To Catch a Thief: What Some Booksellers Are Doing

May 18, 2005

David Bolduc, owner of Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colorado, recently recalled when it was that he first became "very intense" about bookstore security. It was at the end of a year, the time to go through his store's financials and its physical inventory. "I would say to myself, 'What!? I'm working my butt off, yet I'm losing so many books to theft,'" Bolduc said during a recent interview with BTW. "And this would go on year after year. I thought, Either I'll be pulling my hair out at the end of each year, or I'll need to figure this out."

Bolduc went on to adopt some serious anti-theft measures in his store: a sensor gate/tag system and a video-camera system (with about 40 cameras) were employed, and staff training regarding ways to deal with customers and store policy regarding employee theft were improved. He continues to hone his theft-prevention chops. "I had no aspirations to be a policeman," he stressed, but he knew something had to be done. "It's the kind of situation no one really wants to deal with, especially because bookstores attract kind of timid types. But with the margins we have as booksellers, if you don't have some kind of safeguard, all your profit can just walk out of the door."

Bolduc ended up becoming an authority on bookstore security and has lectured on the subject at BookExpo America and other trade shows. (He isn't thrilled, incidentally, with the term "shrinkage," which he characterizes as a "euphemism" for theft. "Sure, there can be some accounting problems, but the gross majority of what's called shrinkage is theft. I always say, 'Don't call it shrinkage. I never saw a book shrink. But I've seen books stolen.'")

Boulder Book Store's sensor gate system is deployed at the store's three entrances, and its tags are lodged in the gutters of books. Meanwhile, employees are not constantly watching for what the store's cameras discover, but, if an incident does occurs, store staff can review the video.

Bolduc obviously isn't the only bookseller who has experienced loss from theft. Yet he believes many booksellers aren't willing to take concrete measures to prevent, and, if necessary, to stop theft. "This is like your house," he observed. "If someone was in your house and started packing up the silver, you'd do something about it, right?" And the reality that his store is his livelihood was definitely a catalyst for action. "It gave me the confidence to say, 'We're going to get aggressive here.'"

When Bolduc started getting really into combating theft, some of his staffers said, bluntly, they wouldn't approach suspected shoplifters. "Through training, working on a routine, and role playing," he said, Boulder Book Store's employees feel prepared to respond to suspected theft. Training about security includes a video developed by the store. "We show them how to approach people, pleasantly," Bolduc noted.

Alan Beatts, owner of San Francisco's Borderlands Books -- a store specializing in science fiction, fantasy, and horror -- was involved in law enforcement for 10 years before becoming a bookseller. And, right out of college, he handled undercover security at a Tower Records store. It's not surprising, then, that he's very knowledgeable about retail security.

To combat theft in his store, Beatts makes sure his staff greets all customers who enter, and do so with eye contact. Beatts explained that this "is actually a very strong deterrent to shoplifting. One of the original studies on that subject was done by Wal-Mart, which is why Wal-Mart has greeters in their stores. The company discovered this reduced shoplifting by as much as 35 percent."

Borderlands also has a closed-circuit surveillance system. "We find it works as a deterrent," Beatts said. The store doesn't, however, use a sensor gate system. "My experience with those, when I was working for Tower, was that they weren't very effective unless someone is willing to be really rigorous in terms of contacting people who set off the sensors, and if necessary, holding them. Most stores don't want to go to that length."

Beatts said the most significant way he's brought his law enforcement expertise to bookselling is by educating his staff about shoplifter behavior profiles. "I'm aware of what patterns to look for if you're being hit by a professional shoplifter, as opposed to someone who's just casually stealing something because they happen to be in the store," he said.

Booksellers should be on the lookout for people who are carrying bags and wearing loose clothing. "This is especially important if a store doesn't have a bag-check policy," he continued. They should also notice people who wander from one section to another with no apparent agenda and without asking about a specific section. "They just wander around, and repeat their wanderings. Someone who is circulating like that is looking for an opportunity, and noticing whether the clerks are paying attention," Beatts explained. Watch, too, for people carrying stacks of books, especially if you see them the next time without the stack, he suggested. "People don't tend to pick up piles of books and then put them down somewhere else in the store -- if they do, it's relatively suspicious." And pairs of people should be observed carefully, he stressed. "One will engage the clerk in a conversation, ask her to search for books and look up information, while the other person wanders around," Beatts said. "Pay attention, also, to people who just seem to set off one's radar. Very often when someone steals, a staff person had a sense that something was wrong prior to the theft."

Booksellers at the managerial level, Boulder Book Store's Bolduc believes, should learn the law, to know what they can and can't do to deal with a theft, and, he noted, "You should learn how you can approach people." In his estimation, if someone takes a book from one department and leaves it somewhere else, then that person has deprived the store of the ability to sell something. "You tell them that they have to go back and show you where that book is. In many cases, you might see someone with a book, and then they don't have it. It may be hidden on their person, or they may have left it somewhere. You ask, 'Where's the book?' They might answer, 'I left it in another part of the store.' 'Okay, please come and show me where.' 'Oh, it's not my responsibility.' 'Yes it is' or 'Come back here, because we need to ensure you don't have it on you.'

Bolduc, however, acknowledged that managerial booksellers shouldn't move a security situation in a direction where a staffer feels his or her safety is threatened. "That's where we say, 'Don't do anything that would make you feel insecure or unsafe. You don't chase people down the street; you don't have to. I'll chase people down the street."

Borderlands Books' Beatts believes that "for the typical bookstore and its staff, it's not a good idea to attempt to make arrests, and if you're going to confront someone who you believe has been shoplifting, do not confront them when you're in-between them and the door -- because of what they're likely to do to you on their way out. You can get injured."

In the end, Beatts said following your instinct is key. If a customer seems suspicious and makes you wary, give the person extra service. All the attention will typically make a shoplifter uncomfortable -- hopefully uncomfortable enough that the individual will leave without stealing, he noted.

When a person who does steal exits a bookstore, the thief will sometimes head to another bookstore and trade in the stolen titles for cash. "The history has been that we've found people with addiction problems doing this," Bolduc reported. "They're desperate, so they'll come to the bookstore, then go to the used bookstore, and use the cash for whatever their addiction is calling for."

Boulder Book Store buys and sells used books, too, and every potential seller must present an I.D. because the individual could have stolen those books from another store. And that's what happened several years ago at the store, when someone brought in many new books to sell. "We were getting these new books, and I found a Tattered Cover [in Colorado] sticker on one of the books," Bolduc continued, "so I phoned the Tattered Cover and said, 'We've been buying these books for a couple of weeks and one of them has your sticker on it. You want to check it?'

"We gave a list, and they were missing all those books." Since Boulder Book Store has a camera aimed at the exit of its used book office, Bolduc knew what the thief looked like, and he sent the thief's picture to the Tattered Cover. "We told the Tattered Cover, 'We're going to act like we're still buying his books, hold them for you, and you can build a case.'" Within two weeks, "the Tattered Cover caught the guy," Bolduc said. "He had stolen thousands of dollars worth of books and was selling them to us. When he was caught, they stopped him at the door with books -- he had a special pocket under his coat where he could stick art books."

While booksellers face the loss of merchandise to shoplifters, they also face the reality of employee theft. Bolduc noted that, according to most general retail information, half of all in-store theft is committed internally. "It's something that's even more difficult to deal with or think about," he acknowledged. Bolduc is a member of the Independent Booksellers Consortium, which recently met at member bookstore Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. The consortium hosted a speaker who had been a law enforcement officer and a security officer for Nordstrom, and the gist of her presentation was revealing. "It dealt with creating a level of concern that the people you hire are honest and addressed the fact that you should ask very direct questions during the interview process and watch for key reactions," Bolduc said. "What she outlined was very psychological."

BTW caught up with Village Books co-owner Chuck Robinson, who noted that he doesn't know of actual occurrences of internal theft in the store. "But I'm certain that over the years we've had things taken by employees, whether it was cash or books." He did note, however, that two years ago the business' Paper Dreams card and gift shop, which is connected to the bookstore, did catch and prosecute an employee who had been stealing money from the store. "The person was doing all this at the register," he said, "by issuing voids and then taking money. The employee was not ringing things in." After another employee became suspicious and alerted the store's management, Robinson brought in a security company, which caught the person within 30 minutes. The security company representatives observed the alleged thief working dishonestly, and also bought merchandise and noticed that she didn't ring up certain purchases. "We had that on tape," Robinson said. "We had installed a camera focusing specifically on that register and only our manager knew about it."

Village Books recently modified its job application. Job seekers are now asked if they've been involved in any acts of theft, witnessed theft, and what they would do if they saw a fellow employee stealing. Meanwhile, the store realizes that certain acts of theft are associated with "people getting themselves into a jam and needing money," Robinson said. "And that it spirals out of control."

Village Books has a sensor gate system, but the store decided it would be a "deterent system" rather than a "catch 'em" system, and there's a difference, Robinson said. Tags sometimes fail to deactivate when a purchase is made, and a purchased book will sometimes set off the alarm. "So when the gates go off, a bookseller will respond, and we'll have to say to the person, 'Gee, we're sorry, we must have missed deactivating something.' We then take the package back to the counter, go through it, and look at the receipt to make sure the receipt and the merchandise match. If they have an extra book, we say, 'Gee, we're sorry. We forgot to ring this book up, so let us do that."

The store has also recently installed security cameras, which helped out when someone slipped into a back room and stole some billfolds out of purses in the staff lounge. "He was recognized on the cameras going back and forth; so, we were able to match what he looked like from the video with the person the police caught."

Dale Szczeblowski, co-owner of Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, knows just how serious bookstore theft can be. When he and other employees of Porter Square worked at The Concord Bookshop in Concord, Massachusetts, they had to contend with a big theft problem. "And it was, in our minds, professional," he said. "And at the same time, The Toadstool Bookshops in southern New Hampshire were experiencing a similar theft problem.

"We were all losing, literally, stacks of bestsellers. It was either the same person or a group of the same people doing the stealing, because it was the same MO. They would only take bestsellers, and take multiple copies. The frustrating thing for us was that it was right under our noses. Displays literally right in front of us would disappear -- stacks of five, six copies at a time. Thousands of dollars in books were taken from our store." At the time, Concord had neither an electronic surveillance system, nor a camera system, but when Szczeblowski and his partners opened Porter Square, hooking up an electronic sensor gate system was a big priority. "You still see some shrinkage, but it's not a significant problem for us," he said. Szczeblowski and his colleagues also figured out another means of observing theft: "We made sure there were sight lines to as many parts of the store as possible."

Colgate Bookstore in Hamilton, New York, which is owned by Colgate University and is considered the largest independent bookstore in central New York, also has not had a problem with theft. "We tag all of our books in conjunction with a security system, and we have another security system that has cameras," said Victoria Brondum, associate director/business manager of the bookstore. "And I think in general, the college community and the general public know that Colgate does prosecute shoplifters."

The store also has strong internal controls, knowing that shrinkage, when it occurs, is usually not due to receiving problems but to theft. Brondum believes the location of the store -- in the country -- accounts for less customer traffic, and therefore, minimal theft. "But if we did have an instance where something was taken from the store we would do follow-up and identify the person. And, if you follow through with a security system, word gets out that someone cannot take advantage of the store and walk out without paying for merchandise." Infrequent occurrences of shoplifting also mean infrequent occurrences of employee theft, Brondum believes, but the store still takes precautions, insisting workers enter and exit through the store's front door, so they're in plain view of cameras. "And we have policies about how to handle things going in and out of the store when employees make purchases."  

Whether or not poor store security is significantly affecting the bottom line, theft is a factor that booksellers must take seriously. "I think people need to be aware of the possibilities, both externally and internally," Village Books' Robinson said. "As booksellers -- maybe more than other retail people -- we don't even want to think about the fact that somebody we hired may be stealing from us. And I think it's our duty, in many ways, to set up systems that don't create a situation that tempts someone into stealing. I think we need to be clear about the fact that we will prosecute people who steal, and we need to make sure systems are solid so people aren't tempted to take that path."

But there's a fine line -- a potential dilemma -- that comes with being conscientious, he admitted. "I think the fine line is doing all you can do without appearing to mistrust everyone," Robinson said. Nevertheless, basic survival does depend on whether a bookstore will be willing to take security measures, Boulder Book Store's Bolduc said. "Most bookstores don't want to go there, but, if you're going to be a survivor, you have to go there. It doesn't mean you're going to survive anyway. But it's guaranteed that you're not going to survive unless you take these precautions." --Jeff Perlah

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