat response. In their Syracuse market, where both operating companies have the heaviest store concentration, that connected view produced a nine-month ORC investigation.
The investigation started with large bags of shredded cheese stolen across multiple locations and ended with four bodegas identified, police brought in, and several business owners arrested. The cheese was going to a pizza operation run out of the businesses they eventually closed. That case does not get built without cross-org visibility.
Handing law enforcement cases they can't say no to
Ryan Themm described what investigating ORC looked like a decade ago at Meijer, before they partnered with Auror. Building a single case meant connecting incidents manually across disparate systems, investing hours of work before any real investigative activity could start.
"It wasn't that we lacked intelligence or the effort and some good cases. It was just putting it together. It was a lot more time-consuming, not as fast. Understanding the groups of folks that we were dealing with just took a little bit more effort through lots of different disparate systems."
The shift that connected intelligence enables is not just speed, but it also changes what law enforcement receives. As Jim put it, the goal is to hand over a case so complete there is no basis for declining it: "Short of having their Social Security number, you have everything." That means incident history, linked persons of interest, cross-location evidence, and a clear pattern. When that standard is reached consistently, the relationship inverts.
New York State Police contacted Northeast Grocery unprompted and sent three detectives to corporate headquarters to ask how they could help build and close cases. When Anchorage committed to that kind of coordinated approach through the Retail Crime Hub, the results were:
- 15% reduction in calls for service
- 28% drop in retail theft cases
- 148 cases prosecuted in the first months of the initiative
Next steps for grocery LP leaders
The retailers on this panel represent what the Auror Network makes possible when intelligence flows freely across retailers and law enforcement. ORC networks are more sophisticated, more coordinated, and more mobile than they were a decade ago. Getting ahead of them requires the same quality of connected intelligence that the criminals themselves rely on to stay ahead.
Watch the full webinar to hear Raul's breakdown of a Boston gang network tied to weapons trafficking and murder-for-hire that started as a retail crime case, the panel's practical advice for starting an ORC program with a single person and no dedicated budget, and what Raul says you should do the first time law enforcement says no.
