[HN Gopher] Retailers are spending millions to combat organized ...
___________________________________________________________________
Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from
stores
Author : juokaz
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-09-03 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| kneel wrote:
| Going to CVS is a timesink now that I have to walk around and ask
| employees to open cases for me.
|
| Why can't they use vending machines?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Hang on, we've had literally thousands of years with stores
| where you could pick up an item and run away, but don't.
|
| There is now are organized shoplifting crime groups, and your
| solution is to design specialized vending machines for teeth
| whitening strips, phone chargers, etc?
|
| I'm not saying it is a net good to deploy violence on poor
| people. But don't you suppose that society would benefit
| overall if there were physical and clear legal consequences to
| shoplifting?
|
| Or do you really want the world to use vending machines for
| everything? Aren't you concerned about climate change? Where do
| you suppose all those vending machines would come from what how
| are they powered?
| kneel wrote:
| I found vending machines on amazon, problem solved
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Initially I was considering this would be farming more
| senseless production to China where you can feel good about
| the pollution because it isn't seen, it isn't tallied, and
| they won't conform to economic policies designed to curb
| it. Ignoring the potential for slave labor and poor working
| conditions. Then you have the shipping of vending machines
| from China to all over the USA. Power, parts, these are
| made cheaply to fail so probably while more replacements
| than parts.
|
| All to treat 99% of people like criminals because we lack
| the conviction to actually do something about a shoplifting
| problem.
|
| But I have changed my mind. I was not aware vending
| machines are available on Amazon.
| wwweston wrote:
| Online order for pickup is close, at least if you can wait 6-8
| hours for the order to process.
|
| Had this same experience with a Walmart a week ago, btw -- it
| took me 15 minutes to _find_ one item I was looking for, and by
| the time I realized that it was behind a glass door I 'd
| already seen the lines of 8 people waiting for an employee to
| help them get what they wanted. At that point, I did the math
| on sunk vs further costs, set down the rest of my purchase, and
| went on to pay twice as much elsewhere _and_ consider it a
| bargain.
|
| The pandemic really created conditions that helped me realize
| how much of retail shopping is a waste of time.
| adamqureshi wrote:
| Boosting has been going on since the 90's in NYC. Back in the day
| i used to work on 34th/7th ave in NYC s selling leather jackets
| in a rinky-dink store about 500 square fee. The boosters came in
| groups some from Brooklyn some from uptown. They would boost
| across the street from Macy's and sell the stolen goods right
| across the street or on the streets. They would go store to small
| shops and sell Georgio armani , versace to the employees who
| worked there and to tourists on the streets ( those brands where
| hot back then) some boosters even started taking orders,. there
| were independent operators( not with the pack) and others who
| would roll with the pack. Each booster specialized in boosting a
| product. Some would only do designer clothing while others would
| lift electronics and they would sell to tourists on the street or
| store clerks working in shops, I even bought a nice Armani suite
| from them one day. They had figured out how to beat all security
| alarms in macy's and someone then figured out that you could
| return what you stole from Macy's without a receipt during the
| holidays so boosters then started to return what they stole back
| to Macy's and Macy's would cut them a check for it. This was
| around 1995. Some boosters tried to lift stuff from the store I
| was working in and I had to go and stop them , one time we had
| throw down right in front of our store to get the leather jackets
| back. I even had to go run after a few. Macy's security guards
| can't do jack. The cops had more important things todo I guess.
| The boosters would grab and bag and just run out the door and
| into the train and vanish. They had some aluminum foil around the
| bag they put the stuff in so the alarms did not go off. They
| would go downtown. Uptown and after the city got to HOT they
| started going to the suburban malls. It was like a syndicate. I
| guess it's still happening now.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Right before the pandemic the gov't run liquor stores in Ontario
| were being robbed of stock in the middle of the day. Staff called
| police and then stood back. If police bothered to appear it was
| usually hours later.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_t5WHvPv1g
|
| Possibly organized boosting, but as soon as word spread it became
| wildly popular for a few weeks.
| jellicle wrote:
| Nobody working on wage theft by employers, by far the largest
| organized theft ring running.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| Wage theft reported in Iowa using unpaid overtime as an
| example:
| http://www.iowapolicyproject.org/images/150818-wagetheft-Fig...
|
| EPI has some good articles as well:
| https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
| missedthecue wrote:
| I wonder what the value of the inverse of this is - time
| theft. How many employees are paid to be on the clock but are
| not working? I bet it's in the hundreds of billions per year
| nationwide.
| conductr wrote:
| The EPI article gives some interesting & specific examples of
| wage theft. However, I think that term and the discussion
| around it gives the impression that large corporations are
| looking for opportunities to steal employees wages. When I
| skim these examples I see a few honest mistakes / bad
| policies but mostly small likely bankrupt/distressed
| companies trying to keep the wheels from falling off their
| business. It's like a ponzi scheme falling apart, payroll
| checks bounce, tips get stolen, employees are asked to do
| something while clocked out, etc. Because many businesses
| have insufficient working capital, this just happens.
|
| Let's take a relative look at the problem
|
| > wage theft is costing workers more than $50 billion a year.
|
| $50B / $6.5T [0] = 0.77% of wages are "stolen"
|
| While not good and $50B is a huge amount, I'd argue this is
| not much of a problem but a rounding error. Unless we require
| some level of capitalization or reserves by small businesses,
| a large portion of this will never go away. I would be
| shocked if even half the restitutions were paid, this forced
| bankruptcy for most of these businesses I would guess.
|
| [0]: https://www.bls.gov/cew/publications/employment-and-
| wages-an...
| noasaservice wrote:
| If employee steals from store, they're fired and arrested.
|
| If store steals from an employee, they're told to pound
| sand at a state level office and hope and pray that some
| mid-level bureaucrat looks into the issue and writes a
| "stern letter".
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Nobody working on wage theft by employers, by far the largest
| organized theft ring running.
|
| Wage theft is absolutely a reality and an injustice that needs
| to be punished as much as petty theft if not more. But 2 wrongs
| don't make a right. Both kind of theft need to be prosecuted,
| especially when it's an organized group, and all the businesses
| that allow fencing stolen goods need to have the book thrown at
| them if they don't take serious measures to limit these
| practices.
| dls2016 wrote:
| Unfortunately one has been deemed a "civil matter" and you
| won't read any reporting about it in WSJ or Forbes.
| Hilariously, wage theft is much more organized than any
| shoplifting conspiracy.
| bko wrote:
| > The target was no ordinary shoplifter. He was part of a network
| of organized professionals, known as boosters, whom CVS had been
| monitoring for weeks. The company believed the group responsible
| for stealing almost $50 million in products over five years from
| dozens of stores in Northern California.
|
| The story isn't about people selling stolen goods on Amazon. It's
| about organized theft operations. One way to stop theft is to
| reduce the ability to sell stolen goods, but that infringes on
| ownership rights of a large number of people that want to sell
| things online. I'm sure large corporations would love it if you
| can't buy their goods second hand.
|
| At the end of the day, protecting property rights is a job for
| the state. Since it sounds its being organized, the criminal
| organization might be exploiting recent changes in sentencing and
| prosecution:
|
| > Retail investigators blame changes in sentencing laws in some
| states for an uptick in thefts. In California, a 2014 law
| downgraded the theft of less than $950 worth of goods to a
| misdemeanor from a felony. Target recently reduced its operating
| hours in five San Francisco stores, citing rising thefts.
| baybal2 wrote:
| A simpler way -- just put all merchandise behind the glass. Any
| touching only with supervision of a store manager.
| Animats wrote:
| Then you need more staff.
|
| I was trying to buy some allergy spray at CVS, and couldn't
| get anyone to unlock the case. So I left and ordered it
| online from Costco, at 1/3 the price.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Sadly a lot of the more risky chains do this pretty
| regularly. I was in a best buy a few years ago where almost
| everything was behind glass. I wonder what that does to the
| minds of locals shopping and feeling like they're always
| under lock and key. It can't be healthy.
| incone123 wrote:
| Also requires more staff to get the goods to the customer.
| It used to be normal for everything in a store to be behind
| the counter, and you got served. But self service is
| cheaper for the store, unless/until we reach a tipping
| point regarding thefts.
| nradov wrote:
| For many customers that eliminates the only advantage of
| shopping at a brick & mortar store. If you have to ask store
| staff for everything then it's easier to shop online.
|
| Cities are destroying their own business districts and losing
| sales tax revenue by refusing to enforce shoplifting laws.
| Gunax wrote:
| I think it's okay to mention the effect Amazon is having
| without blaming them. Ultimately online person-to-person
| trading is making fencing items easier and the people buying
| probably don't know they are purchasing stolen items. Amazon
| isn't the thesis, but it is disrupting the stolen goods market
| in the same way automoboles and highways lead to a spike in
| bank robbery.
|
| I grew up in a poor area and we had a neighborhood fence. Let's
| call him 'Casey' since that was his name. Everyone knew Casey
| was selling stolen items and there was sort of a joke in the
| town about getting a 'Casey discount'. It sounds like Casey is
| probably operating an Amazon store now.
| kevinpet wrote:
| I'm concerned about lawlessness, but if the only alternative is
| that $950 theft is a _felony_ that's messed up. This seems more
| like a case of not being able to deal with crime than lax
| sentencing.
| bushbaba wrote:
| If each item had a unique id. And the stores could indicate
| unique ids that are stolen. The. Amazon & eBay could monitor
| and prevent stolen merchandise
| literallyaduck wrote:
| You could probably get some milage with just a local store id
| and date on the box. If you want to get cute you could change
| the pill stamp.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Everything is easy if you assume a panopticon.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| We already have the panopticon, we might as well get some
| fucking benefits from it.
|
| As it is I'm paying both for hard drives in Utah for the
| NSA to store my contacts and photos and track logs, then
| again (formerly) for iCloud to do it a second time. It's
| inefficient.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| If it's actually organized crime, then they can be prosecuted
| under RICO statutes, which allows for much stronger sentencing
| than shoplifting ever would have. Robbery is one of the 35
| crimes included under the "racketeering" umbrella.
| floren wrote:
| The SF city government seems to have realized that there's
| another way to make crime "go down": refuse to prosecute for
| anything, ideally make it pointless for the cops to even show
| up, until people stop bothering to report crime. Wow,
| shoplifting is at record lows!
| nikanj wrote:
| Same with bike theft in Vancouver. Nobody bothers reporting
| it, so the statistics aren't too bad
| the-dude wrote:
| Isn't there any incentive for your claim on your theft
| insurance?
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It's fairly uncommon to have insurance specifically for
| your bicycle, so most people would be filing claims
| against their renters' (if they have it) or homeowners'
| insurance. Given the size of those deductibles ($500 is
| the US average for homeowners', I would think Canada is
| similar [1]) lots of people would just buy another bike
| that costs less.
|
| 1: https://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-
| insurance/home-in...
| pvtprop wrote:
| Corporations want taxes cut to nothing and complain when the
| public doesn't want to protect their private property.
|
| Funny how that works.
|
| I notice it's WSJ complaining.
|
| More "government is inept" sentiment to justify private
| armies.
| neither_color wrote:
| We're approaching a strange post-empirical world where the
| right chart or graph can be used to justify any public
| policy, and often changing how the data for the chart is
| collected, analyzed and presented is easier than solving the
| issue. The collective anecdotes of thousands/millions of
| people can be dismissed because the chart says otherwise.
|
| Disagree that crime in your neighborhood has dropped? Just
| because your car has been broken into and your neighbor got
| robbed doesnt mean there's a trend. Anecdotes arent data. Do
| you have a source for that?
| seph-reed wrote:
| This is a toughy.
|
| People who don't believe in covid vaccines -- for instance
| -- are living in a world of anecdotes, untrusting of easily
| manipulable data.
|
| But it's where we're at. In a world where you can't trust
| the data and your friends are addicted to consuming
| propaganda, what the fuck is truth?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In your opinion, did the multi-decade drop in American
| crime, regularly discussed by academics who have some
| tentative theories to explain it, happen or was it all
| faked?
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/amer...
| sabarn01 wrote:
| murders are hard to fake. The rest of crime data is more
| subjective than people realize. I was robbed at gunpoint
| for 1$. I did not report the crime.
| sizzle wrote:
| That's really scary, over a damn dollar?!?
|
| What was the context here if you don't mind sharing, why
| one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun??
| Isn't that a felony? Won't police respond immediately to
| the report of someone threatening your life via
| brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not
| caught)?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Usually robbers pull the gun _before_ determining how
| much money the victim has in their wallet.
|
| They could ask the potential victim first, and then, if
| the value is too low, not bother pulling a gun. But all
| potential victims have an incentive to lie and say they
| only have $1. Knowing that, a rational robber would pull
| a gun without requesting the info first.
|
| Regarding police responding immediately: you can't call
| the police until after robber has lowered their gun
| and/or left the scene. So by the time you call the
| police, you're no longer being threatened.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their
| pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They
| asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I
| knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but
| on their porch. They did call the cops.
|
| As for why I don't know.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| Also the police don't come quickly in most places. My
| wife was pistol whipped and it took 30 minutes to get a
| car to our house 1 mile from the station. Also I lived in
| a bad neighborhood for a long time so this may not be
| typical.
| scythe wrote:
| > In your opinion [...] was it all faked?
|
| Please don't flamebait. The poster is talking about year-
| on-year changes in a neighborhood, not decade-on-decade
| changes in a whole country. The relevance of personal
| experience is drastically higher in the first case.
|
| But I think it's worth noting that "crime is rising" and
| "crime is not rising" tend to be aliases for the real
| opinions: "crime is too high" and "crime is not too
| high".
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's all real.
|
| Violent crimes had a multi-decade drop. SF is a very
| localized anomaly in regards to property crimes.
| adventured wrote:
| Definitely not localized.
|
| Los Angeles and New York to name two other prominent
| cities, are drowning in an epic ongoing crime wave.
|
| SF, LA, NYC all have the same malfunction in terms of
| city governance.
|
| LA -
|
| LA Mag, July 2021: "'It's a Puzzle': Experts Are Trying
| to Figure Out What's Causing L.A.'s Crime Wave"
|
| A puzzle. Experts. Ha ha ha ha. Ha. Bullshit.
|
| https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/crime-in-los-angeles/
|
| NYC -
|
| "NYPD Announces Citywide Crime Statistics for May 2021"
|
| "For the month of May 2021, overall index crime in New
| York City rose 22% compared with May 2020, driven by a
| 46.7% increase in robbery (1,182 v. 806) and a 35.6%
| increase in grand larceny (2,848 v. 2,101). Felony
| assault saw a 20.5% increase compared to May 2020 (1,979
| v. 1,643), and shooting incidents increased to 173 v. 100
| in May 2020 (+73%)."
|
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/pr0603/nypd-citywide-
| cri...
|
| Some of that is Covid reductions in 2020 (year over year
| comps), and some of it is still up considerably over 2019
| figures. Murders in May were up 100% vs 2019 for example,
| burglaries were up around 17%. Felony assaults were up
| slightly vs 2019. Grand larceny was up about 25% vs 2019.
| j_walter wrote:
| That was real and everyone can agree on that based on
| what they see as well as the data. However you can't go
| to a single SF neighborhood and find people that think
| crime has dropped recently. There are boatloads of
| articles about people having their cars broken into so
| often they leave them unlocked because replacing windows
| was so expensive. Videos of people shoplifting while
| security stands by and does nothing because of the laws.
| Articles about criminals that kill someone but had been
| in and out of the system for years with fairly severe
| crimes but always let off by a rouge DA or out on bail
| (or without bail because bail is racist).
|
| https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/sf-da-announces-
| homici...
| CardenB wrote:
| ??? A couple of months ago I literally saw a man get
| tackled for stealing ties from a high end store in SF
| nearby union square.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Unintentional consequences of the California three strikes
| law perhaps? Prosecutors unwilling to hand out mandatory 25
| year sentences for petty theft?
| liber8 wrote:
| This is not how the three-strike law works. You don't get a
| life sentence for petty theft.
|
| Under Penal Code section 667(e), you can receive a life
| term if you are convicted of a serious or violent felony
| AND you have twice before been convicted of serious and
| violent felonies. See https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/fa
| ces/codes_displaySectio...
| Stronico wrote:
| Nice catch actually
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Shoplifting is at record lows. Shoplifting is at record
| highs. Ah, forced perspective.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Baltimore, too
|
| But the nice neighborhoods are hiring private security and in
| some cases threatening tax revolt
| babyshake wrote:
| In The Wire, this is called juking the stats.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| You can do the same thing in education by closing down
| magnets schools and lowering the bar for everyone...
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| You don't even have to close them. Just remove merit-based
| admission, in the name of equity.
|
| Then, because many students won't be able to keep up, the
| 'magnet' school will lower standards.
| hncurious wrote:
| I don't know if that was the intention or not, but that is
| precisely the outcome of SF policies.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It seems to apply to traffic, too. Sabotage the road system
| to prove that driving is terrible. A few extremely major
| streets were basically off road driving for a year while I
| was living there. Light timing is terrible at several
| intersections, guaranteeing gridlock. Traffic cops get
| stationed at the next intersection over, so nothing
| changes.
|
| Mission accomplished: fewer cars on the road! But no money
| coming in either.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I will never not share Goodhart's Law when the opportunity
| arises: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a
| good measure". You couple that with redefining what counts as
| a 'crime', and bam, you get the situation SF is in right now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| eplanit wrote:
| Exactly. Stop calling criminal activity "crimes", and then
| the stats look great. And, the local SF media participates
| and pushes the "crime is actually down" narrative:
| https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/stats-
| sh...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| That is a bad idea. It leads to vigilantism, or even worse,
| local organized crime steps in with attendant protectionism
| racketeering.
|
| With the American System each year failing a larger and
| larger percentage of the population, while the upper elites
| continue to hoard wealth and starve the government, then it
| makes more and more poor people turn to illegal means to make
| money.
|
| Much like drug gangs in the inner city. However this will
| also turn into the nasty spiral of gang-controlled
| neighborhoods chasing out legit economic activity and
| becoming even more poor.
|
| What we need is a decent civil society. But America is an
| oligarchy and they've figured out how to use social media to
| block any meaningful populist progressive reform by
| organizing a sufficient opposition with astroturfing and fake
| news.
| floren wrote:
| Yep, but if the police aren't going to do anything I find
| it hard to blame the people in SF Chinatown who started
| doing their own patrols:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-Chinatown-
| patr...
| dantheman wrote:
| Do you think the government is starved? At what level of
| spending would it not be starved?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The government is incompetent at protecting people. Call
| the police and you'll see how it goes. And this is
| happening while the government is spending 13B per year. I
| wonder, where does the money go, if basic services are not
| provided?
|
| I'd rather spend my money on a network of competing private
| protection companies if I didn't have to pay taxes for the
| police. Once the system is in place you can create all sort
| of charity based options - or tax funded, if you like the
| idea of forcefully stealing money from citizens' profit -
| to grant protection to those who can't afford it.
| floren wrote:
| > I'd rather spend my money on a network of competing
| private protection companies if I didn't have to pay
| taxes for the police.
|
| I'd prefer to fix the cops rather than sign up for a
| MetaCops subscription in my burbclave.
| tyoma wrote:
| The felony theft limit for Texas is $2,500, but their retail
| establishments do not report massive shoplifting sprees.
| Clearly there is more than misdemeanor/felony classification at
| work here.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure in CA it's that police do not respond to
| calls for anything less than felony theft.
|
| So it creates a situation where you can walk in the store,
| grab what you want, and then walk out with out having the
| police called or anyone legally allowed to stop you.
| sneak wrote:
| "They were robbing the store, and I think one of them had a
| machine gun!"
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| "i think they had some counterfeit $100 bills as well"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > So it creates a situation where you can walk in the
| store, grab what you want, and then walk out with out
| having the police called or anyone legally allowed to stop
| you.
|
| Walmart and Target, among others, reportedly monitor small
| thefts and let you get up to the felony threshold over
| multiple incidents before swooping in.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| An option not available to small businesses, as the
| shoplifters have no doubt already learned. Another hidden
| tilting of the playing field against small business.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| My guess is it's the same situation as Seattle; Prosecutors
| in California refuse to prosecute these cases, meaning the
| cops refuse to waste time trying to apprehend them.
|
| Here's an excellent clip about a famous criminal living free
| in Seattle that happily expounds on his illegal activity:
| https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=868
| crazy_horse wrote:
| There are plenty of things about my state that get hated on
| all the time, and deservingly so, but I'll never get how
| the West Coast is happy driving productive people away and
| coddling those that have no intention other than to fuck
| over society.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how the West Coast is happy driving productive people_
|
| The evidence for this happening in economically-
| meaningful numbers is scarce. What we _do_ see happening
| is those productive people disengaging from that broken
| society--civically, physically and emotionally.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _The evidence for this happening in economically-
| meaningful numbers is scarce._
|
| It doesn't take numbers meaningful to California to have
| a meaningful effect on other states, where housing costs
| are massively skyrocketing due to an influx of new
| residents.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What does that have to do with crime? Could be people
| just getting priced out. Land in the western US is still
| more expensive and still getting more expensive than
| elsewhere, clearly it is in demand even more than it is
| not in demand.
| rconti wrote:
| I grew up in Washington, where people were whining about
| Californians moving there and driving up property prices
| since at least the 80s, but I'm sure long before.
|
| This doesn't prove someone's opinion that criminals are
| being coddled and productive people are being driven
| away.
| crazy_horse wrote:
| I mean about a decade ago I would have loved to live on
| the West Coast. I'm sure I'm no great loss to you but
| there are a lot of people that you just will never get.
| Not to mention, compared to a decade ago, the cities in
| my home state are starting to adopt these policies.
|
| I don't see how not prosecuting repeated offenders is not
| coddling, as pointed out, the guy ended up murdering.
| There's very much a cultural difference.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I grew up in Colorado, and complaints about housing costs
| and traffic increases due to the influx of Californians
| has been a constant since the 1970s. At least.
|
| I'm going posit that it's perception more than any actual
| changes due to _fleeing 'fornians_.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Could be, but one hears of a multiplying effect: numbers
| of households moving from California _times_ the absolute
| housing price differences, in terms of money flowing into
| local housing markets.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| It's a common right-wing narrative that has literally
| nothing to do with the data. It's just a thing that
| right-wingers repeat at all times, regardless of the
| data.
|
| HN is a site for right-wing extremists, so the nonsense
| is particularly prevalent here.
| codezero wrote:
| Prices are rising in California too, so an exodus can't
| be the explanation, probably inflation and investors
| driving prices up?
| [deleted]
| ahepp wrote:
| This guy went on to kill is girlfriend then (possibly
| accidentally) himself.
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/too-much-
| jai...
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| wow, that article is actually a really interesting take
| on the whole situation, and how there are no easy answers
| (both in this case and, i suspect, in many others (in sf
| and beyond)). these sorts of tragedies really highlight
| the need for a society-wide rethink on how to balance
| freedom/liberty with the ticking time bomb of negative
| externalities that certain, highly-justice-system-
| involved (especially when serious drug abuse issues are
| in play) offenders represent. at what point is someone
| "broken" enough from the pov of the rest of society that
| the humane solution necessitates a more interventionist
| approach? (not that forcible commission is at all a
| panacea, or even necessarily a viable/effective approach,
| of course). i think everyone would agree that letting
| these sorts of problems fester until they get bad enough
| that we can justify locking them up and throwing away the
| key is not a good solution for anyone.
| bko wrote:
| That's a good point. I don't think the felony theft limit is
| the only consideration the deters organized theft. One
| obvious difference between Texas and Bay Area is Texas has a
| lot of guns.
|
| > In TX can You Legally Shoot & Kill a Shoplifter? The short
| answer is...not unless they somehow injure you in the process
| of committing the theft, making it a robbery. "During the
| process of committing the theft" would include while trying
| to escape with the property... One thing that is UNIQUE to
| Texas is the ability to use deadly force to protect property,
| even if you are not in fear for your life.
|
| Even though I doubt CVS security guards are trained the shoot
| shoplifters, the preception that this is a possibility would
| deter low level criminals tasked with shoplifting
|
| http://legas.legrandelaw.com/criminal-justice/in-tx-can-
| you-...
| pjc50 wrote:
| And what happens if you check the receipt on the body and
| find out that the item wasn't stolen? How many years do you
| face for murdering a customer?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I can point to where firearms have stopped shoplifting
| crimes.
|
| Can you point to where your scenario has happened?
|
| Because I'm all for hypotheticals, so long as we admit
| the rarity and precedent before saying there is a
| problem.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Difficulty: It would take maybe, shall we say, ten
| thousand of your "firearms stopping shoplifting" cases to
| offset even ONE "innocent person getting shot" case.
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I grew up in NH which is a gun-happy state.
|
| My mom worked at Macy's and reported endless problems with
| organized shoplifting in the 1980's and 1990's. One time a
| whole family came into the Men's clothing department after
| her shift, the dad kept the clerk distracted, the mom and
| the kids took a few racks of suits and loaded them into
| their car.
|
| She said that the security guards were loathe to use force
| on anyone because Macy's could get sued; that didn't stop
| shoplifters from running over a security guard in the
| parking lot.
|
| I worked at a supermarket where the security was entirely
| undercover (probably because they were more afraid of us
| stealing than the customers) and I knew nothing about the
| security until the day I saw a massively overweight woman
| tackle a man who was leaving the store.
|
| I read this book
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Black-Mafia-Ethnic-Succession-
| Organiz...
|
| which describes similar organized theft organizations
| working in the 1970s, how the goods were fenced, etc.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The 70s 80s and early 90s was the golden age of crime.
| Short sentences, much more lenient recidivism laws, poor
| security, a culture that really didn't care that much, no
| digitsliazation and no tech to easy track stolen goods or
| id suspects, no smartphones . Multiple types of crimes
| thrived in that era: bank robbery, drug
| dealing/distribution, shoplifting, auto theft, and so on.
| It was pretty bad, even worse than now. The noticeable
| decline of crime since the 90s according to steven pinker
| seems to confirm this.
| [deleted]
| conductr wrote:
| > Even though I doubt CVS security guards are trained the
| shoot shoplifters, the preception that this is a
| possibility would deter low level criminals tasked with
| shoplifting
|
| I've never once seen a security guard in a Texas CVS. It
| actually sounds preposterous to me. Charging $3 for a 20oz
| soda is the real crime.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| These comments are ridiculous. Have any of you people
| saying these things ever actually lived in Texas? Minimum
| wage chain store employees are not carrying guns. I would
| discourage you from trying to rob someone's actual house,
| sure. My wife once called me home to say she thought
| someone was in the house, and I cleared every single room
| with an AR-15, and you can believe I would have shot an
| intruder without a second thought. But a convenience store?
| No one is taking it personally enough to shoot you for
| stealing corporate property. If anything, the employees are
| probably the people most likely to be doing the stealing.
| jcims wrote:
| I think CA is an outlier. Super lax enforcement + huge
| population just puts up big numbers.
| valdiorn wrote:
| but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner to
| be armed, and actually confront you? No way that would happen
| in California.
|
| I keep thinking of this event that happened to me in the UK,
| where laws are equally useless at preventing theft, and staff
| are just powerless to do anything about it. I chased down a
| shoplifter. I cornered him in an alley. He stopped, looked at
| me, and this brief conversation took place. (and nobody ever
| believes me, but I don't care; this really did happen)
|
| Him: What are you doing?
|
| Me: I'm chasing you
|
| Him: why?
|
| Me: Because you're a fucking thief!
|
| Him: (confused)...nobody's ever done that before.
|
| Me: (shocked) ... well, I AM, so fucking run!
|
| He dropped the bag (which contained mostly expensive meat and
| cheese and some other expensive-ish items - apparently really
| common theft targets) - and ran off. I took the bag back to
| the store.
|
| Now, I didn't give a shit about a 100 pound loss to Tesco,
| but if we've completely given up on the rule of law, I'm not
| sure that's a society I'm happy to live in.
| am_lu wrote:
| Londoner here, true for big shops and supermarkets, off-
| licenses and corner shops will be equipped with a baseball
| bat behind the counter. Watched them dragging low-life
| thiefs to the back stores to be dealt with.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| ...what? The average Texan, as it turns out, isn't
| literally Wyatt Earp. It would be shocking if a random Best
| Buy manager stopped a shoplifter with a firearm--not to
| mention probably in violation of Best Buy's policies for
| handling shoplifting.
|
| The average cashier's ability to administer lethal force is
| probably not a major influence on the prevalence of
| shoplifting in Texas.
| [deleted]
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Convenience store, pawn shop, or other stores in low income
| areas? Maybe.
|
| The ones these people are hitting? Not a snowball's chance
| in hell. An individual could walk out with 10 baskets full
| of medicine and still not be worth the trouble to pull a
| gun for all the legal headaches that will bring.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Likely Tesco tossed them right in the bin, however. I think
| it's overstating the case to claim that people robbing
| shops (especially big chains) is an indication that "we've
| completely given up on the rule of law" - at least, I find
| it unlikely that your erstwhile (if gormless) thief,
| emboldened by his huge haul of free meat and cheese, would
| choose next time to relieve you of your wallet. Robbing
| people is a much riskier game, even in a civilised (read
| "non-firearm-carrying") place like the UK.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner
| to be armed, and actually confront you?
|
| At a CVS? Not likely at all.
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| Why not? Plenty of folks from all walks of life down
| there get their CCW.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| So given the opportunity, Texan bystanders with guns
| would shoot unarmed shoplifters?
| pandemicsyn wrote:
| Nah, a big section of the class you take to get your LTC
| (we don't have a CCW) covers just how screwed you would
| be if you did so.
|
| ...but...theres dumb people everywhere, so when you
| decide to shop lift in Texas the risk profile is
| certainly different than it is in CA.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| "There's dumb people everywhere, so when you shoplift in
| Texas" sounds a lot like like "Texan bystanders would
| shoot shoplifters."
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| Why on earth would you jump straight to that conclusion?
| Even if the firearm was drawn, which is a huge if
| assuming the carrier was attacked, almost all defensive
| gun uses end before a shot is fired.
|
| Someone carrying a firearm should be more willing to
| nonviolently confront a thief than someone that's
| unarmed.
|
| https://reason.com/2018/04/20/cdc-provides-more-evidence-
| tha...
| sfasf wrote:
| In a fairly liberal area of PA I saw a manager of a
| Walgreens very aggressively (not physically) confront a
| shoplifter and yell out to never come to the store again.
| The punk tried to respond, but ultimately cowered to the
| anger of the manager.
|
| In TX they'd be more intimidating, I'm sure. Unless
| corporate bans guns.
| unexpected wrote:
| sorry, but in Texas, big box retailers do not use armed
| staff. Target, Wal Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I
| have never, ever seen a worker with a gun.
|
| As a life-long Texan, this sounds ridiculous to me. A Wal
| Mart employee is more intimidating, simply because
| they're Texan?
|
| This is not the 1850's.
| [deleted]
| cdot2 wrote:
| You probably walk by people carrying guns every day and
| never notice
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Even in the ultra-liberal Bay Area my Walgreens, Target
| and Best Buy employ armed security. I find it doubtful
| that Texas of all places doesn't have armed security.
|
| (Oddly I've only seen unarmed, tired looking security in
| CVS. Perhaps they're too cheap to pay for armed gaurds.)
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| > box retailers do not use armed staff. Target, Wal Mart,
| CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I have never, ever seen a
| worker with a gun
|
| It wouldn't be the corporation arming the staff, it would
| be the staff arming themselves via a CCW/CHL. The first
| letter states 'concealed', so by definition you shouldn't
| see it.
|
| >A Wal Mart employee is more intimidating, simply because
| they're Texan
|
| Its less about any individual employee, and more about
| the general culture and nature of crime in the two areas.
| If I were a criminal in Texas, I would undoubtedly prefer
| crimes with less chance of confrontation.
| [deleted]
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| There is absolutely no way that corporate would allow
| employees shooting people to defend property.
|
| The resulting lawsuits would be orders of magnitude more
| expensive for the company than the lost goods, and "there
| was a shooting at walgreens" is not a headline that
| Walgreens wants to see.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| Texas is a big place, and as far as I'm aware, doesn't
| make it a policy to train individuals to be vigilantes.
|
| If your anecdote proves anything, it is the relative
| safety of that liberal area of PA. The fact that a
| manager of a Walgreens was comfortable confronting a
| criminal without real consequences speaks to the level of
| danger they were in.
|
| If you've spent time in any rougher areas of Texas (I
| have), you'd agree that physically confronting a criminal
| over petty theft, as a store manager, carries a huge risk
| of violent escalation--something you'd probably want to
| avoid in a city with a higher murder rate.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| All of the downtown CVS locations in Dallas don't even have
| checkout employees. It's automated self-checkout. You can
| just walk out of the store if you want to. Nobody is going
| to shoot you. Whoever owns CVS doesn't live anywhere near
| the stores.
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I totally believe you, but I don't think that's laudable.
|
| It's one thing to go after someone who steals from _you_ or
| some other individual, but appointing yourself the
| vigilante protector of the grocer class is not about
| defending society, it 's about your personal drives.
|
| The food you returned almost certainly wound up in the
| trash (stores have no way of knowing you're not a weirdo
| who contaminates food for kicks), and the cost of
| administering 'rescued product' is more than that of just
| writing off the loss as a business expense, which you'd
| better believe they already budget around.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Friend of mine got in the local paper for retrieving his
| laptop from a grab-and-run, by being a regular competitive
| runner and dramatically outrunning the guy.
|
| Can't imagine anyone doing that for Tesco, though.
| Especially unpaid.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I love a good foot chase!
|
| Given the sentiments of your last paragraph, why did you
| choose to send the criminal away and return Tesco's stolen
| beef?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't understand putting your personal safety at risk
| (who knows if he had a knife or something) over PS100 of
| goods belonging to a PS20B company. It's not like he
| stole your meat and cheese as you were shopping. Nobody
| is going to miss that cheese. Nobody is going to get
| fired over it. It's really not that important.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| You mention the meat and cheese, but the comment
| explicitly disavows that motive.
|
| P: I chased this guy for law and justice, not meat and
| cheese.
|
| Q: why did you chase for meat cheese?
| ryandrake wrote:
| He _said_ he chased the guy out of principle, but if that
| were true, it follows that he 'd do the same thing if the
| guy stole a pack of gum, which is even more insane. Even
| the police won't chase someone down for stealing such
| small amounts. He's not the police, he's not the owner of
| the store, he (presumably) don't even work there. He has
| no skin in that game whatsoever.
|
| The store has already accounted for shoplifting and
| shrinkage in their budget, and any steps they might take
| to combat it will be systemic via policy and by working
| with law enforcement to bust major groups (the subject of
| the actual article) and not one-off foot-chases.
|
| You might argue that a store will charge higher prices in
| an environment with shoplifting than without, but how
| much does that really boil down to in terms of the
| customer's final bill? Bread becomes PS0.02 more
| expensive in a store that has accounted for shoplifting?
| Does anyone care?
|
| Finally, there is almost no secondary market for food,
| so, in OP's case, the guy was likely stealing in order to
| eat, and not to just fence the goods for money.
| incone123 wrote:
| It's pretty normal to be offered freshly stolen meat and
| other high value food in pubs, in poor neighborhoods.
| It's happened to me lots of times. There very much is a
| secondary food market.
| ctoth wrote:
| > You might argue that a store will charge higher prices
| in an environment with shoplifting than without, but how
| much does that really boil down to in terms of the
| customer's final bill?
|
| This is clearly not about meat and cheese. This is about
| stamping out the attitude that some people have that
| allow them to walk into a store and just ...take stuff.
| This time it was from a large company. Next time it's
| from your house or car. What is the cost of living in a
| civil society where people don't routinely steal?
| Apparently, in a world where police are unwilling to
| respond it's acts like this. Thank you OP.
| sfasf wrote:
| Well, the principle of the matter for one and some have
| personal courage.
|
| Also, what you propose radically changes society for the
| worse. If Tesco can't assume a high trust environment to
| sell their goods, they will implement policies to protect
| themselves that are more expensive/less convenient for
| everyone. Thomas Sowell has written extensively about
| this.
| chrischen wrote:
| Agree that OP doesn't have a responsibility to defend
| Tesco from crime, however disagree that it doesn't
| matter. It's logical fallacy to say that crimes small
| enough don't matter. By that definition a criminal that
| is robs billions of people for mere pennies wouldn't
| matter. You have to look at the class of crimes. So if
| petty crimes are significant, then as a class of crimes
| it matters.
| Gunax wrote:
| > Retail investigators blame changes in sentencing laws in some
| states for an uptick in thefts. In California, a 2014 law
| downgraded the theft of less than $950 worth of goods to a
| misdemeanor from a felony. Target recently reduced its operating
| hours in five San Francisco stores, citing rising thefts.
|
| I think this is an example of conflating two classes of crime.
| There are effectively two classes of shoplifter: the professional
| and the desperate amateur. The activists who wanted the
| sentencing reduction probably did not have organised gangs in
| mind. But the gangs are taking advantage of the light rules.
|
| This is something we miss a lot in discussions of crime. For
| instance, laws against possession exist because of the crimes
| associated with drug use. People who use drugs who wouldn't
| otherwise cause any crime are a sort of collateral damage of
| these rules.
|
| It's often remarked how drug laws are disproportionately enforced
| against the poor, but I have always regarded that as a feature
| and not a mistake (as awful as that is for equality under the
| law). No one really cares about the banker snorting coke because
| he isn't robbing gas stations to get his fix.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > But the gangs are taking advantage of the light rules.
|
| Not only that, but it incentivizes amateurs to _become_
| professionals. Theft becomes a viable career under lax laws.
| And crime begets poverty, so I suspect this creates quite a few
| more "desperate amateurs" some of whom will become
| professionals and so on.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > And crime begets poverty...
|
| Doesn't this get cause and effect backwards? You have no job,
| no prospects, so you turn to crime. How does the reverse
| narrative work?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's a cycle. Crime drives away money and poor people are
| more likely to resort to crime. It's super difficult to
| reverse this cycle, which is why we ought to keep a clear
| berth.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The store can't afford to stay open because of all the
| crime, so it closes and lays off all its employees, who are
| now all in poverty.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, isn't seven years a pretty big lag time between cause and
| effect here?
|
| Brazen thefts like this have been happening for years around
| the country. I used to work retail (loong ago) and the store
| would actively let people walk out with expensive merchandise
| and do nothing to stop them. So I really doubt the change in
| law has anything to do with this.
|
| More like 2020 was fucking miserable and goods shortages &
| unemployment drove people to take up lucrative careers in
| organized theft.
| swayvil wrote:
| UBI might fix this. Criminals, as a rule, aren't doing it for
| lulz.
|
| It's like the free speech problem. Don't combat the bad by trying
| to stamp it out. Combat it by providing a better option.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| "as a rule"?
| president wrote:
| Never understood the point of UBI. We have food stamps,
| welfare, and a wide assortment of government safety net
| programs. UBI would just be all those things on steroids. Why
| would hard working people want their tax money going to others
| who aren't contributing? The whole concept would lead to mass
| dependency on the government, which is the worst thing that
| could happen.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Wouldn't people just collect UBI AND steal? The article
| explicitly mentions that most of the people doing this are also
| receiving state and feral unemployment benefits
| swayvil wrote:
| If UBI (or feral benefits) fulfilled their needs then I doubt
| that they would resort to crime.
| missedthecue wrote:
| For some reason, I just don't think the people described in
| this article are moving millions and millions of dollars of
| makeup and over-the-counter drugs every year in order to
| keep their basic needs met.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Wouldn't people just collect UBI AND steal?
|
| Yes, they would. Great example: Turkish + Arab Clans in
| Germany. They usually collect benefits, aren't asked to work,
| and are heavily involved into crime.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This appears to be part of a long running PR campaign by large
| corporations that are happy to lock up poor, mentally-ill and
| drug-addicted people at the taxpayers expense if it lets them
| fear monger, while at the same time stealing from their own
| employees.
|
| https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/10/16/923844907/when-shoplifting-is...
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/San-Fr...
|
| There's some telltale signs that people are trying to swap
| between thefts and violent organized theft in a dishonest way,
| trying to conflate the two.
|
| They're also using it as cover for closing stores that they were
| going to close anyway.
| black_13 wrote:
| Yes i have seen the articles to much if the same content in
| different places to be spontaneous
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Let's suppose there is a real problem with shoplifters
| effectively being immune from punishment, would you expe t
| there to be little news coverage?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You believe that retailers secretly hate the mentally ill and
| drug addicts, and are engaging in a decades long nation wide
| secret conspiracy to get them thrown in prison?
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that they probably
| just don't like people stealing from them.
| [deleted]
| president wrote:
| I don't care if they're rich, poor, mentally-ill, or drug-
| addicted - if someone breaks the law, there needs to be some
| sort of punishment. Letting them off is just enabling repeat
| offense and signaling to other criminals that this behavior is
| tolerated as we have seen.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think I realized that America is lawless when no one who
| matters went to jail for torture during the Afghanistan/Iraq
| wars. Shoplifting is a drop in the bucket compared to that,
| so I have no sympathy for "tough on crime" rhetoric anymore.
| wes-k wrote:
| s/punishment/response
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Why would they need "cover for closing stores that they were
| going to close anyway"? They can basically just close them, and
| no one's going to stop them or cause a problem. Why would they
| need "cover"?
| black_13 wrote:
| Ive gone to many retail stores at night an they have almost no
| one working there they are victims of efficiency and the people
| working there dont care about the store they are not paid enought
| to care ... if your making 7 dollars an hour in a retail store in
| Boston you by default hate your employer
| victorbstan wrote:
| What's the point of police or security guards?
| josephcsible wrote:
| When the prosecutor refuses to prosecute anyone, there's no
| point at all.
| bluedino wrote:
| I worked at a mall in the 90's in two different stores. One was a
| clothing store, and 'home shoppers' made up the majority of the
| thefts.
|
| The way it works, is you 'place an order', and someone from the
| theft ring steals what you want, and in a few days you get your
| items at a discount from the 'home shopper'.
|
| I remember my dad would buy some random clothing items from a
| friend of a friend who had things in the trunk of his car. I
| never thought much of it.
|
| When I worked at JC Penny I then saw how it worked. You'd have
| random individual shoplifters (they'd leave all the tags and
| stuff from the clothes in the bathrooms or dressing rooms), or
| you'd have multiple shoplifters come in at once, fill their carts
| and then dash out the door, getaway car waiting for them.
|
| Store security couldn't do much, if you tackled the people you'd
| get fired, so the best defense was to jam up the automatic doors
| with empty shopping carts, that way they could only leave with
| what they could fit in their hands.
|
| It wasn't much different at the electronics store I worked at
| afterward. PC add-in cards would end up missing, empty boxes
| found in the appliances on the other end of the store, sliced
| open so they could be fished out the bottom. There go the new
| $300 3Dfx cards...
|
| And the organized shoplifters came in at night, just before
| close. You'd have 5-6 people come in, and all head for the CD
| aisle. We'd page for customer assistance, and anyone still
| working in the store would head over. They'd fill their coats
| with CD's and again run out the door, getaway car waiting.
|
| All you can do is get them on camera, record the description or
| license plate of the car, and let the police know, and let the
| other stores know. Our internal email system had a ongoing thread
| of the shoplifters they'd seen lately, because they would hit
| every store in the state.
| Proven wrote:
| They could simply donate to Republican election campaigns.
| steve76 wrote:
| Plagues and barbarity go hand in hand. A few become obscure and
| cure disease and advance humanity. Everyone punching each other
| and stealing and killing each other miss out on it and die.
| hamburgerwah wrote:
| In my experience retailers are lying in a bed of their own
| making. They have had more than a decade to implement RFID based
| UPCs and have steadfastly resisted it at every turn because of
| the few pennies it adds in the supply chain. While not perfect
| RFID allows for much better security controls that the status
| quo. Instead they continue to underinvest in adequate technology
| skills and will just rely on shady third party, privacy
| destroying, false positive generating facial recognition.
| N1H1L wrote:
| I thought that was EBay?
| paulpauper wrote:
| I would hope so or expect so. How is this news surprising.
| legitster wrote:
| A friend of mine is a manager at a Safeway. He says a typical
| store might lose six figures worth of product in a year. In a bad
| neighborhood it's not uncommon to lose over a million dollars a
| year.
|
| They hire security personnel, but people figure out that a) even
| when security catches you, they are not allowed to restrain you
| and b) the police do not respond to shoplifters (in certain
| jurisdictions they are not allowed to.
|
| The stores are responsible for the cost of missing inventory -
| they credit it back to the manufacturers. Stores already run
| tight margins, so this cost ends up getting paid by reduced
| headcount at stores (except for security, if it's bad enough) and
| directly in prices.
|
| And this is in the grocery space, where there's very little
| secondary market for the stolen goods!
| joezydeco wrote:
| Some goods serve as an alternative currency, like bottles of
| Tide laundry detergent:
|
| https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/...
| legitster wrote:
| My wife introduced me to the world of underground baby
| formula. It's frankly shocking how many people she knows who
| make money off of it (either shoplifting, Medicaid fraud, or
| as a way of converting WIC into cash).
| realitygrill wrote:
| I would love to hear more about this, particularly the
| Medicaid fraud angle.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Why are they not allowed to restrain a shoplifter? In Germany,
| that's covered by the "anyone's" right: if you see someone
| commit a crime, you can detain/restrain them until the police
| arrives. Some restrictions apply, like for example having to
| watch the crime yourself etc but for shop security staff it's
| enough rights
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festnahme#Jedermann-Festnahme
| bpodgursky wrote:
| They're allowed in a legal sense, but the store often orders
| security not to physically intervene because of the potential
| legal liability if either party is injured.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| It's not necessarily that they can't legally do so, but it's
| against the policy of every single store. If you do so as an
| employee, you will most likely get fired. No amount of
| merchandise is worth risking an employees life. Healthcare is
| a mess over here, but we do generally have that part right.
|
| Restraining a shoplifter could lead to liability issues for
| the employer. For example, if the shoplifter injures the
| employee, there's a workplace injury that goes on the OSHA
| record, you have an employee who is out for some amount of
| time, it could increase insurance rates, and it could lead to
| the employee getting shot if the shoplifter were particularly
| violent.
|
| Additionally, if the shoplifter gets injured, they may sue
| the store for the injury they sustained.
|
| Most of the US does allow a citizens arrest to be performed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest
| rot13xor wrote:
| Eventually all stores are going to require a membership or
| deposit before letting you enter, like Costco.
| legitster wrote:
| I mean, you can just run into a Costco, grab something, and
| run out. No one can stop you.
|
| In Costco's favor, they don't have a lot of valuable things
| that you can just walk with that aren't just a cardboard
| voucher.
| ericcholis wrote:
| Slightly adjacent, fighting credit card disputes feels the same
| way. A company can prove without a doubt that it's a legitimate
| charge, only to have the case go to pre-arbitration; which in
| many cases is too costly to fight without certainty of winning.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > In a bad neighborhood it's not uncommon to lose over a
| million dollars a year.
|
| Then the store closes, then you get a food desert.
| zionic wrote:
| Followed by a smug article decrying the entire situation from
| some smug blogger.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I noticed my local Home Depot has done away with the security
| tag scanners at the front of the store, apparently in favor of
| a cluster of new cameras above all the exits. I wonder if we're
| headed for just having an AI watch everyone all the time in the
| store like the automatic-purchase grocery stores Amazon was
| setting up. Either that or they discovered that it was better
| for their bottom line to put real security around the power
| tools than bust people for stealing trivial things.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Ultimately high value things will get secured behind a clerk
| where you take a picture card of what you want to them.
|
| Stores will use cameras and AI to build a comprehensive case
| against someone or group and then notify the police. That
| will be enough for a warrant etc...
|
| Probably a startup or two in this space. I am sure home depot
| or CVS will invest in your series A.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| From a month ago, they're working on some new methods where
| power tools won't work until they're activated at the
| register.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28035458
| matrix wrote:
| Amazon's co-mingling of inventory facilitated large-scale theft
| by enabling stolen goods to be sold along-side legitimately
| sourced items. One has to wonder: at what point does Amazon's
| reluctance to improve supply-chain integrity venture into the
| territory of aiding and abetting crime?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| "Pawnshop" is the wrong word. A "Pawnshop" takes your goods for
| collateral and loans you money. A "fence" is somebody who helps
| thieves sell stolen goods.
|
| A pawnshop might be a front for fencing, but Amazon doesn't
| function as a pawnshop at all.
|
| [This comment was a reaction to the title of this post, which was
| fortunately changed.]
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I'm actually surprised no-one has set up an online pawnshop,
| Klarna meets eBay.
| 55555 wrote:
| Shipping costs make this probably a bad idea.
| Cerium wrote:
| You would have to do it as a social marketplace. You could
| post the items you want to pawn and local independent
| 'shops' could offer the item. Essentially, a reverse
| Craigslist with pawn dynamics backed by eBay style profiles
| and feedback.
| quakeguy wrote:
| That sounds like a good idea tbh.
| wil421 wrote:
| It would be way too easy to scam them. Pawnshops need to
| validate the quality of the item and determine if it's legit.
| Most Pawnshops will also sell on ebay.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| This is exactly what people said about eBay, no?
| wil421 wrote:
| How can I put this. The clientele who are using eBay is
| not quite the same as Pawnshops. I've seen someone get
| off a city bus with a massive TV heading into the
| pawnshop. I doubt the person owned the TV and the
| pawnshop was known as a fence. It had a walk up after
| hours window that was open late. Although it's much more
| common for homeless people to have phones these days than
| when I saw this occur. Junkies will find junk that's for
| sure.
| [deleted]
| rtkwe wrote:
| They're not great places to take stolen goods either, at least
| not generically, for anything with a serial number or distinct
| characteristics. Every item that get's pawned or sold in a
| store goes into a searchable database like LeadsOnline [0]. My
| family owns a number of pawn shops and we got a very low number
| of stolen items, the most common was someone stealing from
| family.
|
| [0] https://www.leadsonline.com/main/index.php
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I thought pawn shops were places you could sell random stuff
| and buy random stuff, never knew they loaned money!
| betwixthewires wrote:
| It's the oldest form of credit, the collateralized loan.
| astrea wrote:
| When you "pawn" an item, you get a short term loan with your
| item as collateral. If you don't pay back the loan they sell
| your item.
| wccrawford wrote:
| With interest, of course.
| ninetenfour wrote:
| 100%. Pawnshops are basically high interest collateral loan
| shops. This is saying that Amazon is a fencing operation. But
| then again this has been a major use for eBay and similar as
| well.
| chrisxcross wrote:
| https://archive.is/s4S8a
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| Mods, please correct headline.
|
| This hardly a story about Amazon. It's a story of how Northern
| California's choice not to prosecute theft has resulted in a
| massive increase in criminal activity.
|
| That CVS has to privately hire security in the face of $10
| million/year of goods being brazenly looted out of its stores has
| little to do with any Amazon policy and more to do with the
| policies adopted by local district attorneys.
| adolph wrote:
| Large numbers without a comparison are difficult to understand.
| Is 10M a large or small number in this context?
|
| CA has 1,180 CVS pharmacies. [0] Northern CA has 40% of CA pop.
| [1] Assuming regular distribution of CVSes in CA, there are 472
| in Northern CA. 10M is 21k/store. Is that a lot? Not certain.
|
| 0. https://www.scrapehero.com/largest-pharmacies-in-the-us/
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_California
| busyant wrote:
| There's reasonable evidence that this is how the Sicilian Mafia
| started: lack of effective state enforcement of laws and
| property rights... Creating a situation where private security
| forces arise, offering protection from gangs of thieves and
| perhaps protection from the security force itself. Obviously,
| this is not what cvs is doing, but lack of effective law
| enforcement can lead to unusual and unexpected "solutions."
| mint2 wrote:
| How much is it DAs vs cops just not wanting to do their job to
| prove what they said would happen is true?
|
| Cops don't always arrest based on the law, but what they feel
| like doing. See Oregon where they decided not to police proud
| boy protests and tend to arrest anti-white supremacist type
| protestors much more.
|
| How much is it the cops found they can prove their own point?
| If I make a bet that I'll get last in a race, I'll run slower.
| If one claims some policy will slow them down and They don't
| actually have an incentive to win, Then there's a chance
| they'll slow down to be right so people will do what They say
| in the future.
|
| What incentive do cops have to arrest or charge theft when cops
| keep saying it's CA laws that are causing thefts to rise? They
| can make themselves seem right by not arresting people.
| google234123 wrote:
| The DAs literally don't prosecute people. It's not the cops.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| My leo friends have said its morally wrong to arrest someone
| for something they won't be prosecuted for.
| dls2016 wrote:
| Wake me when wage theft is prosecuted anywhere near as
| seriously as shoplifting. Both have been estimated to cost the
| economy around $40 billion per year in the US. (Simply search
| "shoplifting cost in us" or "wage theft cost in us" and find
| your favorite estimate. They're surprisingly close.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Wake me when wage theft is prosecuted anywhere near as
| seriously as shoplifting_
|
| Given the article is about the effects of not prosecuting
| shoplifting, time to wake up?
| axus wrote:
| I wonder if the savings to society for police/court time is
| worth the increased cost of goods from shops paying for their
| own security? Will this become another barrier to entry for
| small businesses?
| [deleted]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Can you link to some sources on this?
|
| edit: I'd seen this mentioned recently, but hadn't realised it
| was a long running culture war thing so it had already been
| discredited by research years ago:
|
| https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
| nitrogen wrote:
| That's 2018. Wr're here in 2021 watching videos of stores
| being actively raided.
| noasaservice wrote:
| I've worked in retail before (walmart) as a 3rd shift
| stocker, ages ago.
|
| Never once would I even consider saying anything to a
| suspected thief. In fact, I walked away from at least 2
| times where I knew people were destroying the spider-alarms
| on electronics in the pets aisle. It is not worth my
| personal safety in saying anything, especially for someone
| making $9/hr.
|
| Maybe that's the wrong approach. But it's not my stuff, its
| not my role I was hired in as, and not worth any personal
| injury I might receive. I will intentionally give a blind
| eye to petty or professional retail theft. Let security
| deal with it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Have you got any videos of statistical trends or other
| evidence that what you believe is actually true? Or are we
| just working from viral anecdata?
| imgabe wrote:
| Walgreens and Target and other retailers are shutting
| down stores and changing the hours so they close earlier.
| Presumably they're not doing that because they watched a
| viral video.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > According to federal data, adults with substance-abuse
| disorders make up just 2.6 percent of the total
| population but 72 percent of all jail inmates sentenced
| for property crimes. Addicts are 29 times more likely to
| commit property crimes than the average American.
| Furthermore, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics found,
| "[39 percent of jail inmates] held for property offenses
| said they committed the crime for money for drugs"--the
| most common single motivation for crime throughout the
| justice system.
|
| In other news, the Sacklers got away with making Billions
| from creatimg addicts.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The clickbait/bias just gets more and more brazen.
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| 100% this.
| [deleted]
| gryz wrote:
| Could a setup like with Amazon Go stores help here? Let in only
| customers with a verified account.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Maybe. That would be the last place I shop, though.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The shoplifter gangs will just jump over the turnstiles. I
| imagine any store impervious to this attack wouldn't meet fire
| safety requirements.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's an irony to the top comment on an article about organized
| shoplifting being a link to archive.is to get around the paywall.
| Especially given all the "tough on crime" and "rule of law" talk
| in the comments.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Reading the article doesn't make it disappear from the website.
| If I went to a bookstore, read one of their books in the store,
| then put it back on the shelf and left without buying anything,
| would you consider that to be shoplifting too?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| No, obviously not. But if you scanned the book, put it on
| archive.is and invited all the visitors to Hacker News to
| read it I think that might be copyright infringement. IANAL
| so setting the precise legality aside, in terms of economic
| harm (which many here have brought up regarding shoplifting),
| how is this different?
| josephcsible wrote:
| If I just told archive.is the title of a book, and they
| went to get it and scanned it in and put it on their
| website, _they_ might be guilty of copyright infringement,
| but I don 't think _I_ would be.
| aurizon wrote:
| Back in the old days, you asked for items the clerk got them and
| you paid. There was too much theft in the old days for open
| shelves. Now we leave it open and trust - which has now been
| massively abused has expanded to fill that void. The clerks were
| labor intensive, but the similar robots to used in Amazon
| warehouses could serve people at a screen, the order assembled,
| paid and then handed to the client - much like online order and
| deliver - but in person. These huge costs will force this. Small
| stores will go to the old one at a time model service - most do
| this with cigarettes and liquor. It is a fine tuning of the
| retail chain that I feel will inexorable be forced upon us.
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