This 'flash mob' retail theft is a tempest in a teapot. It's flashy and gets a lot of press, but it is small potatoes.
Small potatoes compared to what is happening with train robberies.
With your subscription to the New York Times you can access a recent big article in the Time's Sunday Magazine about the reality of big...friggin' !BIG.....wholesale thefts of freight from container ('intermodal') carrying trains.
The railroad companies are putting together 2-mile long trains....even an occasional 3-mile train......yet, have only two employees aboard those trains, one being the engineer. Any slow down of movement or most especially a stoppage....allows organized predators to swoop in and loot some containers. The locks are way way inadequate.
Robbers are even hopping aboard slow-movers and with a bolt-cutter severing hydraulic lines that force the whole two-mile train to stop....and then some lonely railroad guy has to walk back and see what is happening. Too little. Too late.
Read that Times article. Law enforcement has big challenges in freight theft....far more so than retail store theft.