Page 22 - Security Today, October 2019

Theft on Wheels Cargo theft accounts for as much as $30 billion in annual losses
BOy John Chigos
ddly enough, in a world where virtually any item is only a mouse click and 24-hour delivery window away, we tend not to think much about how our merchandise gets from some ware- house to our front door. Unfortunately, there
are thieves who do.
While inconsistencies in reporting make it difficult to assign
specific numbers to cargo theft, Loss Prevention magazine recent- ly reported that cargo theft accounts for between $15 billion and $30 billion in losses annually.1 As for some recent statistics, trans- portation trade magazine Transport Topics cited a report from the SensiGuard Supply Chain Intelligence Center that found U.S. cargo thefts increased by 25 percent in Q1 2019, with the average loss being nearly $117,000.2
When it comes to cargo theft, thieves certainly have ample op- portunity. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the trucking industry accounted for 11.5 billion tons of freight valued at nearly $12.5 trillion in 2017.3
Regardless of how thieves choose to take the cargo—by pil- fering trucks and trailers left in parking lots or executing violent hijackings that also risk the lives of drivers—both the trucks/
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trailers and the escape vehicles have one thing in common: license plates. As such, automatic license plate recognition (LPR) tech- nology can be employed to mitigate theft, recover lost cargo and, most importantly, bring the perpetrators to justice.
Preventing Cargo Theft with
Improved Perimeter Security
In a report on cargo theft in 2017, the FBI found that nearly 40 percent of all cargo thefts that year occurred in parking lots or garages.4 That means thieves were able to commit their crimes more or less at their leisure, either by stealing trucks/trailers or stealing cargo from them. Even if there was surveillance technol- ogy, the perpetrators could have obscured their faces with hooded sweatshirts, hats or masks, making them difficult to identify— much less apprehend. In short, they committed a crime that ex- perts could argue was relatively low-risk.
LPR could increase that risk significantly while making it possible to catch the thieves in the act. That’s because cargo thieves can’t transport any meaningful amount of cargo on foot. They either need to steal a truck/trailer or need a vehicle of their own on the premises in order to efficiently transfer the stolen
TRANSPORTATION SECURITY
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