Duane Kinsley is sounding the alarm around rampant crime targeting retail businesses.
“It’s like a war every day,” Kinsley, who owns Sports Systems in Albuquerque, New Mexico, told KRQE. “I love what we do here…and we cannot continue with this kind of level of theft, vandalism, and scams.”
Kinsley has been in business for nearly 40 years but deals with break-ins, theft, or damage to his store about four times a week, KRQE reported.
“If people in Albuquerque want to still have stores to go shopping, if they want to go to the Walgreens, or the Target, or the Sports Systems, if this doesn’t stop in the near future, they won’t have that opportunity,” Kinsley said.
Lawmakers are trying to address the rise in crime with a pair of bills. Republican House Bill 55 and the governor-backed House Bill 234 would allow prosecutors to combine the offenses of repeat shoplifters for more serious charges and penalties. House Bill 55 was tabled in committee, but House Bill 234 passed unanimously and will continue to work its way through the legislative process.
The bill “removes provisions that individuals cannot be charged with other offenses arising out of the same transaction as a shoplifting charge, provides for individuals to be charged for different incidents of shoplifting in a 90-day period separately or jointly (based on the aggregate value of stolen merchandise), creates the new crime of organized retail crime (a second-degree felony, carrying a basic sentence of nine years in prison), and adds organized retail crime to the definition of racketeering.”
Kinsley said he has spent $100,000 in the past year on repairs and added security.
“It’s just disheartening every day to come to work and wonder, ‘what do we have to do to protect our business and stay in business,'” he said.