ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Retail theft continues to be a growing problem in our community. Just four big-box stores in Monroe County alone lost nearly $9 million to theft last year.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office now has a specialized team targeting serial shoplifters. News10NBC’s Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke rode along with that team during a detail in the Town of Henrietta to see firsthand how it’s catching up with the thieves. 

We’ve all seen the videos. Sometimes it’s a group of people who swarm a store. Other times it’s a team — one who distracts and the other who steals. More often than not, it’s a single person who walks in to a store and walks out with whatever they want. 

Investigator Sergeant David Bolton of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office put a team together to try and stop it.

“People will say, ‘Hey, the stores can handle it, their insurance covers it.’ But that’s not true. The stores can handle it because they pass that cost on to you. So, you’re paying more every time you go into a store to cover the cost of retail theft,” he tells News10NBC. 

During a detail, deputies in plain clothes go into a store’s security office with loss prevention officers to monitor cameras and look for shoplifters. They radio out to a team of deputies outside when someone walks out without paying.

“I have people out in the parking lots, the idea being, we want to see where these people are coming from, vehicles, those kind of things,” explains Sgt. Bolton.

It wasn’t long before the arrests started. Deputies in the office saw a woman fill up a garbage can with items, put the can in the cart, and walk out without paying.

“We try to use overwhelming numbers. People will see us on occasion and say, ‘Oh, it took seven of you to stop that person?’ No, it didn’t take seven of us to stop that person. It took seven of us to make sure nobody fought, nobody got hurt, and nobody ran away,” Sgt. Bolton says.

But occasionally, people do run.

“They’ll tell us, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were loss prevention. I would have stopped if I knew you were the police.’ So, they’re under the impression that the store is not going to stop them as long as they don’t stop, so they don’t,” he adds.

Over the course of the next few hours, the task force made a number of other arrests, bouncing between seven different retailers.

Sgt. Bolton: “This detail is centered around career criminals or people who are committing larcenies with the idea of profiting or people who are committing larcenies with addiction problems that we need to somehow offer services to or get help for.”

Jennifer Lewke: “And have you found that people are willing to take your help?”

Sgt. Bolton: “So, I’m going to tell you, we made 117 arrests last year. To each one of those people we offered addiction services. We in fact had in-patient housing ready to go for anyone of them. So, they could go right from this detail and end up in an in-patient treatment center. And of the 117 arrests we made, we had one person go.”

Jennifer Lewke: “Do you sometimes pick up the same suspects during different details?”

Sgt. Bolton: “The numbers were well over 60% of the people that we arrest on our details get rearrested within six months of our arrest when we release them on an appearance ticket.”

As Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter continues to lobby lawmakers in Albany for legislative changes regarding appearance tickets, the task force continues its work hoping to swam the thieves and deter as much of the theft as possible.

“Obviously, it’s getting out that we’re out, and when that happens, people start to decrease their activity. So the retailers have been very appreciative of that,” Bolton says. 

Each detail lasts for three days and the task force moves around to different towns doing them. Last year, four of the people who were arrested for shoplifting were returning to stolen cars in the parking lot with the loot so, they were charged for that too. 

The new state budget includes funding to expand specialized retail theft units across the state. Other local departments and State Police are modeling their units after what’s being done here in Monroe County.