Ep. 20, Part 2 — 1 in 48: Why Hasn't the Needle Moved? The SAFR Conversation

Chris Ochs answered the question through a different lens.

The retail theft arrest rate is roughly 1 in 48. In Part 1, Jason Davies of Sekura Global described a downstream chain that no longer holds — cases built, cases handed off, cases that go nowhere. This week, SAFR's Chris Ochs reframes the conversation one layer earlier. The most consequential intervention may not be downstream at all. It may be at the door.

His argument is structural. DUI checkpoints do not produce their public-safety value through arrests; they produce it through the drivers who never arrive. Apply that logic to the retail entrance, and twenty years of loss-prevention doctrine begins to look as though it was calibrated to the wrong outcome.

Jim Cords takes the argument seriously before he tests it. Deflection works on the population that is deflectable. The 327 individuals behind 6,600 NYPD arrests in a single year — and the comparable cohorts surfaced in the Manhattan Institute and Seattle data — are a different population, with a different relationship to consequence. The casual offender and the chronic offender are two distinct problems, and a strategy calibrated to one will under-serve the other.

Don Carr sits with the disagreement on tape. He says plainly that his architectural instincts run closer to Chris's than to Jim's, then walks through where he parts from Chris anyway. The conversation arrives not at a resolution but at a sharper version of the question. Door-layer deflection, funded prosecution capacity, and cross-incident pattern recognition are three different architectures answering three different populations, and the industry has not yet decided which gets built first.

One point holds underneath the disagreement. No system should escalate a human being into a confrontation. The floor associate is rarely the right human. The action belongs elsewhere.

Featured: Chris Ochs, SAFR. Referenced from Part 1: Jason Davies, Sekura Global. Hosts: Don Carr and Jim Cords. Don Carr holds a commercial position in the architectural layer discussed; listeners should weigh his contributions accordingly. CitySafe is independently produced.

Stay aware. Stay well. Stay CitySafe.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

This is the City Safe Podcast, a conversation at the intersection of community safety, technology, and leadership, co-hosted by Don Carr and Jim Kortz. Together, we examine the critical issues facing cities today and the smarter tools that can help reduce crime and protect our communities. From instant communication systems to emerging technology, we break down what works, what doesn't, and what's next for urban safety. Because in today's world, keeping people safe requires more than good intentions. It requires innovation, data, and decisive action. Listen to the City Safe Podcast, available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Music. Subscribe today and join the mission to make cities safer for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the City Safe Podcast. This is episode 20, part two. This is Don, and I come from the private security boots on the ground industry.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

And this is Jim. And I come from twin uh a little over 28 years of federal investigations between FBI, DHS, and OIG.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Alright, so quick setup for anyone joining late. We spent, well, I spent a few days on the floor at Rela. That was RAP 2026. It was actually here in Phoenix. And one question that Jim and I decided to pose to the solution providers, any that could give us a few minutes anyway, was the retail theft arrest rate is still roughly one in 48. So we asked the question why hasn't the needle moved?

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yeah, so last week we heard from Jason Davies, and this week we're gonna hear from Chris Oakes.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Right. So same disclosure from part one. I have a commercial position in the architecture side of this work. So the listeners should weigh that against what I say. So, Jim, setting up Chris, Safer is an acronym. It's secure, accurate facial recognition. Originally part of Real Networks. So their product is built around early identification of repeat offenders at the door.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Okay, uh, here's the thing. So Jason told us the chain downstream is broken. Chris is going to tell us the chain downstream is the wrong thing to be optimizing in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Right. So two different arguments. Let's take a listen to Chris. Today I'm sitting with Chris with Safer. Chris, thanks for joining us on the program.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Chris. 15 years of better technology. Faster detection. Smarter analytics. One out of 48 incidents in half of those are technology. Yeah, those outcomes I just mentioned don't move.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So that's a that's a that's a deep question. That's a really good one. Um and a lot of it is is because the mentality of loss prevention is still. Loss prevention as a protection is reliant on the legal justice system to provide final resolution to what we're actually trying to do. In reality, we need to begin approaching that's more like a DOI checkpoint. You see, some people think that the DOI checkpoint, why would you do that? You're just gonna make them, you know, do something else. Now the point of a DOI checkpoint is to make them stop, make them think, and maybe not drink and drive tonight. Prevention is the key. That is the only way you're ever going to be on the right-hand side of any action that is happening. You have to be preventive in nature. You have to be prophylactic with all of your solutions. And that's the key that all prevention has to get to. It's not about catching a bad guy. It's not about ensuring that you have identified all the bad guys. It is about ensuring that bad guy understands the cost of their action and chooses a different action first. And so if your technologies, if your solutions, if your policies are not geared towards prevention first, you're already in a losing standpoint, from an ally standpoint, from a safety standpoint, from a protection standpoint. You're already behind the gate. You're in a reactive posture only. You have to be proactive. You cannot rely on law enforcement or government resources to always be there for you. You do have to be on the, I like to say I call it the tip of the spear. You have to be the tip of the spear. The first point of contact has to be the most impactful.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Well, Jim, what's your first reaction?

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Oh, I think he's making a serious argument.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

I agree.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah, and the DUI checkpoint thing, it's not a throwaway analogy. The research on that, I think, is real.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

No, I totally get it. But let's walk the people through it, Jim.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

So when most people hear DUI checkpoint, they think the point is to catch impaired drivers. But that's that's not actually the point. The point is the visible existence of the checkpoint changes behavior across the whole driving population. So most people who would otherwise drive impaired find out the checkpoint is there, maybe they make a different choice. Cab, uh designated driver or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Right. And then if you look at the arrests at that checkpoint, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah, it's just a small fraction of the public safety value. The arrests are kind of a byproduct, but the deterrent is the product.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Okay. So Chris is applying that logic to the retail entrance store.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

So there's a piece of the argument that I want to extend because I think it's served well by that. Chris said something on tape, Jim, that I came back to after the interview. He said LP cannot control the prosecutor, cannot control the detective, cannot control the response time.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Yeah, yeah, you said that.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

So his point is why are we designing LP strategy around outcomes that depend on layers that are not in the control of the retailer or LP? So that is a real critique because the entire LP playbook for the last 20 years has been build a case, hand it off, hope it sticks. And Chris is saying the handoff is the problem. Not because the handoff is broken, but because the handoff was the wrong design. So that's a very different argument than Jason's argument.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah, that is a different argument. Um but I'm gonna take it seriously before I push back on it. No, absolutely. I totally agree. So he's right that the legal system is downstream and out of LP's control. He's right that designing around a layer you can't control is a losing posture. Both those are true. But here's here's where I push back. Um, deflection works on the population that is deflectible, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Okay, so define the population.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Um, uh the opportunistic offender, the person who walks in thinking maybe today, uh sees the system and walks back out. So for that population, Chris is exactly right. The early warning system at the door is the right intervention, but the arrest is not the right metric.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Understood.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

The wrinkle is a population we walked through in part one.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Right. Those chronic offenders.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Yeah, exactly. Right? So 327 people, uh, the New York PD records, and 6,600 arrests in one year.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yep, that's that report that came from the Manhattan Institute.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah, right, the Manhattan Institute report. So 18% of arrestees in Manhattan uh driving 42% of arrests over a six-year window. And remember, Seattle had 168 people producing 3,500 misdemeanor referrals over five years.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

I get it, Jim. So that's the chronic population.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Right, exactly. And they're not maybe today people, right? They're daily livelihood people. This is what they do. They walk past the alert, they know the floor staff can't stop them, and they know there's no consequence on the other side.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Daily livelihood people. Well articulated, Jim. So that's the deterrent effect.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Right. So it's real on the casual population, approximately zero on the chronic population.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Okay, and that chronic population we're saying is where that volume lives, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Right, and that's that's the wrinkle.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Okay, so let me sit with that for a second. Because there's a piece of what he said that I don't want to lose in your pushback.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

So he referenced research that violence goes up when an offender is allowed to enter, act unimpeded, and reach the product.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah, yeah, that that tracks with with what I've seen in federal investigations work. You know, the the configuration that produces the news stories is the confrontation at the exit. The associate gets hurt, the bystander gets hurt, it's it's sometimes worse.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

So even if you are right about the chronic population, Chris's frame still has operational value as a violence reduction strategy because the alternative is that associate at the exit, like you just mentioned, trying to stop a chronic offender who has the product in hand and has nothing to lose.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Yeah, Don, that's a very fair point.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Well, that's the doctrine for me, Jim. No system should escalate a human into confrontation. The action belongs to the right human. The floor associate is rarely the right human.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Okay, I think we got some common ground there.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Common ground indeed. So, Jim, I want to be honest about something. Okay, okay, I happen to know Chris fairly well, and we're closer than you and him are because you actually haven't met him in person. And I want to say that on tape because I think the listener will hear it if I don't. So Chris's frame is an architecture argument. He's saying the door is the decisive layer. Build out the door, stop relying on the post-incident handoff.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Okay, right.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

And I want to be clear too, Chris comes from decades in the retail LP space before he got into the technology side. So that thinking is structural, right? Same family of thinking I do. We just disagree on which layer necessarily might matter the most. Okay, so where do you are? So Chris says the door. I say the cross-incident pattern. Door layer optimizes for the casual offender, pattern layer optimizes for the chronic offender.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Okay. Um yeah, I'd like to hear more on that.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

So I think the chronic layer moves the bigger lever because that's where the volume lives.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

What would Chris say?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Well, I think he already said it. He would say that the casual layers move the bigger lever because that's where the population is.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

All right, so yeah, so both of you are right inside your own framework.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Well said, Jim. So, you know, and neither of us has the data to definitively say which lever produces more outcomes at scale.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Yeah, I think that's honest.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

But yeah, you said it. It's honest, right? And it's just part of my own argument that I have to keep checking myself.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Okay, uh, here's something I've been turning over.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Okay, so this is not a two-sided argument. I think it's a three-sided argument.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

All right, and then what's your take, Jim?

SPEAKER_02 12:53

So my take is funded prosecution capacity and back up whichever architecture you choose. And then for you, I think it's cross-incident architecture with chronic offender pattern recognition.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Sure. So three positions.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Yeah, three positions, and honestly, all three are probably right at different layers.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Well said. Let's talk about what the industry has not answered, Jim.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Well, what the industry has not answered is which one gets built first, or whether they have to be built in parallel.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And that, in my opinion, is the closest we've come to a synthesis on this whole arc.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Yeah, I think it is.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

I think that's worth sitting with. So the line that we want the listener to take with them is what, Jim?

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Well, two vendors, right? So two different layers of the stack. Two different arguments. One of them rejected the the premise of the question we asked. Uh, that is what made Chris's interview worth its own episode?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Well said.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Uh what about you?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Well, mine is what Chris said. He said it on tape. You can't control the prosecutor, you can't control the detective, and you certainly can't control the response time. What you can control is what happens at the door. So Chris and I disagree on which architectural layer matters most, but we do agree that the architecture is the question.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Okay, and I think that's a good place to land.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Indeed. So we want to thank Chris Ox at Safer for the time that he took for us on the floor, and again, thanks to Jason Davies at Sekira Global. That wraps this episode. Until next time.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Stay aware, stay well, and stay city safe.

SPEAKER_03 14:44

That wraps up this episode of the City Safe Podcast. Thanks for joining us in the conversation about smarter strategies for safer cities. If you found today's discussion valuable, share it with your network and help us spread awareness about the tools and technology making a real impact. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube Music so you never miss an episode. Until next time, stay informed, stay connected, and stay city safe.