Colorado shoppers are accustomed to it: You’re checking out as another “customer” walks by. With stolen items, they sidestep security personnel and cameras. Business carries on as usual; like a breeze, the shoplifters slip out the automatic sliding doors as you pony up to cover the pass-the-buck prices caused by the very crime you just witnessed.

Any law-abiding citizen is rightly incensed by such brazen lawbreaking. That’s not just because it shows flagrant disregard for the law and order that protects us all, but also because rampant retail theft drives up prices for all consumers when retailers have to cover their losses.

Yet, absent tougher laws against retail theft, the response from boots-on-the-ground retail security and law enforcement agencies has been lacking. And without backup from a justice system that generally doesn’t take shoplifting seriously, large-scale retailers pragmatically factor the losses from stolen goods into their corporate bottom line. It literally has become just another cost of doing business for Rocky Mountain retailers. 

For too long, concerned consumers haven’t had the data to point to just how bad it is. Last week, Colorado’s Common Sense Institute put some cold, hard numbers to the very real retail theft plaguing Colorado. 

A new analysis authored by the institute’s Owens-Early Criminal Justice Fellow and former Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey quantifies what already was clear anecdotally: Retail crime has soared in Colorado, with law enforcement agencies recording 27,094 reported shoplifting incidents in 2024 — a 22.4% increase over 2023 and nearly 10% higher than a decade ago.

Dig deeper, and the CSI report publishes an even more infuriating fact: Citing national surveys conducted by the Loss Prevention Research Council, roughly 89% of all retail theft incidents go unreported.

“The true number of incidents is likely closer to 246,309 statewide,” CSI deduced.

That’s 674 retail thefts across Colorado a day. And per CSI’s math attributing 62.4% of all incidents to just four Front Range counties, 421 retail thefts occur every 24 hours across Adams, Jefferson, El Paso and Denver counties alone.

Aside from the pain to our personal pocketbooks, letting easy-to-enforce laws against theft slide has grim implications for the economy at large. 

Retail crimes cost Colorado businesses $1.4 billion in 2022 alone. Colorado taxpayers forfeited an estimated $78 million in lost sales-tax revenue. And the institute projects more than 8,000 gigs will be gone each of the next three years.

We echo the report’s recommendations for curbing shoplifting. Among those: When the legislature convenes in January, it must lower Colorado’s statutory dollar threshold for felony theft. Currently, that threshold is $2,000. That’s too high — sixth highest among U.S. states. Any retail theft of merchandise under that amount isn’t a felony in Colorado. 

That means criminals are incentivized to pilfer at their pleasure with no possible penalty of true consequence.

The report notes, “A moderate reduction to $1,000 would bring Colorado in line with the national average, better distinguish between organized, high-value theft and lower-level, personal-use incidents, and strengthen the deterrent effect against large-scale retail crime. Such an adjustment would ensure penalties more accurately reflect the severity and intent of the offense while maintaining proportionality across theft categories.”

Are there some state lawmakers willing to draft a bill making that change in the law? Ruling Democrats at Colorado’s perennially soft-on-crime legislature may be loath to clamp down, but the high price of retail theft only is rising. And it’s costing us all.