Middlesex District Attorney Meets With Watertown Police in Effort to Cut Down Shoplifting

Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan joined a regular meeting between Watertown Police and security from local stores to find ways to curb the amount of shoplifting in town, and to prevent incidents from becoming more serious.

Since 2022, the number of shopliftings in the City has steadily risen, with the vast majority occurring at the Watertown Mall and Arsenal Yards. In 2022, the WPD responded to around 400 shoplifting incidents, and in 2024 the number rose to 774, according to statistics collected by Watertown Police. So far in 2025 there have been 566 calls.

Ryan said it also impacts other communities in Middlesex County.

“It’s an issue that affects a number of communities across our county, especially the places that have, like Arsenal Yards, big places like Assembly Square, things like that — Natick and Framingham,” Ryan said.

Watertown Police Chief Justin Hanrahan said Ryan reached out to him asking to organize a local summit with law enforcement and retailers.

“She noticed that our numbers were higher than typical. So she reached out to me last week. She wanted to organize something,” Hanrahan said. “So, we’ve already been organizing (meetings).”

About two years ago, Watertown Police, led by Detective Lt. Ken Swift, began holding regular gatherings with representatives of stores and Arsenal Yards. Out of these meeting came the “saturation patrols” where undercover officers worked with store security to make as many shoplifting arrests as possible.

Ryan said this is a good time to focus on shoplifting, and hopes to avoid other types of incidents.

“We’re headed towards the holiday season, so obviously there’ll be a lot more people out shopping and that opportunity. And it’s an issue that impacts the business community,” Ryan said. “It’s something that also we want to be on top of, in terms of other kinds of incidents that happen.”

In recent weeks Watertown Police responded to two fights at local stores. Ryan said that she has seen other escalations, including gunshots being fired at a Somerville shopping center in July.

Another focus for Ryan is making sure that more cases are prosecuted. She heard about some reasons for suspects failing to be prosecuted. One reason, retail reps told Ryan, was because the letters mailed to store employees asking them to come to court as a witness were not reaching them in a timely manner, or at all. The DA’s office now is looking at emailing the requests to appear.

“We have an amazing partnership with law enforcement here. Many of our communities have built these partnerships with the retail community, and that just helps us to all share information,” Ryan said. “Things like just sorting out how a subpoena summons is not getting to people using the email. Sometimes it’s just very simple things to talk through.”

Ryan has also advocated for differentiating how cases are treated in court, depending on the offender’s history and how much they stole. Five years ago she proposed legislation at the State House focused on this issue.

“There’s the person who’s never been involved in any criminal activity who has an incident where there’s some property taken. We treat that in one way. Then there’s people where this is their business. They’re taking things, they’re being resold at flea markets, whatever. That’s a completely different situation,” she said. “We want to be sure that we have a good sense of who it is, who’s in front of us, what’s the appropriate disposition. You can have the same kind of offense, but depending on what the background is, who that person is, where the property is going, we want to know we can be making good decisions around that.”

At the meeting, Hanrahan said he learned about the process, and what sometimes stands in the way of a prosecution.

“I think it was kind of good to hear, she mentioned about the store personnel not showing up, and how it’s difficult to prosecute (without them),” Hanrahan said. “I think the perspective, a lot of times from the stores and from us is like, we bring it to court, they don’t do anything about it, which gets frustrating sometimes, you know. So we often arrest them more as a matter of least it’s some deterrence.”

Watertown Police have taken steps to try to cut down the amount of shoplifting, Hanrahan said. They have conducted four saturation patrols in conjunction with the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office to transport suspects to jail, and with help from State Police and others. Another one is in the planning for the holiday shopping season, Swift said.

Arsenal Yards has also given the WPD a space for a police substation, and a parking space in front of Nike.

“We came up with the idea of putting the cruiser right by Nike, because Nike was getting a year or two ago they were getting nailed,” Hanrahan said. “They actually would go in. They would grab arms full of merchandise, and they would time it with the bus, like they knew in the bus, and they jump right on the bus, and by the time we get called, they are already gone.”

Swift said that efforts such as parking a police cruiser in front of Nike has made a significant impact on shoplifting at that store.

The substation allows officers to do work on cases without driving back to the Police Station, on the opposite side of town from the malls, Swift said.

“We’ve had it there for about a year. It allows for our officers to go in there: they can write reports, they have access 24/7 to go in there if they need to interview somebody, or they’re following up, or they’re doing community policing,” Swift said.

This is not the first time Watertown Police have had an outpost at a mall, Hanrahan said.

“Way back we had one in the Arsenal Mall days we actually had a substation there for a short period. It was up in the food court area, just kind of tucked over by the elevator,” he said.

Hanrahan has also advocated to City officials for more resources to help tackle the problem.

“One of the things that I’ve been trying to articulate to the City Manager, and I think he’s on board with it, is (the shoplifting) is really concentrated to one area of the City,” Hanrahan said.

The police typically have four officers on patrol, one of whom is assigned to the East End of town, including both malls.

“The way we divide our patrol routes up, there’s one officer that handles that whole area. And we looked at different ways of configuring it, but no matter what you’re gonna we’re gonna have the malls. So we really need more,” Hanrahan said. “So, the goal is — hopefully we are going to get the City Council on board — to hire more police officers so we can assign two units that area.”