Tide Theft Crime Trend Comes To Tulsa

Tide's orange and yellow bottles are an iconic American brand, but now they're part of a national crime wave that hit Tulsa over the weekend.

Police around the country say the popular laundry detergent is being sold on the black market to buy drugs. You can put this one in the "What-Will-They-Think-Of-Next" category.

This past Saturday, a suspect walked into the Walgreens on 15th and Yale in broad daylight, took 12 bottles of Tide laundry soap, threw them in a car, and drove off. 

It may sound like someone just had a lot of laundry to do, but police from Ohio to Oregon are seeing this happen. The basic reason for thefts is simple: everyone needs to do laundry.

Here's what will happen: typically, drug users are the ones stealing bottles of Tide from the store.

Because one bottle can retail for up to $20, the user will offer a drug dealer some Tide for about half that price, and get drugs in exchange.

"They'll steal a couple of bottles and buy a $20 rock of crack or whatever specific drug or pills," Tulsa officer Lori Visser said. "Drug dealers keep it or sell it and turn a profit off that as well as the drugs they're selling."

The dealer can then use the Tide or sell it to someone else.

Police were called after a woman filled up a cart with Tide from a Target store and pushed the cart right past the checkout stands to her car and loaded it up.

Police got a warrant and went to her house.

"We've had numerous cases," Visser said. "We did a search warrant just last month where we recovered 46 bottles of Tide and Gain and paper products."

Lori Visser realized retail theft was such a huge problem in Tulsa, the department created an Organized Retail Crime Task Force.

They focus on all kinds of thefts and coordinate with stores and police in other states. Whether it's Tide or electronics, it's costing all of us.

"Tulsa is losing close to $2 million a year in sales tax revenue and that's a very conservative figure," Visser said.

She says boosters often commit other crimes too, burglaries, credit card and check fraud. She says these groups are organized and travel and do this for a living.

"We've identified 65 to 85 groups doing this and once we shut one down, another group comes up we've not heard of before," Visser said.

Tide's parent company, Proctor and Gamble, is trying to take measures to stop the thefts. A spokesman says they're testing out alarm devices, something like you would see on clothes at a department store

One grocery chain is trying out sticky labels, with "return to owner" printed on them.

Authorities say Tide is not the only item being used to trade for drugs: razor blades, teeth-whitening strips, and heartburn medicine have been subject to theft as well.