Home Depot gave Inside Edition an exclusive look at the company's latest crime-fighting technology, including a shopping cart with wheels that lock if you don't pay for some of the items.
The outbreak of brazen smash-and-grab robberies and shoplifting is showing no signs of stopping, but some stores are taking extreme measures to stop would-be thieves in their tracks.
Video shows one home jammed with more than $1 million in shop-lifted power tools, according to authorities. Another video shows a line of cops emptying out a storage unit filled with goods they say were stolen from Home Depot.
Home Depot spokesperson Christina Cornell says this is not a result of “petty shoplifting,” but “organized retail crime.”
The retail giant is fed up with the shoplifting spree sweeping the nation, and they're fighting back as never before.
Cornell gave Inside Edition an exclusive look at the company's latest crime-fighting technology, including a shopping cart with wheels that lock if you don't pay for some of the items.
“We know that this is going to help catch a lot of bad guys,” Cornell said.
Expensive items are getting locked, and there are more surveillance cameras in the aisles. And if a shoplifter runs out with a stolen powertool, good luck!
“In a lot of our stores, we’re piloting right now, some state-of-the-art technology that uses Bluetooth, so that if you don’t pay for this, if you don’t scan it and go through the register, it won’t even turn on,” Cornell said.
“We want people to know that the value in this is its ability to work, and if it’s not even going to work, it’s not worth stealing,” she continued.
Police say the majority of stolen goods wind up being resold online. One tip to look for are items still fully packaged and being sold in bulk at unrealistic discounted prices.
