Store thefts on increase

Hard times push some over the line

Sales at the Crafty Yankee store in Lexington were up nearly 30 percent throughout most of the year. Unfortunately for longtime owner Kathy Fields, so was shoplifting.

Despite the buzz about businesses cutting costs and considering hiring freezes, Fields has brought on a part-time security guard to look after the busy weekend crowds - an added expense, she said, that comes on top of paying three seasonal workers she annually hires for the last six weeks of the year.

"Theft is a big problem during the holidays, because people who wouldn't normally steal may be feeling desperate and their behaviors could change," said Fields, who spent several years in senior positions at multiple big-box retailers before buying the Massachusetts Avenue store in 1994. "It's very easy to conceal. Somebody can be talking to you and taking a piece of jewelry at the same time."

Local business associations, police officials, and criminologists generally agree there's a marked increase in shoplifting from October through December, a crime that costs stores an estimated $13 billion a year nationally.

Complicating matters for merchants these days, police and retail analysts predict that these harsh economic times could drive more people to steal during this holiday season.

Still fresh in the minds of proprietors like Fields was an incident in which six stores in Lexington Center, including the Crafty Yankee, were burglarized in the early morning hours last December. Erik Flynn, 32, of Rockland, and Kevin Ciliberto, 27, of Quincy, were arrested Dec. 19, 2007, and each was sentenced in October to five years in prison for the break-ins.

"Whenever the economy goes south, there's usually a corresponding increase in all kinds of occupational crime," said Lexington police Lieutenant Joseph O'Leary, who manages the department's detectives. "Shoplifting has always been an issue in Lexington, and it runs hot and cold. Sometimes we'll have runs that seem to go on forever, and other times we don't hear much about it."

That wasn't the case on Nov. 19, when Lexington police arrested Denise Vendetti, a 47-year-old Medford woman, after she allegedly stole more than $1,000 worth of jewelry, including bracelets, necklaces, and several pairs of earrings, from the Crafty Yankee, and $273 in clothing from a nearby outlet called 344, according to court documents.

While she was being booked at the police station, where she was charged with shoplifting, receiving stolen property, and two counts of assault and battery on a police officer, Vendetti allegedly told officers that she steals "on occasion," according to the police report, so that she can resell items for food.

"When times are tough and people are stressed, an opportunity that they would otherwise overlook becomes much more attractive, and unfortunately I expect there probably will be a bit of that this year," said Peter K. Manning, the Brooks professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.

In Burlington, shoplifting incidents were up slightly from May through October compared with the same period last year, Burlington police patrolman Jim Tigges said last week. As in many communities with a shopping center, the figures may not include all incidents that happened at Burlington Mall, Tigges said, because store managers may file trespassing charges instead.

"We see a surge every year, whether the economy is good or bad, but I'm sure that will play a role in it," said Salem, N.H., police Captain Shawn Patten, whose town includes a 5-mile stretch of stores and restaurants along Route 28, as well as the Mall at Rockingham Park.

Patten said the department has had about a dozen reports of purses and wallets stolen from carriages, which he describes as "a big increase" - double the number of reports for such crimes that the department receives the rest of the year.

In demand this year, with shoppers and shoplifters alike: state-of-the-art, big-screen television sets. Patten said he has received at least two reports of people who were caught wheeling the big-ticket items out of department stores using shopping carts, which can bring felony theft charges if the television is worth $1,000 or more.

That is also how much Fields estimates that adding the security detail would cost her for the season.

"It's a deterrent," she said. "If $1,000 just went out the door the other day and I didn't even know it, maybe this will save a couple thousand."

Richard Thompson can be reached at thompjourn@gmail.com.