- Some thieves steal vehicles, from cars to excavators, and drive them to stores they want to rob.
- Thieves use this tactic against high-value targets, such as weapons or ATMs filled with cash.
- Retailers from Target to Home Depot have been talking a lot about theft lately, though the scope of the problem is unclear.
Some retail thieves steal vehicles and crash them into store windows, a form of retail theft known as “piggyback robbery.”
This practice involves attacking stores that contain high-value items such as weapons, etc This was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. However, some thieves don’t want to steal goods at all: instead, they steal ATMs from stores to break into them and steal cash.
According to The Journal, a similar situation occurred earlier this month in Oakland, California, when thieves drove an excavator into a grocery store. They then reportedly used chains to drag the ATM away. In another example, several thieves used the same strategy to steal a gun from a Missouri gun store despite the store’s steel reinforcements and other measures intended to deter thieves.
Last month in San Francisco, police found two suspects who allegedly crashed a car into the Christian Dior store in Union Square. He said the suspects allegedly worked with others to take handbags and other luxury goods from the store before fleeing the scene. “Chronicle of San Francisco”.
Although there are no statistics on sheep raiding, the practice appears to be more common now than in the past, the Journal reported. “You hear about it more in the news because it’s happening more often,” John Ham, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told the Journal. He added that the bureau was “observing ram raids across the country.”
Some retailers say thefts in their stores have increased over the past few years and are impacting their businesses. One of the most high-profile examples occurred in September, when Target decided to close nine stores, citing theft and related violence.
However, estimating the true impact of retail theft on retailers’ stores and wider business operations is difficult. For example, few companies provide detailed data on how much theft hurts their bottom line.
A Target review of crime data shows that several of the stores Target is closing are not known for thefts or violent robberies.
