Police tout retail crime program
Low-profile special unit targets Greenwich Avenue
GREENWICH — Two years ago, Greenwich police bolstered its detail of plainclothes officers working on Greenwich Avenue to target a rise in shoplifters, bank fraud perpetrators and organized retail theft rings.
As police administrators and elected officials work out plans for the future of law enforcement on the Avenue and debate the use of police officers to direct traffic, the plainclothes unit has been deemed a success.
The program is called ORCA, an acronym for Organized Retail Crime Activity, police said. The unit aims to be proactive
in confronting perpetrators and it keeps a low profile. Its deployment was not publicly announced until recently.
According to police Captain Mark Zuccerella, the department’s spokesman, improved cooperation with the local business community has been a key component of the initiative.
“One of the main functions that has allowed ORCA officers to achieve success has been the ability to engage with local business owners, managers and employees. ORCA officers have been able to instruct employees and business owners in ways of detecting and deterring fraud, in the trends and strategies utilized by shoplifters, and in sharing information regarding the criminal groups operating in the tristate area,” he said in a statement.
“Through these relationships built with local businesses, ORCA officers have been able to make arrests that have included members of violent gangs and organized retail theft organizations,” he said. “They have stopped crimes in progress and created an omnipresence in the Greenwich central business district. ORCA criminal cases will frequently become intertwined with federal law enforcement investigations, as well as thief of the New York Police Department and other surrounding state police agencies.”
The Greenwich Police Department released statistics from 2020 on the unit’s activities in the downtown business district:
1 Cases investigated: 45
1 Cases closed with an arrest: 26
1 Number of people arrested: 37
1 Number of felony charges: 65
1 Number of misdemeanor charges: 37
The police department also noted that several of the people arrested had ties to violent gangs.
Last summer, the officers who were posted to direct traffic at two locations on Greenwich Avenue were reassigned to other duties. The department has added bike-mounted officers in their place.
Some community members and business owners have called on the department and the town administration to return the officers to traffic duty on the Avenue, calling it a venerable local tradition.
But police point to the crimes reported on the Avenue in recent years, including organized retail crime rings that targeted highend shops on Greenwich Avenue in recent years, as well as other shopping destinations in New York and New Jersey.
In September 2017, a Greenwich police officer grappled with one of three suspects who tried
to steal handbags from a store on Greenwich Avenue, blocking their escape, police said. Three suspects stole a number of Canada Goose jackets — valued at a total of $6,420 — from a store on Greenwich Avenue in November 2019, police said.
Organized crime rings have been targeting purses and other luxury items at shopping destinations around the region, reselling them on the Internet, police said.
In addition, banks in the central business district have been targeted by thieves using doctored credit cards and identity documents to fraudulently withdraw funds, police said.