The camera shakily pans right to show three masked people using hammers to smash display cases of watches and diamonds at a mall jewelry store in Charlotte, N.C. The video, posted on Instagram, garnered close to 10,000 likes and drew comments such as, “where is security” and “wild, but they have insurance tho.”

While the smash-and-grab happened on December 1, videos like this frequently populate social media feeds and capture sensationalized headlines during holidays and election season, raising the specter of skyrocketing retail theft by shadowy organized crime networks in American cities.

These incidents, which have gone viral and made headlines from the Sunshine State to the Tar Heel State, have been identified as the reason for the closures of retailers in cities, which disproportionately impact communities of color.

In fact, the National Retail Federation, the trade association and lobbying group for companies like Walgreens, CVS, Target and Kroger, at one point estimated a total industry loss of $94.5 billion in 2021 due to organized crime — about 50% of all losses.

Recently, the NRF admitted they overstated the impact of organized shoplifting, however, economist Trevor Wagener told The New York Times that organized theft actually accounted for only about 5% of store merchandise lost from 2016 to 2020.

The NRFs retraction is more than an innocent oopsie, criminal justice reform advocates say. They add that factually inaccurate information perpetuates false narratives about the prevalence of crime, which can have detrimental effects on communities.

“I don’t think that we should be allowing private corporations to impact so deeply our perceptions of public safety. And those of us who work in criminal justice reform or adjacent fields at the time [in 2021] kind of felt that the narrative [rise in organized crime] was not matching what we were seeing on the ground,” Rena Karefa-Johnson, director of national programming with FWD.us, told Reckon.

What the data says about organized crime

Responding to the backlash, the retail trade group said that its original claim about organized retail theft was based on the congressional testimony of Ben Dugan, the former president of an advocacy group called the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail.

Mary McGinty, an NRF spokesperson, told CNBC that the organization “stand[s] behind the widely understood fact that organized retail crime is a serious problem impacting retailers of all sizes and communities across our nation,” but acknowledged how difficult it is to gather data on theft.

Despite the claims about surging crime rates, a November 2023 report from the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank focused on criminal justice reform, casts more doubt on the seriousness of that problem.

While shoplifting incidents reported to law enforcement in 24 cities have rebounded from 2020, the height of the pandemic, whether shoplifting is up or down depends on how you parse data, the report shows.

Authors of the report write that by including New York City, the nation’s most populous city, “reported incidents were 16% higher (8,453 more incidents) in the study cities during the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2019.”

However, omitting New York City brings the number 7% lower, the authors write. Further, the survey finds that “more than 95% of shoplifting incidents in 2019, 2020, and 2021 involved one or two people” with about one-tenth of a percent involving more than six people.

Still, widely shared videos of masked groups of people shoplifting continue to populate social media and amplify crime hysteria. Retail chains like Walmart, Walgreens and Target have claimed the spike in organized crime factored into their decisions to close stores and lock products behind plexiglass cases.

While these stores routinely lock away electronics and at times hygiene products, some communities report seeing a rise of more items under lock and key.

Recently, André Brock, an Atlanta resident and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology visited the men’s section of his local Target in the Edgewood Retail District – a gentrified neighborhood – to find undergarments treated the same as Bluetooth headsets.

Brock posted two photos with the caption: “I’m used to electronics being locked away but SOCKS and UNDERWEAR?!”

“I wasn’t surprised by the electronics, but usually (in) the men’s section, like personal home goods, underwear and socks are basically there for you to pick and choose. So you can see how many come in a pack or feel if the socks are really soft,” Brock told Reckon.

“I was horrified and surprised when I walked up on it and all of that stuff had been placed in those same lockable shelves that the electronics are in.”

Brock recalls previously stopping at a Target outside the perimeter – where majority-white suburbs outside of Atlanta are located – where he only saw electronics locked behind cases.

“To see the contrast at the two Targets that are literally less than 15 miles apart was really striking,” Brock said.

Solutions or barriers?

Inflating the problem of retail theft has often meant an increased presence of loss-prevention employees, including receipt checkers, security guards and law enforcement. The NRF has also actively lobbied local, state and federal officials in recent years to harshen punishment for shoplifters.

Since 2019, the NRF has spent more than $38 million lobbying on issues like consumer product safety and law enforcement and crime. The group also backs the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023, which makes it easier to prosecute theft as a federal felony and sets up a system for governments to share resources and data on crime.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, a powerful member of NRF and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, co-sponsored the legislation, which he said would also protect employees and consumers. “[Organized retail crime] has to be dealt with in a comprehensive way. And that’s what our legislation is all about,” Grassley told reporters at a press conference announcing the legislation.

Overhyping the prevalence of organized retail theft, “inaccurately influences people’s perceptions of safety and I think a lot of our crime narratives in this country are very much traded on anti-Black stereotypes and individual incidents,” Karefa-Johnson said.

Many retail stores have taken it a step further and began to completely close stores, leaving many communities without pharmacies or grocery stores. In October, Target said they would close nine stores in major cities due to organized crime.

Despite the NRFs admission of inflated claims, Target maintains that its stores are victims of large retail crimes and how the incidents have eaten away at profits causing them to close stores.

“We cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance,” Target said in a news release.

Even before NRFs admission, a top executive at another pharmacy giant, Walgreens, told investors the company overhyped claims about organized retail theft. Speaking to investors in January, Walgreens chief financial officer, James Kehoe, said “maybe we cried too much last year” about the problem of organized theft.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams advised privately owned stores to require shoppers to remove face masks upon entering and launched a task force to reduce retail theft across the city.  All together nine states have passed laws in 2023 targeted at organized retail theft.

Advocates like Karefa-Johnson say too often relying on the criminal legal system, punishment and police are seen as the only solutions to increasing public safety but it doesn’t have to be.

“We have decades of data and evidence showing that incarceration is the most ineffective and expensive way of reducing crime and increasing public safety. And the policy interventions that actually help people get things like access to behavioral health care, housing and making sure young people have jobs are the most effective policy interventions,” Karefa-Johnson told Reckon.

“I want to lean into solutions that help invest in communities and invest in people in ways that really actually effectively do make us all safer.”