St. George Sheriff's Sgt. James Van Fleet saw retail thefts in his area climb 42 percent in 2008. He believes the spike is likely to mount even higher: "We're just in prepare mode right now for what's coming at us in 2009."

Van Fleet partially blamed St. George's glaring one-year shoplifting hike on retail growth in the once-booming area of Washington County. But Bob Well, a geographic real estate statistician for NAI Utah Southern Region, said retail establishments between 2007 and 2008 not only slowed with the economy but actually declined. NAI's third-quarter report shows a 3 percent decline in the number of retail businesses in the area between 2007 and 2008.

In Cache County, sheriff's Lt. Matt Bilodeau said no new retail businesses popped up in his jurisdiction in 2008, and his department's total number of retail thefts has soared 48 percent since 2007. "It's just the tip of the iceberg here," Bilodeau said. "Because as bad as that may seem, our car and home (burglaries) are even worse. They're going crazy here right now."

Tooele reported the highest increase in retail theft, at 103 percent.

A direct causal relationship between rising thefts and the declining economy is tough to prove, but Wood said the correlation is clear. Utah's retail shoplifting peaked the year of and the year after the eight-month recession in 2001. When the economy rebounded with double-digit retail growth in 2005 and 2006, police reported the lowest overall incidents of retail theft in about eight years, according to Wood and the data from the law enforcement agencies.

In Bountiful, retail theft was up 11 percent in 2008. But Bountiful Police Lt. Randy Pickett said he's more worried about an increasing number of car burglaries. "There are at least one and sometimes three a day," he said. "Anything for a quick buck right now."

Paul Jones, vice president of Retail Industry Leaders Association, predicts the rising number of thefts will snowball further in 2009, because most retailers are unprepared to deal with more theft. He also believes that revenue-strapped enforcement agencies are beginning to disregard it for other, more serious, "cost efficient" crimes.

In King County in Washington state, the sheriff's department already has begun such prioritizing. A new department policy says that before a detective is assigned to a case, it must be worth at least $10,000 in damage or theft. A $9,999 theft is ignored.

"Theft is going up, you can bank on it," Jones said.

E-mail: jhancock@desnews.com