End Users '20 under 40' 2016—Justin Knickerbocker

Justin Knickerbocker, 26

Senior special investigator, Target

Fremont, Calif.

Justin Knickerbocker has focused on loss prevention with a variety of companies, and with his current role at Target, he said he's interested in facial recognition technologies.

Prior to working at Target, Knickerbocker worked as a global asset investigator for Google. He also held asset protection positions with Sam's Club and Walmart prior to working with Google.

As one of the senior special investigators at Target, Knickerbocker primarily “oversees the organized retail crime investigations, and then internal investigations pertaining to store management and asset protection teams, for 63 Northern California stores,” he said.

For this role, he relies on the stores' camera systems and remote monitoring, he said.

With a theoretically infinite budget, Knickerbocker said that it would be useful to have more cameras. Additionally, he said he's interested in facial recognition technologies, “I'd be interested to see how that can impact us, especially in a public space.

“I'd like to see increased technology when it comes to merchandise protection, and how we can not hinder the honest guest shopping experience, but still have some sort of level of merchandise protection,” he said.

Target's biggest physical security challenges, from Knickerbocker's perspective, are external, including adequate staffing for local law enforcement and legislation that decriminalizes property crimes.

He highlighted the jump in scale between his position at Sam's Club and his role at Google. “It was a much larger scale, instead of [a] single-store focus, we're obviously investigating things at all of our offices,” he said.

Knickerbocker started in asset protection while he was in college; he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Information Security and Intelligence.