Crime is down in Toronto. So why is retail theft on the rise?

Caught on camera. Suspects filling suitcases with booze and making off with shopping carts full of stolen alcohol. Others walking out of a Walmart with arms full of stolen merchandise, threatening people with pepper spray as they try to intervene. Police say they're not cracking down on just shoplifting here. This work is essential to disrupting organized crime. Police say stolen alcohol often gets resold illegally to bars, stolen jewelry pawned or resold online, clothes too. These goods are going to other enterprise criminals who are then selling these goods off. Whether it's through online channels, shipping them off some more or selling them through other illicit marketplaces. Repeat and prolific offenders cycling through the system with limited deterrence. Of the 546 arrests, about half of the suspects had been charged with theft in the past. And as such, Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkew says arrests are one thing. They need fulsome prosecution. The cost benefit of doing a crime versus the consequences is tipped in the wrong way. And if we're going to address this, we need a justice system that is prepared to tackle this. Prosecutors that are prepared to deal with it in court and have meaningful consequences which includes incarceration. We've been talking a lot in this city recently about crime trends and yet people feel unsafe. It's just a snapshot of an overall trend reported by Statistics Canada showing that while major crime is down nationally, retail thefts have increased in each of the last five years. This is one area of why people feel unsafe. Ali Chiasso, CBC News, Toronto.