A Detroit retail crime blitz just led to 23 arrested, merchandise worth thousands of dollars seized — is America facing a shoplifting crisis?

Shoplifting and organized retail crime is a major issue in Canton, local law enforcement told WXYZ. Lt. Michael Andes of the Canton police department said, "It’s in the billions nationwide, but it’s millions just here in Canton Township alone. So, our large stores like Walmart and Meijer and Sam’s Club, they’re losing millions of dollars each year.”

The National Retail Federation reported that $112.1 billion was lost to theft at retailers across the country in 2022.

The “booster” and “fence” system

Lt. Andes told WXYZ that shoplifters or “boosters” sell their stolen items to “fences” or stores that buy stolen goods for pennies on the dollar for resale. A lot of the boosters are drug addicts and the fences are often small stores like gas stations, liquor stores, or pawn shops, according to Andes.

"Our motto is to disrupt and dismantle. We disrupt by arresting these boosters, and then we dismantle by going after the fence, and that is always the goal to go after the fence, the people who are funding this operation, funding the drug addicts, we target them," he said.

Loss prevention investigators from 16 different retailers worked with the officers in the sting operation. They kept tabs on suspicious shoppers and relayed information to the cops waiting outside.

How theft may affect you

One arrest outside of a Kohl’s store captured on camera illustrated how the sting worked. Once the shopper left the store, the officers moved in to apprehend them.

"She went in and out of changing rooms, taking clothing with her and had a device to defeat the security tag that we found in her purse, and she was prying at those security tags off, and she ultimately stole several hundred dollars’ worth of clothing," said Lt. Andes to WXYZ.

While a few hundred dollars may not seem like much, the cumulative effect is big for the industry, and major retailers including hardware stores are feeling the hit.

Lt. Andes also described how he believes this affects regular consumers.

"Ultimately, we’re all paying extra for our items, and the prices continue to go up, and we’re here to combat that problem as well as bringing these addicts into our communities that are committing crimes, and that's what we don't want to have here," he said.

Some of the other potential effects of shoplifting are loss of jobs and tax revenue if stores are forced to close and increased workload for law enforcement and the judicial system, according to retail security company InVue.

Is shoplifting on the rise?

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a nonpartisan research group, looked at crime data through 2024 from 25 American cities and found the average reported shoplifting rate in 2024 was 14% higher than in 2023. Across the sample cities, the 2024 shoplifting rate was about 1% higher than in 2019.

"Reported incidents of shoplifting, a crime that has received enormous attention in state capitols, Congress, and the media, dropped abruptly early in the pandemic as stores closed during COVID lockdowns, but have now increased back to 2019 levels," said the report.