Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin has announced the creation of a new task force aimed squarely at organized retail theft rings operating across Ohio, teaming up with state and local partners to go after crews that hit multiple stores and online platforms rather than lone shoplifters. The new unit is called F.O.R.C.E., short for the Fraud & Organized Retail Crime Engagement Task Force, and it marks Franklin County's entry into a growing statewide push to dismantle organized theft networks.
According to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, Baldwin is working alongside Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson and Franklin County Prosecutor Shayla D. Favor to stand up the task force, which brings together multiple agencies collaborating to combat organized retail crime. The initiative is tied to the Ohio Organized Criminal Investigations Commission, giving it access to the legal support, confidential funds, and technical investigative resources that the commission has extended to more than 138 specialized task forces across the state since its founding in 1986, per the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
A New State Law Fuels the Crackdown
F.O.R.C.E. was established under the Ohio Organized Criminal Investigations Commission in March 2026, with the strategic goal of sharing real-time intelligence among law enforcement, prosecutors, retailers, and online platforms to track theft rings moving between physical storefronts and e-commerce sites, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office notes. The task force's creation traces back to Ohio House Bill 366, known as the FORCE Act, which Governor Mike DeWine signed into law in April 2025 to expand law enforcement tools against organized retail theft networks, according to the Ohio House of Representatives.
Under the updated retail theft statutes and FORCE Act provisions, prosecutors can now aggregate the monetary value of stolen merchandise across multiple incidents and locations to meet Ohio's $1,000 threshold required for felony charges, as explained by Columbus Criminal Defense Lawyers. That change closes a loophole that previously let theft rings dodge felony exposure by keeping individual store thefts under single-incident dollar limits, spreading their hauls across several locations to stay under the radar.
The Economic Toll Behind the Push
The stakes for Ohio businesses are steep. An Ohio Chamber of Commerce study presented at a 2024 industry legal symposium estimated that retail theft cost Ohio businesses approximately $2.527 billion in revenue losses in 2022, a per-capita loss of $274.88 in retail sales statewide, according to the ICSC Law Symposium. Those losses translate directly into reduced municipal sales tax revenue and higher shelf prices for shoppers.
Favor, who took office in 2025 as Franklin County's 52nd prosecuting attorney and is the first woman and first person of color elected to the role, restructured her office's Criminal Division in March 2025 to create a specialized Violent Crime Unit focused on repeat offenders and organized crime elements, per the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office. That restructuring positioned her office to process the kind of complex, multi-agency indictments the new task force is expected to generate.
A Sheriff With Decades of Investigative Experience
Baldwin brings 28 years with the Columbus Division of Police to the role, including investigative and tactical leadership assignments in SWAT, Narcotics, and Robbery, before his election as sheriff, according to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. His office says that background, spanning 38 total years of police experience in Columbus, informs the sheriff's focus on regional task force collaborations like F.O.R.C.E.
Franklin County's new unit joins a wider pattern of regional retail crime task forces launching across Ohio, including the Tactical Crime Suppression Unit in Kettering and the Northwest Ohio Organized Retail Crime Task Force covering Lucas and Wood counties, according to a report from 13abc on Facebook. Those multi-county units allow law enforcement to track theft syndicates that cross municipal borders rather than confining investigations to a single jurisdiction.
Part of a Bigger National Trend
Ohio's crackdown mirrors a surge in retail theft nationwide. National Retail Federation survey data reported in 2026 found that U.S. retailers experienced a 93% increase in shoplifting incidents and a 90% surge in associated financial losses between 2019 and 2023. In May 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act to establish centralized federal law enforcement coordination with state and local task forces, according to the National Retail Federation. That federal measure is meant to bridge communication gaps between federal agencies and municipal police chasing theft rings that operate across state lines.
It is unclear how quickly F.O.R.C.E. will move from formation to active investigations, and the Franklin County Sheriff's Office has not detailed specific cases or arrests tied to the new task force. The office has previously stood up other specialized units, including its HOPE Task Force honored earlier this year for community outreach work, showing a pattern of collaborative, multi-agency approaches to public safety challenges in the county.
