Introduction
Over the
course of twelve weeks, I gathered data from the police blotters of my local
newspaper, The Advance, in order to assess the nature of theft in Lower Bucks
County. Initially, the purpose was to study the level
of absurdity of objects stolen, but during the three months, I learned there
was more to observe and draw inferences.
The methodology I employed was
mostly qualitative data with the exception of retail theft amounts. Each week is marked with the ending Sunday. For each week, I recorded the types of thefts
and the items stolen. Types of thefts
were defined by the crimes as the township reported them. Examples would be Theft, Burglary, Theft from
Vehicle, Stolen Vehicle, Retail Theft, etc.
I did not include credit card fraud or any incident where it was unknown
if anything was stolen. Credit card
companies reimburse their customers, and the corporate entity endures the
loss. This study focused on material
losses of individuals and brick and mortar retail fronts.
There is more
detail on items stolen. The qualitative lists
of words showed common items, which became categories to account specific incidents
per week. Tables for the number of
thefts quantified the number of incidents involving cash, jewelry, vehicles,
electronics, etc. Retail thefts had separate
weekly tables, which gave the store’s name, the number of thefts that week, the
value of merchandise per incident. Totals
on incidents and dollar amounts, and an average shortage could be calculated.
There were three tables per week,
and instead of showing all 36 tables, only tables and charts displaying
cumulative values overall in this study are below.
Results and Analyses
Overall by Town
In Table 1,
each cell shows the calculated total theft in a given week by a reporting
police unit. The totals at the bottom
indicate how many incidents occurred in all the participating townships that
reported crime for that week. The towns
shown at the far left column are Newtown, Bristol, Middletown,
Yardley, Lower Makefield Township (LMT), Bristol Borough, Morrisville, and Northampton.
Table 1
The next
three charts were derived from the processed data in Table 1. They depict total thefts over time, thefts
over time in the townships, and total thefts per town.
Chart 1
The first
chart shows the total thefts over the course of three months. Stealing was highest in the middle of July,
having a total of 60 accounts of theft. In
three weeks, the numbers faltered to only 21 incidents. From that point, the crime rates for theft
and burglary moderately increased, and teetered between 31 and 51 thefts in a
given week. It can be inferred that in Lower Bucks
County, incidents of theft
increase during the middle of summer.
Unfortunately, this study started later, and the numbers for June’s
weeks are uncollected. It is still possible
to conjecture that theft decreased due to juvenile perpetrators entering their
next school year, leaving only adult thieves available for offending.
Chart 2
This chart
displays the weekly total for the individual towns. Middletown and
Bristol stand
out the most for a few reasons. Middletown’s jurisdiction encompasses
the Oxford Valley Mall and Court areas, which are central to commerce. The majority of retail theft occurs in Middletown. Bristol is
part of Levittown, which is the tenth largest community in Pennsylvania according to
NeighborhoodScout.com. The thefts
reported are from Bristol and other Levittown subsections, hence their numbers are
higher. Yardley and Morrisville have
smaller police departments. Most Yardley
residents report to Lower Makefield Township Police Department, since it is the
bigger agency with more officers on duty.
Yardley’s police covers mostly the downtown area.
Interesting
to note, during the week ending on August 31st, Bristol
had zero theft and Middletown
peaked. Though, that week Bristol did not report
crimes to the newspaper.
Chart 3
This bar
chart represents the number of thefts occurring in each town based on reports
submitted by each township to the police blotter. Some towns did not submit crime reports each
week. Morrisville and Northampton appeared two weeks into this
study. Yardley dropped out of the second
week, possibly because it has a small police agency. Newtown
reported every week and their theft related crime rates were relatively lower
than the other towns.
Chart 4
Table 2
Due to the
lack of reporting from each town, it is important to show the level of
participation each township has in submitting information to the local
newspaper. The uneven submissions skew the
data, which I can not help. Table 2 and
Chart 4 show that Newtown, Middletown,
and LMT reported all twelve times, and Bristol
reported 11.
Types of Items Stolen
Table 3
Chart 5
Chart 6
According
to Table 3 and Charts 5 and 6, the four prominent types of theft in this area
involve electronics, cash, other financial information, and miscellaneous
items. “Other financial information”
includes credit cards, checks, and purses and wallets that contain financial
information.
The other
categories also had a range of different possessions, some less obvious than
others. Cars and other vehicles include
motorcycles, dirt bikes, quads, and electric bikes. Car parts included hub caps, vehicular
batteries, and even the radio antenna on the back. Tools included saws, jackhammers, weed
whackers, and other lawn equipment.
Change was just loose coins. Also
observable were the incidents involving copper and scrap metals, but there were
not enough accounts to designate a category for it, so I put them under
miscellaneous.
The most
apparent type of theft is miscellaneous.
People usually steal the most unlikely objects, and the most plausible
reason people fall victim is that they do not suspect anyone stealing these
things. Thieves derive a twisted sense
of empowerment in their stealing, but when they loot the most ridiculous
things, they are mysterious idiots. I
think I have read wilder crimes in Nancy Drew novels during my youth than these
Boxcar Children type of thefts, where the villains steal random things that
serve the villain no purpose. Ex. Wow, you stole a window! The thieves in Lower Bucks are just as
peculiar.
Since I had
noticed eccentric items reported stolen in the past, I had wanted to generate a
list of the stupidest and weirdest items stolen. Here is my Hall of Lame.
Hall of Lame
Mailboxes,
two manhole covers, bag of cat litter, windshield wipers, soda, carpeting,
construction vehicle batteries, “numerous cartons of cigarettes,” headlights,
vacuum, carpet shampooing machine, fire extinguisher, charging cable to iPod,
“car blinkers,” backpack leaf blower, USPS packages, 8 cans of baby formula,
$965 worth of razors, 12 red Honda generators, lottery tickets, car seat,
bookbags, driver’s license, jackhammer, hub cap, sweatshirt, microwave, golf
clubs, stereo faceplate, power pruner, newspapers throughout a neighborhood,
rammer from construction equipment, sunglasses, 5 air conditioner compressors,
cellphone chargers, hammock, $8 from a purse, two raccoon traps, kayak,
aluminum canoe, flatbed truck, pool stick, two motors from furnace, car keys,
sneakers, sweatpants, baseball bats, radio antenna cord on car, power drill,
stereo speakers, quilted backpack, butcher knives, ladder, lock, cement Marine
Corps plaque, water meter, and “electric dog fence and gift certificate.”
Some of
these items would seem normal. However,
stealing someone’s driver’s license is pointless if you don’t resemble person
in the photo. Car keys would seem
average, but they are useless if you can not find the car. If a person steals a sweater, depending on
its description, it may be recognized if he or she wears it in public. Used sneakers that probably don’t fit are
pointless, unless sold online, but who wants to buy used, smelly sneakers? Sunglasses can be pricy, but this is all the
thief could take? As for the postal
packages, the boxes could contain items that the thief has no desire to own. Winning the lottery is slim so stealing
lottery tickets would be lame, but if they yielded winnings, that would be low.
Some things
in the list would seem cool to have, like the kayak and the hammock. Though, they are awkward things to steal,
bulky. The thief had the gall to enter a
property probably with the knowledge that the items were there. They had premeditated the burglaries
carefully in order to satisfy their greed.
Other likely items would be useful like the microwave, backpack leaf
blower, power drill, and weed whackers.
These could be stolen on impulse, but they are still odd and awkward
things to conceal, even in a getaway car.
Stereo
speakers would seem like worthy materialistic items to loot, but these came
from a burglary. The burglar just took
the speakers and left the stereo. Other
items are useless accessories, like cellphone chargers and an iPod wire.
Retail Theft
Table 4
Table 4
shows the totals and averages for retail theft per week in the whole Lower Bucks
County area as provided
in the police blotter. Theft ranges
between $300 and $18,400 per week. The
average theft is between $177 and $1,225.
This information is further illustrated in Chart 7.
Chart 7
Chart 8
In Chart 7, the average appears to
be flat compared to the total thefts which dwarf the average line. By focusing only on the average, Chart 8
shows that the line for average thefts per week is similar to the line for
total thefts from Chart 7. They both
start declining from a high point
and peak in the middle. The average line
in Chart 8 rises toward the end, whereas the total line in Chart 7 declines and
becomes closer to the average, since thefts were fewer.
As stated
before, the majority of retail theft occurs in Middletown due to the mall, the court, and
the high number of stores surrounding those areas. Table 5 displays all the stores that reported
losses. There were 20 identified stores
and two were unnamed. Totals are
accounted for each store or chain over the course of twelve weeks. Totals per week are also shown, which were
used in Table 4 and Chart 7.
Table 5
The top
three stores for retail theft were JC Penney, Giant, and Sesame Place. Giant is a chain of grocery stores, and
thefts occur at more than one location.
JC Penney had the highest reports of retail theft and only from its sole
location in Oxford Valley Mall, which is very close to Sesame Place. Sesame Place is a theme park, but they have
gift shops. A security guard is usually
situated in the Sesame Place’s
larger shops like Mr. Hooper’s Emporium and Finder’s Keepers.
Table 6
Table 6 gives the overall numbers
for the top three high incident stores.
Chart 9 allows a visual comparison of the numbers from Table 7,
regarding total thefts per week among these stores.
Table 7
Chart 9
Although
the chart above presents three different lines, they do have three peaks and
two troughs in common. From July 20th
through August 3rd, JC Penney and Sesame Place nearly parallel each
other. For three weeks, Sesame Place and
Giant reported no shortage, and JC Penney was at zero for that middle
week. In the week ending August 31st,
JC Penney and Sesame Place
peak in a parallel motion again have closer numbers. Giant rises slightly at that point. In the week ending September 14th,
all three retails have zero thefts. JC
Penney and Giant’s theft incidents rise thereafter, practically
coinciding. Since Sesame Place is a theme park with mostly
water rides, theft steadily declined toward the end of summer.
Trending Types of Shoplifting
At Giant,
CVS, and Rite Aid, there have been numerous accounts of razors and baby formula
being stolen in bulk. People are
stealing hundreds of dollars in razors; $400, $520; $965. People are also stealing up to eight cartons
of baby formula. These two items show up
repeatedly in the police blotter. Why?
At first this seems
ridiculous. It’s not. Both items are resold for drug related
activities. Baby formula resells fast
because there are no substitutes for a baby, which leads to price elasticity. Parents will buy baby formula regardless of
price increases. Thieves resell the baby
formula at non-chain stores for very cheap.
Since big box stores like Walmart and Target run little stores out of
business, buying these stolen goods could be tempting, because they could undercut
the big chain’s prices on a non-substitutable product. The money the thief gains funds his/her drug
habit.
Razors are more complicated,
because it involves a network of professional criminals. Thieves, known as boosters, steal the razors
and hand them to their middle man, a fence.
The fence will sell the razors for half price at small shops, and then
yield more money for drugs than just stealing and reselling. Sometimes the fences will ship their stolen
goods out of the area and yield revenue.
This has been termed as “Organized Retail Crime.”
©2014 Caroline Friehs
Original Date
Posted: October 25, 2014
References:
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