Tag Archives: larceny and theft

Business

Some auto insurers are refusing to cover some Hyundai and Kia models

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CNN
 — 

Progressive and State Farm, two of America’s largest auto insurers, are refusing to write policies in certain cities for some older Hyundai and Kia models that have been deemed too easy to steal, according to the companies.

Several reports say the companies have stopped offering insurance on these vehicles in cities that include Denver, Colorado and St. Louis, Missouri. The insurance companies did not tell CNN which cities or states were involved.

The Highway Loss Data Institute released insurance claims data last September that confirmed what various social media accounts had been saying: Some 2015 through 2019 Hyundai and Kia models are roughly twice as likely to be stolen as other vehicles of similar age, because many of them lack some of the basic auto theft prevention technology included in most other vehicles in those years, according to the HLDI.

Specifically, these SUVs and cars don’t have electronic immobilizers, which rely on a computer chip in the car and another in the key that communicate to confirm that the key really belongs to that vehicle. Without the right key, an immobilizer should do just that – stop the car from moving.

Immobilizers were standard equipment on 96% of vehicles sold for the 2015-2019 model years, according the HLDI, but only 26% of Hyundais and Kias had them at that time. Vehicles that have push-button start systems, rather than relying on metal keys that must be inserted and turned, have immobilizers, but not all models with turn-key ignitions do.

Stealing these vehicles became a social media trend in 2021, according to HLDI, as car thieves began posting videos of their thefts and joyrides and even videos explaining how to steal the cars. In Wisconsin, where the crimes first became prevalent, theft claims of Hyundais and Kias spiked to more than 30 times 2019 levels in dollar terms.

“State Farm has temporarily stopped writing new business in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically,” the insurer said in a statement provided to CNN. “This is a serious problem impacting our customers and the entire auto insurance industry.”

Progressive is also cutting back on insuring these cars in some markets, spokesman Jeff Sibel said in an emailed statement.

“During the past year we’ve seen theft rates for certain Hyundai and Kia vehicles more than triple and in some markets these vehicles are almost 20 times more likely to be stolen than other vehicles,” he wrote. “Given that we price our policies based on the level of risk they represent, this explosive increase in thefts in many cases makes these vehicles extremely challenging for us to insure. In response, in some geographic areas we have increased our rates and limited our sale of new insurance policies on some of these models.”

Progressive continues to insure those who already have policies with the company, he said. Progressive is also providing them with advice on how to protect their vehicles from theft.

Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, said it was very unusual for auto insurers to simply stop writing new policies on a given make or model of vehicle.

“They generally want to expand their market share depending on where they’re doing business,” he said.

Hyundai and Kia operate as separate companies in the United States, but Hyundai Motor Group owns a large stake in Kia and various Hyundai and Kia models share much of their engineering.

Engine immobilizers are now standard on all Kia vehicles, according to a statement by the automaker and the company says it has been developing and testing security software for vehicles not originally equipped with an immobilize. Kia said it has begun notifying owners of the availability of this software, which is being provided at no charge.

Hyundai said it is providing free steering wheel locks to some police departments around the country to give local residents who have easily stolen Hyundai models. Hyundai dealers are also installing free security kits for the vehicles, the company said.

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Business

‘Maybe we cried too much’ over shoplifting, Walgreens executive says

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CNN
 — 

Throughout the pandemic, major retailers have warned about surging theft and a rise in brazen shoplifting attempts. But a top Walgreens executive now says the freakout may have been overblown.

“Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call. The company’s rate of shrink — merchandise losses due to theft, fraud, damages, mis-scanned items and other errors — fell from 3.5% of total sales last year to around 2.5% during its latest quarter.

Kehoe’s message is a notable shift from comments about theft from Walgreens and other retailers like Walmart and Target over the last nearly three years.

Companies and retail industry groups have tried to draw attention to shoplifting and “organized retail crime” rings smashing windows and grabbing aisles full of merchandise off shelves, urging lawmakers to crack down. Incidents have certainly happened: Many political leaders and local and national news outlets, including CNN, have picked up on viral incidents of smash-and-grab robberies.

So retailers took action. Some began locking up more products like deodorant and toothpaste, adding extra security guards and even shuttering stores.

Last January, Walgreens

(WBA) said its shrink was up by more 50% from the year prior. The company blamed part of that spike on organized retail crime and closed five locations in the San Francisco area in 2021, claiming theft as the reason for their closure.

“This is not petty theft,” Kehoe said last January. “These are gangs that actually go in and empty our stores of beauty products. And it’s a real issue.”

But a year later, Kehoe said Thursday that the company added too much extra security in stores.

“Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing. The company has found private security guards to be “largely ineffective” in deterring theft, so instead it’s putting in more police and law enforcement officers.

Though Walgreens may have overblown the shoplifting threat over the last few years, it’s true that theft has always been a problem for retailers — and that it often spikes during recessions and other periods of economic hardship, when people are desperate and may feel the need to turn to petty crime to sustain themselves. What’s more, recent factors like shortstaffed stores and self-checkout can make it easier for thieves to steal.

The National Retail Federation estimated that shrink cost retailers $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $61.7 billion in 2019 before the pandemic. Shoplifting often does not go reported to the police, but companies have said theft has worsened during the Covid crisis.

“Along with other retailers, we’ve seen a significant increase in theft and organized retail crime across our business,” Target

(TGT) CEO Brian Cornell said in November.

Walmart

(WMT) CEO Doug McMillon said last month on CNBC that “theft is an issue” and “higher than what it has historically been.” He warned stores could close if it continued.

However, it’s not clear the numbers add up.

For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021.

One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.

Similarly, a 2021 Los Angeles Times analysis of figures released by industry groups on losses due to organized retail crime found “there is reason to doubt the problem is anywhere near as large or widespread as they say.”

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Business

Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and Uniqlo add self-checkout

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

Self-checkout arrived in the late 1980s at supermarkets. A decade later, it began spreading to big-box chains and drug stores. Now, self-checkout, loved by some and hated by others, has entered discount clothing and department stores.

Kohl’s

(KSS) is testing self-checkout stations at a handful of stores. H&M added them at three stores and plans to roll the program out to more than 30 stores by the end of next year. Bed Bath & Beyond

(BBBY) first tried self-checkouts at its flagship in New York City last year and has since added them to several locations. Zara has it at 20 of its largest US stores.

Plus Uniqlo, Primark and other chains have started to roll out self-checkout machines at some of their stores.

These retailers are beginning to adopt self-checkout for a variety of reasons, including labor savings, customer demand and improvements to the technology.

Labor is one of the largest expenses for stores, and they are trying to save money as costs rise and more shoppers buy online. Self-checkout transfers the work of paid employees to unpaid customers.

Self-checkout stations eliminate some of the need for human cashiers, which is why retail unions typically oppose the technology. The number of cashiers in the retail industry is expected to decline by 10% over the next decade, in part due to the rise of self-checkout, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These stores are also responding to customers who prefer self-checkout and perceive it to be faster and more convenient than checking out through a traditional cashier. Millions of customers used self-checkout for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic to minimize close interactions with workers and other shoppers, and got accustomed to the technology.

But these companies’ attempts to bring self-checkout to stores come with risks, including irritated customers and more shoplifting.

According to a survey last year of 1,000 shoppers, 67% said they’d experienced a failure at a self-checkout lane. Errors at the kiosks are so common that they have even led to dozens of memes and TikTok videos of customers complaining of “unexpected item in the bagging area” alerts.

Customers make honest errors scanning barcodes as well as intentionally steal items at unstaffed self-checkout stands.

“It does present some real challenges,” said Adrian Beck, an emeritus professor at the University of Leicester and retail industry consultant who researches self-checkout. Retail losses are higher at self-checkout stations than at staffed checkout, Beck has found.

Traditionally, clothing and department stores have relied on hard security tags on merchandise to prevent shoplifting. This is a problem for self-checkout: customers aren’t used to removing security tags themselves, and most self-checkout machines aren’t equipped to do so.

To get around this, some apparel stores are using wireless “radio frequency identification” security tags, known as RFID, on merchandise instead of hard tags.

Stores such as Uniqlo have invested in new self-checkout machines that automatically recognize these tags, eliminating the need for customers to scan any products themselves or remove security tags. Customers simply drop their merchandise in a designated box at the self-checkout station and the machine automatically identifies the item and displays the price on a screen.

The spread of self-checkout to budget-oriented clothing and department stores has other impacts, too.

It entrenches a divide in retail where one segment of customers gets better service than others, said Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University and author of “The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets and the Do-It-Yourself Economy.”

Although shoppers of all incomes visit these stores, it’s unlikely that luxury brands will have customers do “quasi-forced unpaid work under surveillance,” Andrews said.

“Is this an early glimpse of a future where the affluent get in-person service and the working classes are required to perform free work to get their food and clothing?”

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World

Cyril Ramaphosa facing impeachment calls over cash stolen from his farm

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Johannesburg, South Africa
CNN
 — 

Cyril Ramaphosa was elected to root out corruption. Now, he could be forced to quit over claims that he covered up the theft of a huge amount of cash from his lucrative game farm, which – by his own admission – had been stuffed in a leather sofa.

South Africa’s President is being probed in an ongoing scandal linked to the theft of more than $500,000 in cash from his private game farm in 2020. The cash was stuffed inside a leather sofa according to the panel investigation.

The panel, led by a former chief justice, found that the crime was not reported to the police and that there was a “deliberate decision to keep the investigation secret.”

Former South African spy chief Arthur Fraser alleged the theft occurred with the collusion of a domestic worker and claimed that the theft was concealed from police and the revenue service. Fraser, whose allegations were detailed in a report into the investigation, said Ramaphosa paid the culprits for their silence.

Ramaphosa has maintained that the cash was from the sale of buffalo at his Phala Phala farm to a Sudanese businessman and that the theft was reported to the head of presidential security.

The president also disputes claims by Fraser that the amount hidden at his farm was more than $4 million.

“Some are casting aspersions about me and money. I want to assure you that all this was money from proceeds from selling animals. I have never stolen money from anywhere. Be it from our taxpayers, be it from anyone. I have never done so. And will never do so,” he said while addressing members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party in June this year.

He is a well-known owner and trader of rare buffalo, cattle, and other wildlife, and has become a multi-millionaire through his private buffalo farm.

The panel found that Ramaphosa’s submitted explanations were not yet sufficient and that he could have violated the constitution and his oath of office by having a second income as president.

The ANC’s top leaders are set to meet later Thursday to discuss the report and while the party does have a “step-aside” rule for misconduct, the ANC’s national spokesman Pule Mabe told local television that it only applied to those that are “criminally charged.”

Ramaphosa was recently feted at Buckingham Palace at the first state visit hosted by King Charles, but closer to home, the scandal threatens to end his political career, with speculation swirling around political circles in the country that he could step down.

The ANC’s elective conference to choose its leadership is due to take place in mid-December, but is likely to be dominated by the President’s troubles.

South Africa’s official opposition leader was quick to call for impeachment proceedings and early elections.

“The report is clear and unambiguous. President Ramaphosa most likely did breach a number of Constitutional provisions and has a case to answer. Impeachment proceedings into his conduct must go ahead, and he will have to offer far better, more comprehensive explanations than we have been given so far,” said by John Steenhuisen, the leader of the Democratic Alliance.

The panel was appointed by the speaker of parliament after a motion from a smaller opposition party.

The National Assembly will consider the report and may institute impeachment proceedings – though the ANC does hold a majority of seats.

Ramaphosa took office after his predecessor Jacob Zuma was forced to resign because of multiple allegations of corruption.

A former trade union head and multi-millionaire from his business career, Ramaphosa has repeatedly said that fighting corruption is a priority for his presidency.

But the ANC has, by all accounts, been fractured by factional politics during his tenure. Some allies of former president Zuma are now openly asking for Ramaphosa to step down.

Soon after the report’s findings were released, Ramaphosa’s office reiterated his statement to the panel, “I have endeavored, throughout my tenure as President, not only to abide by my oath but to set an example of respect for the Constitution, for its institutions, for due process and the law. I categorically deny that I have violated this oath in any way, and I similarly deny that I am guilty of any of the allegations made against me.”

The office of the presidency said that Ramaphosa will study the report and make an announcement “in due course.”

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US

Mayor Eric Adams could be New York Democrats’ fall guy for potential big midterm losses

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CNN
 — 

Democratic officials and strategists in New York tell CNN they are bracing for what could be stunning losses in the governor’s race and in contests for as many as four US House seats largely in the suburbs.

With crime dominating the headlines and the airwaves, multiple Democrats watching these races closely are pointing to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of overhyping the issue and playing into right-wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster on Tuesday.

“He was an essential validator in the city to make their attacks seem more legit and less partisan,” said one Democratic operative working on campaigns in New York, who asked not to be named so as not to compromise current clients.

Other Democrats argue this has it backwards. While they accuse Republicans of political ploys they call cynical, racist and taking advantage of a situation fostered by the pandemic, they insist candidates would be in better shape if they had followed Adams’ lead in speaking to the fear and frustration voters feel.

But going into Election Day, New York Democrats worry about a double whammy from how they’ve struggled to address crime: Swing voters turned off by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and suburban House Democrats go vote Republican, while base Democrats in the city, dejected by talk of how awful things are, don’t turn out at all.

“Crime today has been compared to the ’80s and the ‘90s, and the fact of the matter is that crime is lower now than it was then,” said Crystal Hudson, a Democratic New York City councilwoman from Brooklyn. “That’s emboldened the right to use crime as their narrative and put Democrats in a bad spot for these midterm elections.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin, Hochul’s GOP opponent, has taken to regularly invoking Adams on the campaign trail, to the point that some Democratic operatives have grimly joked that Zeldin could just run clips of Adams talking about crime as his closing ads.

There are national ripples: Democratic groups like the Democratic Governors Association are moving in millions of dollars to prop up Hochul in a deep-blue state instead of spending that on tight races elsewhere, with Vice President Kamala Harris flying in on Thursday in one of her own last campaign stops and President Joe Biden heading to Westchester County, north of New York City, on Sunday to rally with the governor. Republicans, meanwhile, are seizing opportunities to pad a potential House majority by targeting seats that Democrats had been counting on as backstops.

Adams was elected mayor last year on a tough-talking, tough-on-crime message, then embraced as such a hero among many Democratic leaders that rumors circulated he might be eyeing a 2024 presidential run himself. In office, he’s often talked about the bad shape the city is in, including citing statistics he says demonstrate connections between the rise in crime and a 2019 progressive-led state law change that barred judges from setting cash bail for all but the most serious offenses.

Multiple top Democrats argue that Adams could have used his credibility to buttress Hochul – whom allies point out is in a tricky political spot talking about crime in New York City as a 64-year-old White woman from Western New York – instead of loudly pushing the governor to call a special session of the legislature to roll back more of the new bail laws. Hochul also seemed to be caught surprised by the attacks and unsure of how to defend her record, with several elected officials and operatives saying she appeared to be balancing between different factions of the party rather than setting a firm agenda of her own.

That’s fed an increasingly tense relationship in the campaign’s final weeks, though Adams recently appeared with Hochul at both an official government event announcing she’d allocate state money to pay for overtime for police patrolling the subways and at a campaign stop in Queens as she seeks to prove to voters that she’s taking crime seriously. Adams has also shifted to blaming the media for sensationalizing the crime problem.

Appearing on “CNN This Morning” on Friday, Hochul said there’s never been a governor and mayor in New York with as strong a relationship as the one she has with Adams. While she acknowledged that violent crime is up and that the issue was rooted in voters’ sincere fears, she said Republicans were “not having a conversation about real solutions.”

She cited her record of getting more cops and cameras on the street and help for the mentally ill, and Zeldin’s opposition to gun control.

“Crime has been a problem,” she said. “I understand that. Let’s talk about real answers and not just give everybody all these platitudes.”

Rep. Kathleen Rice, a retiring moderate Democrat from just outside New York City and a former Nassau County district attorney, said at first she was encouraged by Adams. As a former police officer, he understands the problem, she said, but “the general consensus is that he hasn’t shown he has focused on the issue enough for it to have made a difference.”

Rice said she’s heard from constituents from just outside the city who are turned off by reports of Adams spending late nights at pricey private restaurants juxtaposed with stories about murders on the subways and other horrific incidents.

“People want to feel safe first before they go to a club,” Rice said.

Rice’s seat is one of two Democratic-held seats on Long Island now seen at risk. Democrats are also in danger of losing two seats north of New York City – one held by Rep. Pat Ryan and the Lower Hudson Valley district of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“It is an issue for voters, but it is not because they have personally experienced crime in the Hudson Valley or their neighbors are talking about crimes committed in the Hudson Valley as much as it is the narrative pushed by the industrial fear machine at Fox and the New York Post describing New York City as a lawless hellscape,” Maloney said in an interview. “That, understandably, is raising concerns among suburbanites.”

Months ago, Maloney warned other House Democrats, in conversations and in a March memo sent around by the DCCC and obtained by CNN, to be ready to respond and rebut attacks for being weak on crime. The guidance started with telling candidates to be firmly against calls to “defund the police” but also to talk about the more than $8 billion Democratic lawmakers had secured for law enforcement in bills such as the American Rescue Plan.

Maloney pointed to his votes for legislation to fund programs for body cameras and plate reading technology for local police departments in his district, as well as for the gun control measures enacted over the summer.

He also stood by a remark he made last July – catching several Democratic operatives’ attention at the time – when he stood with Adams on the steps of the Democratic National Committee headquarters and called him “a rock on which I can build a church.”

“What I meant is that I like his combination of respecting good policing and understanding the need for public safety with a genuine passion for justice and fairness in our system,” Maloney said in an interview. “He may not get everything right, and it may not be everything I would do. But he recognizes that we’re not where we should be. And I support his efforts to clean it up.”

Others have not been convinced.

“The concern over crime is real. It is acute,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones, a progressive Democrat who lost a primary to represent parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn after Maloney opted to run for a redrawn suburban seat that also included parts of Jones’ district. “But once this election is over, I hope people have an honest conversation about how Democrats like Eric Adams have validated a hysteria over crime that is uninformed and that has been debunked.”

Conversations about crime in New York are bound up in the debate over reforming the bail laws, and in well-worn internal political power struggles among officials. In phone calls and meetings at the beginning of the year, Adams urged top officials in Albany to change the laws, warning them that crime would likely be a major political liability in the fall, according to people familiar with the conversations.

Legislative leaders have already passed two partial rollbacks, including one supported by Hochul earlier this year. But they have resisted doing more, despite warnings from suburban members.

Adams has charged that the “insane broken system” of bail laws now puts criminals back on the street who then tend to get back to committing crimes. According to figures from the New York Police Department, in the first half of the year, 211 people were arrested at least three times for burglary and 899 people were arrested at least three times for shoplifting, increases of 142.5 percent and 88.9 percent, respectively, over the same period in 2017. The mayor’s office also pointed to statistics that show double-digit jumps in recidivism for felony, grand larceny and auto theft.

Still, crime statistics don’t tell as simple a story as what shows up in political ads. Suburban counties are reporting safer streets and communities – a report in February by the Westchester County executive from just north of New York City, for example, showed a 26.5 percent drop in its crime index.

Murders and shootings are down in the city from last year, but rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft are all up, by over 30 percent from 2021 in several categories, according to New York Police Department data.

But those are the stories which play on the same local news – and campaign ads during the breaks – that reach into the homes of suburban voters who may not have been crime victims themselves, or even spent much time in the city for years. And that’s left Hochul and Democratic House and state legislative nominees leaching support in Long Island, Westchester and the northern New York City suburbs.

“A lot of the story that’s being told is of New York City crime,” said Democrat Bridget Fleming, a former prosecutor who’s been endorsed by police unions in the House race for much of the area Zeldin currently represents on Long Island. “We’re making sure law enforcement is supported – and other than gun crime, we’re keeping crime down here.”

Evan Roth Smith, a pollster working on several local races, said Adams “may be a drag on Democratic trustworthiness on crime.”

But Adams spokesman Maxwell Young said the mayor’s job isn’t to put a rosy spin on things in a way that could benefit Hochul’s or any of the other candidates’ campaigns.

“We can’t, and won’t, ignore the reality,” Young said. “Those who claim we aren’t making progress or, conversely, that we’ve been crying wolf aren’t paying attention and have no idea what they’re talking about.”

Evan Thies, a top Adams political adviser, said he wished other Democrats had taken lessons from the mayor’s win last year.

“You have to convince people you’re worthy to lead by following their lead on issues and meeting their urgency, not by disagreeing with them,” Thies said. “The mayor became mayor by listening to and advocating for people in high-crime communities – he’s not going to abandon them now.”

Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat, whose district covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, points to how many systemic, as well as larger societal and economic issues, are involved in making a real impact on crime – and that Adams has only been on the job for 10 months.

“He’s really trying hard. This is not easy,” Espaillat said. “It’s going to take some time.”

Biden had his own bromance with Adams, from hosting him in the White House weeks after he won his mayoral primary to offering him half of his peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich as they rode together in the limo in February during a presidential visit to New York to talk about gun violence. White House chief of staff Ron Klain praised Adams for tapping into the same coalition of pragmatic, working-class and African American voters, which won Biden the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Through an aide, Klain did not respond to questions about how he and the president view Adams these days.

But what many Democrats are left with as they approach the end of campaigning in New York is a potentially devastating example of failing again to break a decades-long paradigm of Republicans capitalizing on calling them soft on crime.

“The paradox here is: Crime is high in some of the reddest parts of the country where they have the weakest gun safety laws. We needed to tell that story and done so loudly to neutralize the issue. You can’t sit idly by and wish it away,” said Charlie Kelly, a political adviser to former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s gun safety group Everytown and former executive director for the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC.

In New York and beyond, some Democrats are already hoping for a post-election recognition and realignment that pushes their party both toward a tougher attack on Republicans and a more forceful deflection of their own left flank.

“We can’t dismiss people’s concerns,” said Justin Brannan, a New York City councilman from a moderate district in Brooklyn. “It’s another thing to be a Republican, to say, ‘If you go outside, you’re going to die.’”

“It’s both true that crime is down from the 1990s and that it has been increasing and that people feel uncomfortable,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president. “Democrats have to be able to talk about that and offer real solutions.”

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