One in ten retail events today involves violence. Some stores have stopped scheduling women after 4 PM because it is no longer considered safe. A new associate, only weeks into her first ever job, was dragged by her hair and punched so someone could steal a key from around her neck. These are not edge cases. This is the daily reality of retail today.
Auror's 50 in 5 mission sets a clear and urgent goal: reduce violent retail crime by half within five years. In this episode, Phil Thomson, Terry Sullivan, Raul Aguilar, and Alaina Kring come together to explain why the mission exists, what it will take to achieve it, and why the time to act is now.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Violence in retail is not a loss prevention issue. It is a community issue, and accepting it as normal is not an option.
- Technology and AI are changing what is possible, but the real shift happens when retailers, law enforcement, and communities act together.
- You are not in this alone. The tools, the partnerships, and the will to make change already exist.
Why we cannot accept violence as part of the job
Phil Thomson launched 50 in 5 because he reached a breaking point. Not with the data, but with the idea that an entire industry had started to treat violence as inevitable.
"Would I want my kids to go and work in retail today? No. The amount of retail leaders I speak to that have that same view about an industry that they love and are passionate about themselves. This is why the flow on effects are just much more than retail crime and someone losing some money. It's actually about an impact on a community, a city, an economy."
Over 60% of retail workers are women. Some are now being told not to work after 4 PM in certain locations because it is too dangerous. First jobs, which have always been a starting point in retail, are becoming places where young people are assaulted.
Alaina Kring shared one such story: a new associate was dragged to the ground and punched by a group who wanted the key from around her neck. Three or four weeks into her very first job. That is what 50 in 5 is responding to.
How Retail Crime Intelligence changes everything
For years, identifying repeat offenders meant weeks of manual work. Building link charts, chasing video from store managers who were not on shift, calling across jurisdictions. Cases went cold not because the evidence was absent, but because the process of surfacing it was broken.
"Bring in technology and AI and you can just start to do that at scale and at speed. Suddenly you know who your top 10% of people are that you should be looking into. You want to do an investigation? Don't spend two weeks building out a link analysis chart, click a button and pull it together."
Raul Aguilar has seen this shift from both sides. At Homeland Security Investigations, organized retail crime (ORC) was tied to South American theft groups, vehicle theft, gift card fraud, and violent networks tracking jewelry store owners to beat and rob them. What looked like petty retail theft was often the surface layer of something far more serious. The intelligence to connect those dots now exists. Getting it into the right hands, fast, is what makes the difference.
What it means to join the “coalition of the willing”
No retailer, department, or agency can do this alone. 50 in 5 is a collective mission. Raul describes it the way he ran federal initiatives at HSI: you find the people who want to do more, you give them a shared goal, and you build from there.
"Share until you're uncomfortable… Get approvals. Ask. Join that coalition of wanting to do more. This is your community, whether you're a law enforcement officer, a retailer, or just the public. Not in our city. Not in our communities. Do something about it."
The retailers already using Auror are proving the model works:
- Leading grocers investigate the same individuals.
- Law enforcement receive complete, actionable cases instead of blank reports.
- Guards arrive for their shifts knowing who to look out for and why.
The Auror Network effect is not theoretical. More than two million dots have been connected already across cases around the world.
The 50 in 5 mission is bold by design. What’s happening in stores today is not acceptable, and the only way to change it is to stop treating it like it is.
Watch the full episode to hear the team's advice for retailers who are not yet reporting everything, the role of facial recognition in proactive prevention, and what each speaker hopes you take away from this conversation.
