Top DHS official warns of 'absolute threat' to public safety, economy from organized retail crime
Authorities are ringing alarm bells about the growing threat of organized retail crime, where groups of criminals steal high-value items to sell online or elsewhere. The surveillance video, from earlier this year, is startling: Four masked men march in a line through a Home Depot store in New York -- two of them looking like menacing bodyguards -- while the two others confidently push carts stacked with almost a hundred boxes of high-value items that they take but never pay for. When the same crew, allegedly doing the same thing, was approached by a security officer at another Home Depot store nearby, one of the men threatened the guard. "I'll knock you out. This isn't worth dying for," he said, according to prosecutors. MORE: 83-year-old employee dies after being shoved during Home Depot theft: Police As Home Depot executives describe it, that New York-area crew is part of a growing threat to Americans across the country: so-called organized retail crime , where ...