CITYSAFE PODCAST

CitySafe Podcast

CITYSAFE PODCAST Co-Hosted by: Jim Cords and Don Carr For twenty years, retailers asked when law enforcement was going to show up. In 2026, law enforcement is asking when retailers are going to bring something worth showing up for. That is the seam this show lives in. Don Carr has spent over a decade in the retail and hospitality private security space. Jim Cords is a recently retired federal agent with nearly three decades at the FBI and DHS on the investigations and prosecution side. Together they cover what actually works on the floor, in the courtroom, and in the space where retailers and law enforcement either collaborate or miss each other entirely. Episodes feature AP leaders, federal agents, prosecutors, and the practitioners doing the grinding, unglamorous work that is actually changing this industry. Real conversations with real operators. Tools and platforms get discussed because they have to. Spin does not. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    Ep. 21: The Architecture of Asset Protection with Khris Hamlin, RILA

    There is a structure underneath every loss prevention program. Most leaders inherit it. Few examine it. Khris Hamlin spends his career looking at that structure across the largest retailers in the country at the same time. As Vice President of Asset Protection and Retail Technology at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, he sits in one of the only seats in the industry with that view. Recorded three weeks after RAP 2026 in Phoenix, this conversation moves from the patterns the public reporting hasn't named yet, to the Washington work about to land at the store level, to the technology deployments that actually changed outcomes in 2026, without naming a single vendor. We close on the human boundary around AI that retail hasn't drawn yet, and what Khris thinks the next five years actually ask of the people doing this work. For LP/AP leaders, retail operators, and anyone trying to read where this work is going next.

    21 min

  2. 15 MAY

    Ep. 20, Part 2 — 1 in 48: Why Hasn't the Needle Moved? The SAFR Conversation

    Chris Ochs answered the question through a different lens. The retail theft arrest rate is roughly 1 in 48. In Part 1, Jason Davies of Sekura Global described a downstream chain that no longer holds — cases built, cases handed off, cases that go nowhere. This week, SAFR's Chris Ochs reframes the conversation one layer earlier. The most consequential intervention may not be downstream at all. It may be at the door. His argument is structural. DUI checkpoints do not produce their public-safety value through arrests; they produce it through the drivers who never arrive. Apply that logic to the retail entrance, and twenty years of loss-prevention doctrine begins to look as though it was calibrated to the wrong outcome. Jim Cords takes the argument seriously before he tests it. Deflection works on the population that is deflectable. The 327 individuals behind 6,600 NYPD arrests in a single year — and the comparable cohorts surfaced in the Manhattan Institute and Seattle data — are a different population, with a different relationship to consequence. The casual offender and the chronic offender are two distinct problems, and a strategy calibrated to one will under-serve the other. Don Carr sits with the disagreement on tape. He says plainly that his architectural instincts run closer to Chris's than to Jim's, then walks through where he parts from Chris anyway. The conversation arrives not at a resolution but at a sharper version of the question. Door-layer deflection, funded prosecution capacity, and cross-incident pattern recognition are three different architectures answering three different populations, and the industry has not yet decided which gets built first. One point holds underneath the disagreement. No system should escalate a human being into a confrontation. The floor associate is rarely the right human. The action belongs elsewhere. Featured: Chris Ochs, SAFR. Referenced from Part 1: Jason Davies, Sekura Global. Hosts: Don Carr and Jim Cords. Don Carr holds a commercial position in the architectural layer discussed; listeners should weigh his contributions accordingly. CitySafe is independently produced. Stay aware. Stay well. Stay CitySafe.

    15 min

  3. 8 MAY

    Ep. 19 Part 1: 1 in 48 — Why Hasn't the Needle Moved?

    From the floor of RILA RAP 2026 in Phoenix. 15 years of better cameras. 15 years of better analytics. 15 years of faster alerts. And the retail theft arrest rate is still roughly 1 in 48. DJ Carr took that question to the people building the technology. In Part 1, he sits down with Jason Davies of Sekura Global, whose answer points past hardware tagging at the same structural problem detection alone cannot solve. Then DJ and Jim Cords debate where they diverge. Jim brings 28 years across FBI, DHS, and OIG. He'd start with funded enforcement. DJ brings private-sector roots in ground-level security and several years as a systems architect. He'd start with the data layer. They do not resolve it. They agree on one thing. A system that knows and cannot act is not a security system. It is an evidence system with no consumer. Part 2 drops next week with Chris Ochs of SAFR. Loss. Liability. Law.

    23 min

  4. 02/05/2025

    EP. 17: The Door Is Open: How the Retailer and Law Enforcement Relationship Actually Changed

    This week on the CitySafe Podcast, Don Carr sits down with co-host Jim Cords, retired FBI and DHS Investigator, for an unflinching conversation about how the retailer and law enforcement relationship has changed in the last five years. From the eighteen-month case that got away, to the fourteen-incident pattern file that closed in under a year, Jim walks through what actually broke the old loop, what the 2024 RILA-IACP partnership is really about, and what every AP leader should carry into RAP 2026 in Phoenix this week. No spin. No product. Just the institutional read from both sides of the seam. For twenty years, retailers asked when law enforcement was going to show up. In 2026, law enforcement is asking when retailers are going to bring something worth showing up for. This week on The CitySafe Podcast, Jim Cords (retired FBI, retired DHS) and I get into what actually changed, where friction still lives, and what AP leaders should carry into Phoenix this week.

    16 min

  5. 30/09/2022

    Ep. 16 Interview with Matt Kelly of LiveView Technologies

    Headquartered in Utah since 2005, LiveView Technologies has provided on demand, rapidly deployed surveillance to the largest companies in the world. Today, LVT is used by DOTs, oil, gas, law enforcement, retail, construction, housing and other industries. Whether you need surveillance in a parking lot, on a lonely roadway, at a busy intersection, or at a concert or sporting event—LVT has a solution for you.

    20 min

  6. 26/08/2022

    Ep. 15 The New DICE Corporation

    New technologies and solutions aimed at security, safety and loss prevention.  Listen in as we learn how The New DICE Corporation is helping the industry obtain better insights and outcomes.

    23 min

  7. 19/08/2022

    Ep. 14 The Recap

    Chris and Don recap previous episodes and talk about future episodes.

    25 min

  8. 12/08/2022

    Ep. 13 RILA (Retail Industry Leaders Association)

    A must listen as we interview special guests Lisa LaBruno and Michael Hanson of RILA as they provide insightful and informative input on solutions for combatting ORC and violence in the retail space.

    42 min
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About

CITYSAFE PODCAST Co-Hosted by: Jim Cords and Don Carr For twenty years, retailers asked when law enforcement was going to show up. In 2026, law enforcement is asking when retailers are going to bring something worth showing up for. That is the seam this show lives in. Don Carr has spent over a decade in the retail and hospitality private security space. Jim Cords is a recently retired federal agent with nearly three decades at the FBI and DHS on the investigations and prosecution side. Together they cover what actually works on the floor, in the courtroom, and in the space where retailers and law enforcement either collaborate or miss each other entirely. Episodes feature AP leaders, federal agents, prosecutors, and the practitioners doing the grinding, unglamorous work that is actually changing this industry. Real conversations with real operators. Tools and platforms get discussed because they have to. Spin does not. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube Music.

Information

  • Creator
    CitySafe Podcast
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 CITYSAFE PODCAST
  • Show Website
    CITYSAFE PODCAST