"Wichita is facing a public emergency
the longer we let it go, the worse it gets."
“It’s not only NY, LA, San Francisco. Retail crime has hit a bustling Kansas metropolis”
A local Victoria’s Secret lost $30,000 a month to theft, authorities say. The Cabela’s has reportedly lost more merchandise than any other in the nation. They’re not in San Francisco, Chicago or New York, the way some might assume. They’re in Wichita, Kansas.
…But it’s not just big coastal cities grappling with the problem. In America’s Midwest, a bustling, mid-sized metropolis, known for its rich entrepreneurial heritage as home to both Pizza Hut and The Coleman Co. is also wrestling with the gravity and pervasiveness of retail theft.
“I’ve lived in this city my entire life and to see this much retail crime, it’s shocking,”
- Captain Casey Slaughter
“There is a link between drug trafficking and organized retail crime,” Kobach told lawmakers in June. “Organized retail crime is a problem that is getting worse, not better. And it does not exist in a vacuum. These criminal enterprises often overlap with the trafficking of drugs.”
CNN, 7/7/2023
A local Victoria’s Secret lost $30,000 a month to theft, authorities say. The Cabela’s has reportedly lost more merchandise than any other in the nation. They’re not in San Francisco, Chicago or New York, the way some might assume. They’re in Wichita, Kansas.
A pattern of store thefts – not just one-off petty shoplifting incidents, but more serious planned and brazen heists from pricey luxuries to everyday products – has retailers on edge across the country. In some cities like San Francisco, retailers are closing up shop, pointing the finger at crime.
But it’s not just big coastal cities grappling with the problem. In America’s Midwest, a bustling, mid-sized metropolis, known for its rich entrepreneurial heritage as home to both Pizza Hut and The Coleman Co. is also wrestling with the gravity and pervasiveness of retail theft.
“I’ve lived in this city my entire life and to see this much retail crime, it’s shocking,” said Captain Casey Slaughter, who is in charge of the Wichita Police Department’s property crimes bureau.
Republican Kris Kobach, Kansas’ attorney general, said retail crime is a “spiraling problem” in his state, adding that Kansas and Missouri are among the top 10 states in the nation for volume of retail crime. Kansas lost approximately $642 million in stolen goods in 2021, he said.
“People are frustrated. Store employees are frustrated,” he said in an interview with CNN.
In Kansas, Kobach says one scourge is fueling another: drugs, especially fentanyl addiction.
“There is a link between drug trafficking and organized retail crime,” Kobach told lawmakers in June. “Organized retail crime is a problem that is getting worse, not better. And it does not exist in a vacuum. These criminal enterprises often overlap with the trafficking of drugs.”
Read the rest of the article below or at CNN.com
Wichita police chief Joe Sullivan, who heads up the largest police department in Kansas, in April provided some startling numbers on escalating retail crime in Kansas’ largest city, which is home to nearly 400,000 residents. Speaking at an event with the Sedgwick County Board of Commissioners, Sullivan said stores of some popular retail chains in Wichita are among the worst hit, nationally, by retail theft.
“We talked to some of our largest retailers, and within those chains, some of their stores in Wichita are their biggest problems,” Sullivan said during the meeting. “These are national chains, and some of these stores in Wichita have the highest rates for retail theft either regionally or nationally.”
A Victoria’s Secret store in Wichita, he said, was losing tens of thousands of dollars a month to theft. Worse, Sullivan said Cabela’s, which sells sporting goods and outdoor products, cited its Wichita store as number one in the nation among its stores for theft.
Victoria’s Secret did not provide a comment specifically addressing theft at its Wichita store but said in a statement to CNN that “the safety of our associates and customers is always our top priority. We take matters of theft seriously and work closely and in cooperation with the appropriate authorities on these types of investigations. We will prosecute shoplifters to the full extent of the law.”
Cabela’s did not respond to a request for comment. Sullivan’s office also cited Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy Sports and Outdoors stores in the city as leading in the region for store thefts. Both retailers did not respond to requests for comment.
Retail crime overall, Slaughter said, is up 34% so far this year in Wichita, compared to last year, and up 35% versus a five-year average.
Among the most stolen items reported by retailers, Slaughter said, are high-priced clothing, Lego sets, jewelry, footwear, beauty and cosmetic products, sporting goods, power tools, and Tide detergent, which is typically cited as one of the most shoplifted items nationally.
Because most retailers have a non-intervention policy in place to protect employees and shoppers, he said thieves are taking advantage and “basically taking anything that can be quickly carried out of the store.”
The stolen merchandise frequently ends up in online marketplaces or smaller neighborhood stores where it’s sold for a quick profit, Slaughter said.
Nationally, merchandise “shrink,” or the value of merchandise lost to theft, fraud, damage and other reasons, is estimated to have cost retailers $94.5 billion in 2021, up 4% from $90.8 billion in 2020, according to the National Retail Federation, which attributed nearly half of the loss to large-scale theft.
Still, some groups have pushed back on concerns about retail theft, pointing out that consistent data can be hard to come by and that employee theft and other factors can play a role in missing inventories.
And one Walgreens executive earlier this year suggested perhaps that company had overstated the impact of retail theft.
On Tuesday, the retail industry got some fighting power to curb the sale of stolen and counterfeit items online when the bipartisan INFORM Act went into effect. The new law requires online marketplaces to collect, verify and disclose information – including bank account information, tax ID number and contact information – of third-party sellers of high-volume products, making it harder for sellers of counterfeit and stolen products to get away with it.
In Wichita, Slaughter said many stores have hired off-duty police officers to boost security, but theft persists because in his view the root causes are equally difficult to quash.
“Drug addiction has gotten worse in the city,” he said. “Almost every time a suspect is caught, we find drug paraphernalia on the person. It’s shocking to us when we don’t find it.”
Fentanyl addiction is a particularly urgent problem in Kansas.
Kansas logged the nation’s second largest percentage increase in drug overdose deaths in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with most overdose deaths involving fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine or heroin.
In Sedgwick County, drug-associated deaths among residents increased by 91% from 2015 to 2020, according to county data.
Marc Bennett, district attorney of Sedgwick County, said the drug crisis is one reason why individuals, desperate to feed their addiction, are turning to crime, including being recruited by criminal enterprises behind large organized retail crime sprees. Organized retail crime offers criminals a business model of pure profit, “with no overhead, rent, product cost. It’spure profit,” he said.
“There’s also a vulnerable population in and around Wichita that is unhoused or struggling with mental illness,” he said. “There’s an opportunity when people are desperate to be pulled into these criminal enterprises.”
Harold Casey is closely tracking the drug crisis in Wichita and across 29 counties in Kansas.
Casey is CEO of SACK (Substance Abuse Center of Kansas), a Wichita-based non-profit specializing in the prevention, treatment and case management of individuals affected by substance abuse. His organization works with 800 to 900 individuals a year in hospitals in Wichita and about 1,200 a year in Sedgwick County jails, as well as people in homeless shelters.
“Most of our clients are uninsured, unemployed and homeless,” he said.
Most worrisome to him is the increasing number of drug addiction cases among teenagers, he said. “In Wichita, we’re experiencing a lot of overdose deaths in teens,” said Casey. He explained that parents often cite a familiar pattern – their child connects with a dealer on social media and gets access to drugs.
“Fentanyl is becoming the drug of choice here because it’s cheap and more accessible,” he said, adding that 11% of SACK’S current cases involve fentanyl and 36% methamphetamine.
Scott Poor, a Wichita-based criminal defense attorney, has a running caseload of clients involved in property theft. “It’s plenty of home burglary, breaking into a garage, self-storage units and store theft,” he said. “A bulk of the cases are drug-related property crime.”
He recalls one in particular, a current client.
“She’s a young lady in her early thirties, and she has a serious problem with fentanyl,” said Poor. His client last September was charged with shoplifting from a local ranch and home goods store on three consecutive days, each time stealing bulk cases of ammunition.
“She’s not into shooting sports. But she is an addict, deeply hooked on fentanyl. She’s a mom who has lost her kids to Children and Family Services.”
In mid-March, Poor says his client shoplifted from an Ulta Beauty store and a Victoria’s Secret store on the same day. “She stole $477.32 worth of products from Ulta and $322.59 of items from Victoria’s Secret,” said Poor. “They got her on video.”
Poor was with his client in court on Monday. She was sporting a black eye, he said.
With high-value store thefts, Poor said his clients committing the crime aren’t stealing basic necessities like bread and diapers. “They are going after items they can turn around quickly for some good money, like at pawn shops,” he said. “If it’s not drugs, then they need money to pay rent.”
Kobach, the state attorney general, told CNN he recently spoke with an employee at Walgreens who said she was upset about thieves repeatedly targeting her store. “She violated company policy by following them and trying to stop them, but it was because she doesn’t want the store or the neighborhood to get a bad reputation,” he said.
In early June, Kobach testified before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on “Organized Retail Crime and the Threat to Public Safety.”
“When one thinks about the explosion of organized retail crime in the United States, the State of Kansas may not intuitively jump to mind,” he told lawmakers. “But Kansas is particularly illustrative for two reasons: Kansas is one of the hardest hit states, and we are attempting solutions that other states have not yet tried.”
One of the main reasons that organized retail crime is surging in Kansas is because many cases don’t get prosecuted, Kobach said in his testimony. “There is a shortage of prosecutors in most counties.”
The other challenge is that serial thieves “almost always steal a dollar amount just below the felony theft level,” he testified. “In Kansas, they steal roughly $900 to stay below the $1,000 threshold.”
But a new Kansas law set to take effect on July 1 would give the state AG more authority to prosecute organized retail theft rings. He said the law would make Kansas the first state in the nation to give the state AG’s office original prosecutorial authority in all cases where a course of criminal conduct occurs in two or more counties.
“This allows my prosecutors to prosecute cases with state resources where a county or district attorney does not have the capacity,” he explained in his testimony.
“The more we tolerate this form of crime, the more it will degrade our culture,” said Kobach. “That’s not the kind of society we want to live in.”
THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW
Slower Emergency Response Times
Would a shortage of 240 officers ensure a safe city for our families?
- 100 Vacancies
- 140 Eligible for Retirement
- 10 in the Academy
"Wichita is facing a public emergency right now - the longer we let it go, the worse it gets."
– Bryan Frye, Press Conference
Fraternal Order of Police Headquarters
Monday, July 10th, 2023
Watch the press conference here
- 100 commissioned officer vacancies
- 140 officers eligible for retirement
- Combined that’s 1/3 of the officer, detective and sgt positions
- Only 10 recruits in the academy
“At any minute, we could be down to only 416 instead of the 655 we should have on the streets.
With only 10 recruits in the academy, we are not working fast enough to fix the growing gap in Wichita Police Department staffing.
Why is this so critical?
The safety of you and your loved ones.
This staffing crisis is leaving the department with exhausted and demoralized employees, slower emergency response times and increased violence throughout the city.
Without safety, we cannot thrive as a community.
So, What’s the Solution?
City staff are forecasting a $12.6 million dollar surplus for 2023. This is money that can be used for the rest of the year to stabilize police staffing.
The 2024 proposed budget recommends putting away this surplus for possible rainy days in 2025, 2026 & 2027. In my opinion, it’s pouring right now, and we have an umbrella for protection we’re not using.
We must dedicate some of the 2023 surplus immediately to getting & keeping WPD fully staffed.
Possible Ideas -
- Offer bonus pay for retention, new recruits & employee referrals.
- Hire more community service officers to support commissioned ranks.
- Explore extending medical benefits gap coverage for officers nearing retirement.
- “Grow our own” – develop career pipelines for youth at high schools, WSU tech & universities.
- Bolster collaborative efforts with social workers and mental health professionals.
- Recruit, recruit, recruit.
The 2024 proposed budget will be presented at tomorrow’s council meeting. Additional meetings are July 27, August 15 and August 22. We need to hear from the community. Make your voice heard.
Wichitans told us in the 2022 Citizen Survey, that crime prevention is the top issue in the city. I believe this is still the case in 2023 and it’s only increased in priority.
At the top of the mission statement for Wichita, it says “As an exceptionally well-run city, we will KEEP WICHITA SAFE.
We must do better and we must do it quickly.
Wichita needs a mayor who doesn’t fight with police, but fights for them.
We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul in the future while the public gets less protection today.”
– Bryan Frye
What does it mean to have 10 in the academy?
Two academy classes per year
Academy lasts 23 weeks
Additional six months required with supervisor
Ongoing goal of 25 per class
Almost a year before having 10 new officers
"WPD union says staffing at ‘crisis levels,’ impacting police response times" - KWCH
WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – When you call 911 in Sedgwick County, it could take minutes, or as FactFinder 12 found, hours for a Wichita Police Department officer to get to your emergency.
“Calling 911 really didn’t do any good because once they got here it was too late,” said Christopher Parisho, who said he waited on officers to help with an active assault.
And FactFinder found, he wasn’t the only one.
“I was probably on the phone the first time like 30 minutes and then I got mad and I hung up. Because I was like ‘Nobody’s doing anything,’” said Charles Edgar, who said he witnessed an older woman getting beaten while he was shopping.”
– KWCH, 7/12/2023
"Public safety crisis in Wichita?"
- KSN
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – At least two members of the Wichita City Council are sounding the alarm, saying that there’s a public safety crisis. With recent violent crimes and a possible officer shortfall on the way, some are saying that we need to spend money now.
“It’s pretty clear what’s happening in Wichita right now, and we have a public emergency,” said Wichita City Council Member Bryan Frye on Monday.
Frye, who is running for mayor, says the city needs to consider spending some of the City of Wichita’s projected $12.6 million surplus for the next budget cycle on hiring and retaining cops.
In a public media forum Monday, Frye pointed out that the Wichita Police Department needs about 100 more commissioned officers. And the current recruiting class, says Frye, has only ten potential officers.
“It’s simple math,” said Frye.
He is not alone.
Following Bryan Frye’s Press Conference, 7/10/2023
Your Support is Critical
Frye needs your support to win the primary. Would you please help by contributing to his campaign? Contributions up to $500 per election cycle are allowed from each individual, business, &/or organization.