“Hope isn’t a strategy,” said Josh Nylander, manager of retail asset protection investigations, EG America. When it comes to tracking crime across stores, he noted that “If you don’t have a management system in place, you’re really relying on what is hopefully a great game of telephone between operators to notice patterns.” Nylander said this during the Education Session “An Industry Approach to Crime Reporting and Recording” at the 2025 NACS Show.

[Discover the NACS Loss Prevention and Safety Symposium, taking place December 3-4 in Dallas.]

Ultimately, as an operator facing various forms of loss prevention, the lesson is “you cannot manage what you don’t measure,” said Cory Lowe, PhD, director of research, Loss Prevention Research Council.

EG America tracks and categorizes criminal incidents through an in-house database, Nylander explained, although the company is looking into other software. Even a relatively simple system has allowed EG America to gain insights and data that helps the company customize its needs.

At Refuel Operating Company, “We use an online database, and we’re concurrently in the process of exploring some other options,” said Wes Pate, VP risk and loss prevention, Refuel Operating Company. “Additionally, we built some Power BI reporting that actually pulls that data out and heat maps it, showing us where the crime is and where it’s moving.”

For both companies, tracking data has helped them narrow in on specific issues with specific stores. “It’s really important that we don’t do a blanket solution. If you’ve got five locations and four of them don’t have an issue, well, then why are we doing the same thing at every location? We could do one thing here that would solve the issue,” Pate said.

Nylander added, “Acquiring better data has helped us sharpen our influence on operations. We’re able to catch and identify policy or conduct issues before they become heavier loss issues. It also helps us be quicker to support audits, to deploy physical security where it’s needed, when it’s needed and influence operational training as a whole.”

For those looking to build their own crime tracking management system, the advice from Nylander and Pate is the same: Keep it simple. “We could ask tons of questions, but it’s not relevant, and it’s not important, and so we’re trying to keep those forms for the necessary information. The standardized forms are mostly filled out by our store and field teams. It’s important to keep those forms simple to use and time efficient,” Pate explained.

Learn more about how to tackle crime and safety issues at the NACS Loss Prevention and Safety Symposium, December 3-4 in Dallas.