Proposed law targets retail theft sprees as organized crime

COLUMBUS — Ohio is looking at treating escalating and increasingly violent retail theft sprees as organized crime with a statewide law enforcement task force and stronger criminal penalties.

Now in the Senate, a House-passed bill would create the task force to collaborate with the state attorney general's office and the Ohio Organized Crime Commission to assist law enforcement and prosecutors and to share information in real time across jurisdictions.

“[Organized retail crime] causes billions of dollars in losses annually,” Rep. Haraz Ghanbari (R., Perrysburg), sponsor of House Bill 366, told his House colleagues. “ORC involves planned large-scale operations targeting retailers across multiple jurisdictions. The National Retail Federation survey shows a 67 percent increase in organized retail crime incidents reported by loss prevention executives.”

“ORC disrupts businesses, and it also jeopardizes the safety of consumers and employees,” he said. “Many retailers across Ohio have reduced operating hours or they have closed their stores in some instances due to increased criminal activity. The primary concern in doing so is the escalation of violence associated with these ORC activities.”

Dubbed the Fight Organized Retail Crime and Empower Law Enforcement (FORCE) Act, the bill passed the House 69-27 in late June just before the chamber recessed for the summer. The Senate does not plan to return to Columbus until after the Nov. 5 election.

To pay for the stepped-up collaboration, a vendor licensing fee already paid by retail businesses to county auditors would be doubled to $50 with the additional $25 reserved for the Organized Crime Commission Fund.

The bill is supported by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and multiple other business and retail entities.

“We do not have an interest, nor do our members, in locking up or punishing individuals who make a one-off mistake or find themselves in unique situations where they feel they have no choice but to commit theft,” Alex Boehnke of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants told a House committee in support of the bill. “Our focus remains on large-scale theft rings that operate across municipalities and states, committing targeted thefts on retailers.”

“That is what constitutes organized retail crime,” he said. “It represents an annual loss of $2.3 billion in economic activity to Ohio. The resulting impacts are store closures, job loss, and communities feeling less safe.”

Support and opposition crossed party lines with Reps. Michele Grim (D., Toledo) and Gary Click (R., Vickery) casting the sole northwest Ohio negative votes.

Some Democrats voiced concern that the bill would exacerbate the state's existing prison overcrowding problem, pointing to language that would escalate penalties for new crimes if an offender had previously been convicted of minor retail theft.

“It is not organized retail theft to steal $1,000 worth of material or goods over a 12-month period,” Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D., Cincinnati) said. “That is not organized crime. Organized crime has a far higher threshold.”

“Someone who suffers from substance abuse or addiction — to which this body claims to care about all of the time — might, in order to fuel that substance abuse addiction and that disease that they have, steal $1,000 worth of petty products over the course of a 12-month period, and they will not be deterred by taking something from a fourth-degree felony to a third-degree felony,” he said.

“All it will do is keep them in prison longer, and our prisons are full of people who need help,” Mr. Isaasohn said.

Ohio has already enacted a Ghanbari law requiring greater information from high-volume online sellers whose platforms may be used to sell items stolen in smash-and-grabs and other organized retail thefts.

Similar legislation has since been passed at the federal level.