Overland Park beefs up patrols as high-impact shoplifting captures national headlines
A rash of brazen “grab and run” thefts targeting high-end and technology retailers have been sweeping across the country and making national headlines as the holiday shopping season gets underway.
The shoplifting crimes in some instances involve dozens of people who swarm stores, grab whatever they can and flee — all in a matter of seconds, leaving shoppers terrified and retailers with huge losses.
Det. Byron Pierce with the Overland Park Police Department doesn’t call such crimes shoplifting. Rather, he said they are organized retail crime.
“The impact to the retailers sometimes can be enormous,” said Pierce, who is with the police department’s Organized Retail Crime Unit. “Recently there’s been quite a bit of an uptick in the emboldeness of some of these bad perpetrators who are targeting some of our luxury-line type of retailers and stealing thousands to hundreds of thousands of product.”
Often times, those who commit such crimes are involved in a network that has some level of sophistication and organization to it, he said.
“Many of these groups recruit assets to allow them to pull off some of the high impact thefts,” he said. “They utilize social media to offer their product to what we call their customers on the black market.”
They have realized that there’s strength in numbers.
“It becomes very overwhelming when you have 15, 20, 30 people storm your store,” said Pierce, who is assigned to the mall with another detective. “There is no way you can prevent that. It can’t be stopped.”
And a reason a lot of the thefts succeed is that such crimes takes seconds to commit. Meanwhile it takes police minutes to respond.
To combat such crimes, Overland Park police have once again beefed up their presence at Oak Park Mall as part of Operation Fraud, a program it has been running for around 20 years, Pierce said.
The program uses additional plainclothes detectives at the mall during the holiday season to provide rapid response to crimes that are in progress.
“We’re able to level the playing field,” said Pierce. “Our response time here at Oak Park Mall can be seconds as well.”
As part of the operation, members of the police department meet with retailers in October before the holiday season kicks off and go over ways they can defend themselves against such thefts and mitigate their loses.
Along with the increased presence of detectives inside the mall, the police department has tripled the number of patrol cars roaming the parking lots with uniformed officers.
“We have adequate resources to address any issue that comes up here at the mall,” Pierce said.
Having detectives stationed at the mall has proven successful. In late October, a group of three women traveled from Oklahoma City to allegedly target retailers across the Kansas City metro area, including those on the Country Club Plaza and Leawood’s Town Center Plaza.
One of the retailers at Oak Park called detectives saying that a group had just stolen merchandise and provided a description.
“We were able to apprehend these three young ladies at Town Center as they were trying to enter the store,” Pierce said.
Police recovered more than $10,000 in stolen property from the group. All three face three counts of felony theft in Johnson County District Court.
Pierce said he knows Operation Fraud is working. About a year or so ago, a Facebook post that was believed to be written by a shoplifter was forwarded to him that said: “Hey everyone, the undercover are back at Oak Park Mall. Stay away from the mall.”
Pierce said he hopes the added police presence makes customers feel more comfortable and safe while shopping at the mall.
To keep from becoming a victim of a crime, Pierce urged people not to leave shopping bags and purses in their vehicles where others can see them. Instead, lock them in the trunk. He also said people shouldn’t allow themselves to be distracted by their cell phones, especially at night.
“Make sure you have your keys ready,” he said. “Make sure you park in well lit areas and also adopt the buddy system.”
Lastly, be aware of your surroundings, he said.
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 12:15 PM.
