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Manteca Police nab pair suspected of conducting organized retail theft
organzized retail theft
Manteca Police arrested two men from Sacramento last week for organized retail theft after they walked out of a Kohl’s with a suitcase – which was for sale inside of the store – packed full of more than $1,800 worth of items.

Two Sacramento men were arrested last week after a loss prevention staffer from a local business alerted police about a possible case of organized retail theft.

The men, ages 54 and 32, respectively, worked as a team – with one allegedly using a suitcase for sale in the store to load up more than $1,000 worth of merchandise while the other gathered other items that they intended to steal.

When the first man exited the store with the suitcase and began approaching a Toyota Prius that was parked in the parking lot, he was stopped by Manteca Police and taken into custody without incident. The second man walked out of the store with clothes concealed on him and was contacted and ultimately arrested.

During an investigation of the two men and their previous actions it was determined that the same two men were suspects of a previous theft at Lowe’s store in Stockton – a theft that the store wasn’t even aware happened until Manteca Police Organized Retail Theft Detective Dave Brown contacted them.

One of the suspects was arrested in August at the Manteca Wal-Mart location after he tried to steal $940 worth of merchandise, and the other was on post-release community supervision and had three warrants out for his arrest. The pair are believed to be responsible for thefts at stores from Modesto to Sacramento.

While cases of organized retail theft – where teams of people often steal thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise at a store at the same time – have gained more notoriety in recent years, the Manteca Police Department opted to try a different approach to thwart the practice by assigning a detective to work closely with the individual stores and their loss prevention teams and surveil locations where these types of thefts are known to take place.

The approach has been so successful that other agencies have contacted Brown to learn more about what they can do to prevent the crime – which often raises prices for law-abiding consumers that end up having to pay for the losses incurred by the stores.

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.