Mack of SecureWatch24 to positively impact the threat of organized retail crime

According to Securewatch24, Chris Mack, CPP, has joined the firm as vice president of commercial sales. Mack will be based out of the SW24 corporate office at One Penn Plaza in New York City. Mack comes to SW24 with almost 20 years of industry experience. A graduate of Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in Criminology, he spent the past 18 years with Honeywell International in several sales and managerial rolls. As a branch manager with ADI/Honeywell, he managed branch locations in N.Y. and N.J., winning both Branch Manager of the Year and President's Club honors. Most recently, he held the position of regional sales manager for Honeywell Video Systems, covering the Metro N.Y. area where his responsibilities included the design of both stand-alone and fully integrated Analogue and IP-based CCTV/Access Control solutions. Mack currently serves on the board of directors of the New Jersey Burglar and Fire Alarm Association where he has held several positions including chapter president from 2007-2009. He is also a member of ASIS, holding the coveted CPP, Certified Protection Professional designation, demonstrating competency in the areas of security solutions and best-business practices through an intensive qualification and testing program. Mack has indicated his interest in positioning SecureWatch24 to positively impact the threat of organized retail crime in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and develop a robust residential and commercial intrusion detection business line in the region. Mack tells all of his clients that "whether your retail business operation can be described as a department/large box store, discount, drug, grocery, restaurant or specialty concern, you're a vital part of America's economy." Retail businesses in the United States currently number in excess of 1.6 million establishments, employing almost 25 million people, and producing sales on the order of more than $4 trillion annually. According to the FBI, however, he says "America's retail businesses lose about $30 billion every year to what has come to be known in both the retail industry and law enforcement circles as Organized Retail Crime." According to the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime refers to groups, gangs and individuals who engage in the illegal acquisition of "retail merchandise through both theft and fraud in substantial quantities as part of a criminal enterprise." Organized retail criminals methodically steal merchandise from retail stores and move it on to "fencing" operations which convert retail products to cash or illicit drugs as part of a larger criminal organization. The more sophisticated participants in these theft rings are known to move from one state to another, sometimes in a single day, stealing merchandise from a number of different kinds of retailers. Their methods may range from brute force break-ins overnight, to "ticket switching" - the changing of UPC codes on merchandise to ring up at lower prices on checkout, to so-called "booster box" thievery, to the use of stolen or cloned credit cards and the re-sale of stolen goods over the Internet. Organized retail criminals are particularly fond of those high demand, easily moved goods that command "close to retail" prices on the black market. This would include products such as teeth whiteners, baby formulas, gift cards, designer handbags and clothing, electronics, video games, and non-prescription medications. Mack goes on to point out that a 2010 survey of retailers by the National Retail Federation determined that nearly 90% of the retailers surveyed indicated that their companies were victims of organized retail crime in 2010. Mack and his fellow professionals at SecureWatch24, New York's premier security technologies firm, urge you to fully engage these criminals and protect your valuable investment in your retail operations. Mack believes that the right combination of in-house investigative talent, covert and overt loss prevention technologies, and security enhancing protocols will significantly reduce a company's exposure to the threat of organized retail criminals. Mack and his team are favorably positioned to assist companies in participating in useful business roundtable discussions with the appropriate federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in every major jurisdiction where such collaborations are possible and desirable. They are also prepared to assist companies in setting up reasonably priced technology platforms to identify and track thieves within their establishments and deliver real-time video images of these thieves in action to the local law enforcement agency in the affected jurisdiction. Mack further urges his clients to consider using the services of professionally trained investigators to augment the capacities of in-house loss prevention officers. He's very excited about the prospect of demonstrating to his clients the many benefits resulting from regional industry and law enforcement collaboration and will be inviting prospective clients to become part of SecureWatch24's Business Intelligence/Fusion Center. He is confident that he and his team at SecureWatch24 have the people, protocols and technologies necessary to assist his clients in building a solid criminal case against organized retail thieves, from identification and investigation to apprehension and post-apprehension investigation and finally, to debriefing and prosecution.