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A shoplifter concealing merchandise inside a retail store
Retail Loss Prevention

Stop the loss
before it leaves the store.

Most retail shrink is preventable. ACS pairs trained floor presence with AI cameras over your highest-risk zones and after-hours live monitoring, so shoplifting, staff theft and refund fraud get caught in the moment, not counted at inventory.

What shrink costs

Small losses.
Big line item.

Shrink runs about 1.5% of retail sales, money gone before it ever shows on a receipt. It does not feel like a loss because it never happens all at once.

$0U.S. retail losses to shrink in a single year
0Share of shrink that is theft, internal and external
~1.5%Average share of revenue lost
Live · estimated Canadian retail shrink since you opened this page $0 Estimate at industry-average rates. Source, NRF National Retail Security Survey.
Where shrink comes from

Loss has more than
one source.

Shoplifting

Concealment, grab-and-run and organized retail crime on the floor.

Internal & staff theft

Product, cash and sweethearting from behind the counter.

Fitting rooms & blind spots

The corners where product quietly goes to disappear.

POS & refund fraud

Voided sales, false returns and till manipulation.

After-hours break-ins

Smash-and-grab and forced entry once the doors are locked.

Entrances & parking lot

Cart pushouts, exit-door theft and lot incidents.

Run your numbers

What shrink costs
a store your size.

Slide to your annual revenue. The numbers update at the industry-average shrink rate.

$2.0M
Estimated annual loss to shrink$30,000
Recoverable with an LP program$12,000
Lost per week, today$577

Based on a 1.5% industry-average shrink rate and a 40% reduction target. Your actual exposure depends on category, layout, and current controls. That is what the assessment measures.

See the plan for my store
Three ways to run it

One goal.
Three ways to staff it.

Every store's risk, layout and footprint are different. Loss prevention comes in three models. Pick the one that fits, or layer them.

Model 01 · Uniformed

Uniformed loss prevention

A licensed officer, visible at the door and on the floor. Deterrence starts before anything is taken, and when theft or fraud does happen, a trained professional is already on site to handle it to your policy. Intervention, documentation, and police handover. The uniform changes behaviour the moment someone walks in.

Model 02 · Plainclothes

Plainclothes loss prevention

Officers who read as shoppers. They observe selection, concealment, and the last point of payment, building the continuous observation a lawful arrest requires under s. 494. The right fit where visible security only moves theft to another aisle, or where repeat offenders have learned the rotation.

Model 03 · Virtual

Virtual loss prevention

A trained team of virtual LP agents watching your in-store cameras in real time, across every location you operate. Agents can issue a live audio talk-down directly to a person concealing merchandise, or quietly alert on-site staff and security to intervene. One team covering many stores means multi-location retailers get full-time LP coverage without full-time staffing at every site.

LICENSED UNDER ONTARIO PSISA · $5M GENERAL LIABILITY · HANDLED TO YOUR WRITTEN POLICY

Not sure which model fits? That is the first question the free assessment answers.

Rapid response

When a store is bleeding,
send the Blitz team.

Some locations do not need a program adjustment, they need an intervention. The ACS Strategic Blitz Team is a coordinated unit of experienced LP officers deployed short-term into high-theft stores to break the pattern, then hand back a store that is no longer a soft target.

Step 1 · Target

Read the store's own losses

We start with your incident data and camera history. Peak loss windows, hot zones, known faces. The deployment is built around when and where your store actually loses.

Step 2 · Deploy

Saturate the windows that matter

A mixed team, uniformed and plainclothes, working together with virtual monitoring, covers the store during the windows that matter. Crews casing the store meet coverage they cannot map.

Step 3 · Break the pattern

Take the store off the easy list

Apprehensions, trespass notices, and offender identification in volume. Organized retail crime runs on intelligence. A Blitz deployment takes your store off the list of easy targets.

Step 4 · Hand off

Results that outlast the team

You get a full intelligence package. Who was hitting the store, when, how, and the ranked fixes that keep losses down after the team rotates out. The Blitz ends, the results do not.

Built for stores dealing with ORC crews, habitual offenders, or shrink numbers that jumped and stayed there.

Request a Blitz assessment
The loss inside

The most expensive theft
does not come through the door.

Most staff are honest. The few who are not cost more than shoplifters ever will, because an outsider has to find your gaps and an employee already knows them. Which camera faces away. Which count gets skipped. Which refunds nobody reviews. Internal loss runs quiet, repeats weekly, and hides inside your own paperwork, which is exactly why it needs a different response than floor coverage.

Internal-loss review

When the numbers point inward, we work with you on a discreet, structured review of where the loss is coming from, documented and handled fairly, whether the outcome is an internal decision, a police handover, or clearing someone who did nothing wrong.

POS and exception review

Voids, no-sales, manual discounts, and refund patterns tell the story the register tape will not. We review your exception data for the outliers worth a closer look, and separate real loss from honest error.

Store security audit

A full walkthrough of the controls and habits that internal loss lives in, covered in detail below.

Handled quietly, handled fairly, handled properly. Your team keeps its trust, your losses stop.

Know your gaps

Audit the store
before someone else does.

A structured, top-to-bottom review of how your store actually handles loss, not how the manual says it does. Shoplifters, crews, and dishonest staff all audit your store constantly. This puts you ahead of them.

  • Entrance, exit and floor sightlines

  • Camera coverage map and blind spots

  • Receiving, stockroom and vendor delivery process

  • POS exception and refund controls

  • Cash handling and deposit procedures

  • Staff awareness and escalation procedures

You get a written report ranking every gap by loss exposure, with fixes ordered by cost, the free ones first.

Book a security audit
Security rights in Ontario

What our officers can do,
and what they will not.

Most retailers have never been told, in plain language, what a loss prevention officer is legally allowed to do. We would rather you know the rules before you hire anyone, including us.

Criminal Code · s. 494

Arrest authority

A person authorized by the property owner may arrest someone found committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property. Continuous observation, reasonable force only, and prompt handover to police. Done properly, it protects your store. Done improperly, it becomes your lawsuit. Our officers are trained on all of it.

Trespass to Property Act

Removal and banning

As your authorized agent, our officers can direct individuals to leave, issue trespass notices banning repeat offenders, and act when a banned individual returns. For retail, this is often the most useful tool there is. It addresses the habitual offender before anything is stolen.

Ontario PSISA

Licensed and insured

Every ACS officer is licensed under Ontario's Private Security and Investigative Services Act, trained in use-of-force limits, de-escalation, and evidence handling, and covered by $5 million comprehensive general liability. No unlicensed guards. No exceptions.

What we will not do

No searches without consent. No detaining on suspicion alone. No force beyond what the law allows. Restraint is not a limitation, it is what keeps a good stop from becoming a bad claim.

This page is general information about security services in Ontario, not legal advice.

The camera standard

Cameras that detect,
not just record.

Stores running our preferred camera line get more than footage. Modern 4K systems with on-board AI flag the behaviour, while the video quality holds up when it matters most, as evidence.

  • 4K evidence-grade video

    Faces, hands and product identifiable, footage that supports a charge instead of a shrug.

  • AI detection, human decision

    Loitering, concealment zones, and after-hours intrusion flagged automatically and routed to trained virtual LP agents. AI finds it, a person judges it.

  • Crime data and site history

    Every incident logged, tagged, and searchable. Over time your store builds its own intelligence file, repeat offenders, peak-loss windows, hot zones.

  • One investment, three jobs

    The same camera system powers live detection, evidence collection, and virtual LP coverage. NDAA-compliant hardware, no hidden software fees.

Commercial CCTV and AI
A PTZ camera covering a retail entrance and till line REC · MONITORED

Already have cameras? The audit maps your current coverage and tells you what is usable before recommending anything new.

After the doors lock

Live operators keep
watch after close.

Live monitoring

Trained operators watch the store overnight, not a recording nobody sees.

Verified alarms

Every alarm confirmed on camera before anyone is dispatched.

Voice-down & escalation

Operators speak on site to move intruders along, then call the right response.

How live monitoring works

Built for retail

Stores we
protect.

Big-box & department Apparel & boutique Grocery & pharmacy Convenience & gas Malls & plazas Multi-store operators

SERVING WINDSOR-ESSEX & SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO

Straight answers

Asked often.

Both. Uniformed presence deters openly, plainclothes observation catches what hides from a uniform. The mix is set to your store, your product and your risk hours.
Yes. Every officer is licensed under the Ontario PSISA, screened and trained, and ACS carries $5M general liability.
Usually. The assessment maps what integrates and what needs upgrading. You change what fails the plan, not the whole system.
De-escalation comes first. Officers act strictly to your store's policy and the law, and document the incident in full for police or your insurer. The scope of any intervention is agreed with you in advance.
Camera coverage over tills and back-of-house, paired with a searchable event log, makes voided sales, false returns and staff theft reviewable with footage attached.
Yes. After-hours live monitoring watches the store overnight, verifies alarms on camera, and can speak on site and escalate before anyone gets in.
Yes, under specific conditions. Section 494 of the Criminal Code allows a person authorized by the property owner to arrest someone found committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property. The officer must have observed the offence, use only reasonable force, and turn the person over to police promptly. Detaining on suspicion alone is not lawful.
The pattern usually tells. Loss concentrated in categories only staff handle, shrink during low-traffic hours, or anomalies in voids and refunds point inward. Loss in high-theft categories during peak hours points to the floor. A security audit separates the two, and most stores have some of both.
A short-term, high-intensity deployment of uniformed and plainclothes officers into a store with a serious theft problem, targeted using the store's own incident data, coordinated with virtual monitoring, and finished with an intelligence handoff so results outlast the deployment.
Theft is one cause of shrink. Shrink is the total gap between the inventory you should have and the inventory you actually have, shoplifting, staff theft, vendor fraud, damage, and administrative error combined. That is why a real program looks at more than the front door.