Lake Worth police helping businesses combat organized retail theft rings
Lake Worth PD wants to put a stop to theft rings
Burglaries and robberies of businesses have changed. Instead of just one person, police are now seeing groups of people committing organized retail theft. The Lake Worth police chief organized a roundtable to discuss ways to put a stop to the crime rings.
LAKE WORTH, Texas - Burglaries and robberies of businesses have changed.
Instead of just one person, police are now seeing groups of people committing organized retail theft.
Now, the Lake Worth police chief is organizing the city's retailers against organized crime rings.
New video shows thieves breaking into a Lake Worth business over the weekend. Once inside, they turned the lights on, and with late night shopping with trash bags in hand. As police rolled up, they ran out.
"Pursued them. It ended up with a barricaded situation," explained Lake Worth Police Chief J.T. Manoushagian. "And we were eventually able to get that individual to surrender."
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Chief Manoushagian holds a retail roundtable twice a year, meeting with businesses to talk about ways to cut organized crime rings of burglars and robbers.
"No longer do we see shoplifting. That's very rare," he said. "What we're starting to see now are groups of criminals acting in an organized fashion to strategically target certain retailers or areas, and then those products are sold on the black market. And those funds go into criminal organizations. So we see the bigger picture, and we're trying to work with our private sector partners to put a stop to that."
Like a group caught on tape last year stealing drugs from a Walgreens in Lake Worth, they hit multiple stores that day — a pattern for these thieves, says one Walgreens representative.
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"A lot of times, they will go from Target to Walmart to Walgreens to Ulta and then go to the next little city and do it again," the Walgreens rep said.
"They have stash houses, and they just take all of it," said Lake Worth Police Commander Joe Connolly. "They don’t have to sell it on the corner. They take it to a stash house, and they sell all of it in one block for hundreds of dollars."
Organized rings are rolling across the country, says one retail loss prevention agent.
"Last year, we had crews from Mississippi. We had several come up from Houston," the agent said. "So it’s not surprising to us to see people come here."
Chief Manoushagian wants retailers to call when they know or suspect that a theft is taking place — not after it's over and the thieves are gone — to give police a chance to catch them.
"We want to catch them in the act," he said. "Put them in jail today, and close that case for good."