The scale of retail crime today demands a sober conversation.
While picking up a pair of soccer cleats at my local sports equipment store, I was taken aback by a large poster greeting all visitors — a “not to return” warning to suspected thieves featuring snapshots pulled from surveillance footage. It wasn’t welcoming. More importantly, it may raise privacy concerns, as publicly displaying images captured on store cameras without consent can conflict with Canadian privacy legislation.
What that sign reflects, however, is a response to a crisis that has outpaced traditional approaches to loss prevention.
The scale of retail crime today demands a sober conversation. Since COVID, retail shrink has nearly doubled in Canada, climbing from approximately $5 billion in 2018 to about $9 billion in the most recent period. What’s more alarming is that nearly all retailers report rising employee safety concerns tied to these incidents, with 76 percent citing increased violence during theft incidents. Retail theft is no longer a crime of opportunism either. It’s actively directed and coordinated by organized crime with national chains routinely being hit in sequence along major routes and highways as thieves target specific inventory in high volume heists.
A similar picture is developing in the United States. According to the National Retail Federation, a majority of U.S. retailers report year-over-year increases in shoplifting, organized retail crime, repeat offender activity, and violence. In response, some US states, including New York through its New York’s Retail Worker Safety Act, have introduced legislation aimed at protecting store employees from escalating threats to their safety.
In this context, adding more cameras, signage, or disengaged security guards is not enough. The threats facing Loss Prevention teams are now mobile, organized, and coordinated. They exploit gaps in response time, fragmented systems, and limited visibility between stores and regions.
To meaningfully reduce losses, protect employees, and deter repeat offenders, retailers must move from manual, passive surveillance to proactive action supported by AI-driven, automated systems that turn intelligence into real-time decisions. These capabilities multiply the effectiveness of loss prevention (LP) and asset protection (AP) teams while discouraging criminal behaviour before it escalates.
Here’s how advanced AI and automation deliver impact:
Cross-Store Behavior Mapping + Repeat Offender Detection: AI-enabled systems can correlate patterns across locations, such as a person appearing at multiple stores, the same vehicle travelling between regions, or behavioural markers linked to theft rings. This cross-location visibility analysis transforms siloed footage into actionable insight.
Instead of posters at store entrances, managers, security, or regional LP leaders can automate alerts when a known offender enters any location within the retailer network.
Unified Timeline + Contextual Search: Rather than manually stitching clips from multiple cameras, AI-enabled systems can build a unified, time-sequenced view that reconstructs an incident from parking lot to exit. This reduces investigations from hours or days to seconds.
Searches no longer rely on manual screening. Teams can use plain-language queries, motion attributes, or vehicle and person descriptions to surface relevant footage. For LP teams, this means reclaiming dozens of hours each week spent compiling evidence.
Automated POS + Sensor Integration: One of the largest blind spots in loss prevention is the disconnect between camera footage and point-of-sale activity. Modern AI platforms can ingest POS and inventory data, correlate anomalies with video, and automatically trigger investigative workflows or alerts.
Instead of manually matching transaction logs with time-stamped footage, suspicious activity is surfaced and compiled for review on demand.
Smart Deterrence + Real-Time Alerts: AI doesn’t just record; it detects and responds. Whether alerting staff when a known offender approaches, linking EAS tags to video feeds, or triggering pre-configured workflows tied to suspicious behaviours, including health and safety incidents such as slip and falls, modern systems transform cameras into active components of a broader risk strategy.
Preserving Existing Infrastructure: For many retailers, particularly those operating legacy environments, modernization does not need to mean wholesale rip-and-replace. Tools like Verkada’s Command Connector can layer advanced intelligence over existing camera infrastructure, enabling AI capabilities without prohibitive hardware investments.
This approach allows retailers to modernize strategically while protecting prior investments and existing infrastructure.
To reduce theft, violence, and the impact of organized retail crime impact on retail margins and employee safety, leadership must realign priorities:
Position loss prevention as a strategic priority at the executive level. Invest in systems that convert data into action, not just additional hardware.
Adopt AI platforms that unify video, POS, access control, alarms and analytics into coordinated workflows that alert, deter and document in real time.
Implement cross-store intelligence capabilities to identify patterns that individual locations cannot see on their own.
Train teams to manage automated, exception-based workflows, rather than rely on manual video review.
Strengthen collaboration with law enforcement and industry peers through standardized reporting and integrated data sharing.
Retail crime is not a passing headline. It is a structural challenge that calls for strategic, intelligent responses. AI and automation, deployed thoughtfully, integrated deeply, and aligned cohesively to operational processes, provide a sustainable path forward.
At Compugen, we work alongside retail leaders as a Technology Ally, helping organizations design and implement integrated security strategies that protect employees, preserve margins, and create safer store environments by design.
If retail risk is rising in your environment, now is the time to act. Connect with our team to assess your current loss prevention posture and identify practical next steps to strengthen protection across your network.