We’ve all seen viral videos of brazen shoplifters or read new stories on reports of increasing shoplifting in retail stores. Last week a Giant Food supermarket in Washington D.C. announced that, in an effort to remain open, it is removing all brand name health and beauty products from store shelves and will check receipts of customers leaving the store, drastic steps to combat the shoplifting that the company said is causing the store to become unprofitable. It is the last remaining grocery store in that area of Washington, D.C. and its closing would severely limit the access to fresh food to people living there.
Retail shoplifting has been a frequent topic in the news and discussion on social media. It inspires passionate discourse from both sides on whether the trend is real. Those on one side point to the viral videos, store closings, and measures stores take to combat theft as evidence of the trend, while the other side cite official police statistics and the lack of details from corporations as evidence that the problem is overblown. As someone who both works at a store and follows this topic in the news, I have a lot of opinions on this issue and some insight that might clear up some misinformation that I often see.
Q: What makes you an authority on this topic? Why should we listen to you?
A: I’ve worked in retail for over two decades, from being a part-time clerk to an assistant store manager for a supermarket chain in New England (the parent company I work for also owns Giant). I’ve worked in multiple stores in many different types of neighborhoods.
Q: So is retail shoplifting a real problem or imagined?
A: This is a problem that has definitely gotten worse in the last half decade. There has been an increase in the number of people stealing and also the brazenness of some who know they can’t be stopped. The main causes are the ability to sell stolen merchandise online, certain jurisdictions declining to prosecute most potential cases, and some companies changing their policies on stopping shoplifters. The viral story of the Lululemon employees who were fired for trying to stop some shoplifters is the most known example but many stores now have a policy of not stopping shoplifters at all or having a strict multistep protocol that employees must follow before they do. Stores do this for the safety of employees and to limit legal liability if something goes wrong during a stop. Whether you think this the correct decision or not by stores, it means that shoplifters know that in some stores (the frequent shoplifters know exactly which stores those are), they can walk in, fill up their bags or a shopping carriage with product, and walk out without anyone stopping them.
San Francisco has been making headlines in recent years for their shoplifting problems, but they are not the only area in the country with such problems. I live in the Boston area and after the city’s district attorney decided not to prosecute shoplifters in 2019, shoplifting has skyrocketed and been just as much of a problem as in San Francisco, even though it has so far avoid national headlines.
Of course if you’re skeptical that this is happening I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. I also acknowledge that while viral videos are great content, they’re anecdotes, not data, and store closings often have multiple factors, not all of which are related to shoplifting. The evidence I would cite are the public steps some stores have taken that would not make sense at all if the shoplifting problem isn’t real. It’s very common for stores to have security devices on high-priced items, but now stores are locking up cheaper items like Spam. In high theft areas, stores are putting entire aisles or almost the whole store under lock and key. This is not good for business. Actual customers hate it and go elsewhere if they have a choice, and you need more employees to fetch products every time a customer needs something. The Giant store not carrying any private brand products is a bit extreme but many stores have stopped carrying high theft items in certain locations. Other steps stores have taken include limiting store hours, closing certain entrances and exits, and hiring more security.
One other thing that I sometimes suggest on Twitter: go to a store in your area and talk to the employees. I suggest a grocery store or convenience store. I’m not saying you have to take the word of a company’s CEO or spokesman. Talk to the cashier, the workers you see stocking the shelves, or find a manager. I’d bet if you ask them they’ll tell you shoplifting is a big problem, and one that’s increased in recent years, and if they’re anything like the people I work with, they’ll be more than happy to tell you the details and the incidents they’re witnessed personally.
Q: Isn’t a lot of theft in grocery stores just poor people stealing food to feed their family?
A: No, nor is it teenagers stealing candy or makeup after they get out of school. By far the items that get stolen most often from grocery stores are those with resale value: various high priced health and beauty care items, batteries, and Tide laundry detergent. Those are the items you’d often see people selling on the streets in poor neighborhoods, and in recent years on websites like Facebook and eBay.
Q: You mentioned stores hiring security. Wouldn’t that stop shoplifters?
A: An open secret that all frequent shoplifters already know is that security doesn’t actually do anything. The same issues with safety and liability apply to security guards. If a store has a policy where employees can’t stop shoplifters, that’s probably also going to apply to security guards. Now if a store hires a police detail, that’s different, but they are much more costly. At $60 an hour that’s over $250,000 a year. Unless you’re a big box store your annual profit is unlikely to come close to that number.
Q: Isn’t the theft cover by insurance anyway?
A: Theft at retail stores is not insured. In some cases, robbery (i.e. someone comes in with a gun and takes money from the cash registers) is insured, but not regular theft. This is in my opinion the biggest myth about retail shoplifting, that the losses are covered by insurance. When an item is stolen it is pure shrink. And if you think about it it wouldn’t make sense anyway. For something that’s a regular occurrence, the insurance premiums would just be what you’re losing in theft every month; otherwise the insurance company would quickly go out of business.
Q: Didn’t Walgreens admit they were lying about shoplifting being a problem?
A: It was one person on an earnings call trying to downplay how much money they were losing from shoplifting. I would expect them to try to put a positive spin on things.
Q: What about official government statistics that says shoplifting is down?
A: Those numbers are from police reports. All usual caveats about the accuracy of police reports apply. In recent years police have been much more reluctant to file reports because they know it won’t be prosecuted, and in response stores are much less likely to call the police because they know nothing would happen.
Q: If the problem is as bad as you’re saying why aren’t more stores closing?
A: My knowledge is in grocery stores. Grocery stores are a highly competitive field of business well-known to have a small profit margin, typically around 1-3%. But that’s just the industry average and there’s some variance in individual stores. This also means some stores don’t make any money at all and in fact are losing money every month. So why don’t these stores close if they’re not making money? There’s value in having market share and being known as a store that’s everywhere. Maybe you’re hoping a competitor who’s also losing money close their store nearby before you do. If you decide to close a store, it’s a lot of bad publicity, especially if you’re the last store in the area. And often it’s because you’re in the middle of a multi-year lease you can’t get out of. Grocery stores often have leases that last a decade or more, and economic conditions, both nationally and locally, can be much different from when you signed the lease.
(Other retail stores have higher profit margins and typically shorter leases but I don’t know much about them so I won’t speculate.)
Q: What about wage theft?
Wage theft is bad! It also doesn’t have anything to do with shoplifting. One thing being bad has little to do with whether another unrelated thing is bad. Yet wage theft is often brought up whenever people talk about shoplifting, possibly because some think that if corporations are bad for stealing wages from employees, then it is morally right for others to steal from them.
If you’re someone who thinks it’s right and good to steal from corporations, I’m definitely not the person who’s going to convince you otherwise. But I hope I have at least made the case that retail shoplifting is a real growing problem that stores are concerned about and not just something made up.
honestly, my main feeling is frustration. What this is going to do is make the lives of ordinary honest people (like me) harder. If I have to hunt for a Walgreen’s clerk (say) in order to get some item I want or need, and Walgreens, like every store now, is understaffed (for whatever reason) and I can’t find a clerk, either I will do without the product or will mail order it from a place.
I would not shoplift as (a) I was taught it was wrong and (b) I suspect I’d get caught if I tried it.
Granted this is less than ideal if the thing you need is Imodium or similar where waiting a week might….mean you don’t need it any more. But it does suggest maybe brick and mortar will just continue to spiral away. I KNOW I would be less prone to want to shop at a place that essentially treated me as a criminal (locking away things so I have to ask, having lots of tags on stuff, making me stop at the door and surrender my receipt to allow my bags to be searched.) It bothers me to feel like it’s assumed I’m a would-be criminal. I can’t be the only one.Report
What’s the hit to stores profits and how does it compare to other hits?
That’s the tell . . . .Report
Very informative piece! Thanks for writing it.
I would add there’s another perverse incentive in play – in lieu of buying anything that’s locked up and I’d need to ask for, I’ll buy it online instead. I’m just not interested in waiting around for the clerk to show up and the whole rigamarole. It takes forever and for busy people, introverts, or anyone buying something personal, is stressful.
(And before people chime in with their claims that they’ve never experienced long wait times, “fever dreams”, hurr de durr, save your breath. My husband had to buy a power tool the other day, and we waited for 20 minutes to finally get it, and that was only because I was pushy and grabbed a clerk on their way to do something else. Many other people were left waiting even longer than us. This is definitely a thing that people are experiencing.)
There’s a vicious cycle, if stores are locking merch up due to theft, and this drives customers to increasingly shop online, but much of the stuff sold online is stolen, causing retailers to lock up more products – yeah. It’s a race to the bottom and the only ones winning are the thieves.Report
Or retail chains who are trying to lower fixed real estate and personnel costs to boost profits.Report
That kind of conspiracy thinking is right wing quality Philip. If retail chains wanted to lower fixed real estate and personnel costs to boost profits they could simply… close stores. There’d be no need for locking up merch or spinning some story about it. They could simply say it’s better for customers to deliver it online and call it a day. There’s no authority who’s permission they need to close brick and mortal locations. Saying “it’s good for the bottom line” is more than good enough.Report
Its not conspiratorial at all, not even anything nefarious.
It is probably cheaper in the long run to lock up the merchandise, switch to self-checkout and cut staff.
And while online sales have caused their brick and mortar locations to close, retailers are still selling just as much stuff. Its not like people are not buying shampoor or snacks.Report
It’s conspiratorial to think that chains are hyping shoplifting as a reason to close stores or to lock up merch. The former, they can do for any reason at all without explanation to anyone. The latter is unambiguously more costly, work intensive and trouble for the chains than doing nothing -unless- the shoplifting is a significant concern. They’re not doing it as some kind of “own the libz” scheme nor as some kind of “make more moneyz” schemes because the actions involved cost more than doing nothing -unless- the shop lifting problem is real and pervasive.Report
Assuming a clever plot might be conspiratorial, but we do know for a fact that they often use “Shrinkage” synonymously with theft, and that they have on a couple occasions flat out lied about theft as a cover story for low sales in explaining store closures.
The idea that companies lie to hide embarrassing actions isn’t so radical a thought.Report
No, I agree that it is likely that near everything that costs companies inventory gets blamed on shoplifting, but the idea they’d impose genuinely costly measures on themselves, like locking up their merch, to advance such a narrative is unambiguously conspiratorial.Report
Thank you! It always amuses me when I go to stores like Target and Walmart and the wait time would be like 10-20 minutes and everyone seems to accept it, whereas when I’m working customers would complain to me if the wait time is more than 2-3 minutes.Report
Part o the stress on retail stores is that online shopping is just so much easier to the point where it is faster and easier to order groceries online from a store half a mile away and have them delivered, than to drive there and shop in person.
I am now realizing this applies to theft as well.
If, say, in 1985 you went into a store and stole a bunch of shampoo and snack chips, what would you do with it? its not lik you could easily fence it in the brick and mortar world.
But the same internet that makes it easy to buy legitimate stuff online, makes it easy to buy stolen stuff online.Report
“If, say, in 1985 you went into a store and stole a bunch of shampoo and snack chips, what would you do with it? its not lik you could easily fence it in the brick and mortar world.”
Here’s a useful book to read on the subject of fencing stolen goods in the 1970s-1980s. (summary: it was pretty easy actually)
It dropped off sharply after the introduction of big-box retail, which received supply from central warehouses monitored by computerized tracking, and could tell exactly where everything went (and didn’t allow unauthorized sourcing). It picked back up when Amazon started doing third-party selling, and went back down when Amazon increased the charges for third-party sellers (which made it unprofitable to sell things like cosmetics and toiletries except at professional levels.)Report
Shoplifting is obviously getting worse. The balance between security of goods and convenience to the customer is delicate. A grocery store is necessarily more convenient and less secure than a jewelry store. And there seems to be a rise in organized shoplifting for resale rather than simply stealing stuff.
All of these are real problems. Is there a policy solution to it? You can’t regularly divert more than a few cops from what they do now to more-or-less random wandering into not-so-randomly selected stores. Maybe occasional focused and intense efforts will work for a while, but they aren’t sustainable. Investigations into organized shoplifting rings in hopes of busting Fagin rather than the Dodger, are difficult and resource-heavy. And in every state, the usual shoplifting haul exposes the miscreant to petty larceny charges, usually misdemeanors, and that is as it should be. Is that the appropriate focus for a busy prosecutor’s office? Maybe an occasional “shoplifting week” emphasizing prosecutions will be more effective than Trump’s “infrastructure week,” but that’s not sustainable either.Report
There is frequently outrage when it is discoverd that stores discourageemployees from chasing after and apprehending thieves, but it only makes sense.
Do we really want people risking injury or death over a bag of Doritos, or even a case of Doritos?
Shoplifting is called “Shrinkage”, which is just the diffference between how much merchandise is bought, versus how much is sold.
Shrinkage includes loss due to incidental damage like where an employee drops a sixpack of soda and forgets to write it down, or where an employee steals the sixpack, or where there is just a clerical error and somehow a sale isn’t recorded or the inventory numbers are wrong.
What a lot of commentary on shoplifting misses is that oftentimes stores will list “Shrinage” as shoiplifting. Maybe not out of malice, but its just easier. But the other sources of shrinkage can easily be equal to, or even exceed, shoplifting.
Because really, how does a store know that 10 bags of chips were stolen, as opposed to damage, employee theft, or clerical error?
And at the end of the day, it is also true that there is an acceptable level of shrinkage, just as there is in every industry an acceptable level of damage or error.Report
That’s probably true, but the proliferation of locked-up goodies, and the consequent expense and inconvenience of locking things up and having to put the customers to the trouble of getting staff to unlock them, likely does reflect an increase in shoplifting-related shrinkage. So what do we do about it — other than pointing to it as evidence of civilizational decline?Report
I don’t really know what to do about it. With every new technology, theives find new ways to adapt.
It could be that retail stores will adopt some sort of double entry system and instead of having three cashiers and one security guard, they have one well paid securirty guard and self-scanners with one greeter.
Or…merge the self checkout with a Robocop cashier/ security guard, who scans your items and gives you 5 seconds to comply if you run out.Report
Well, you could legalize this or just actively not prosecute it. After all, that’s what a lot of DAs have indicated they will do for “petty crimes’. State you wont prosecute the store owners who beat the crap out of shoplifters. I can assure you that the incidents of it will either go down or the criminals will bring guns. Then it’s a defense of life.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/02/7-eleven-workers-beat-cali-thief-for-stealing-shelves-of-tobacco/Report
It seems a significant element of the shop lifting is due to reselling. How you’d make the online companies facilitating the reselling of these goods liable would be an interesting exercise. But considering they work on a national or trans national scale whereas the thefts are local there’d be a definite venue challenge.Report
You mean like Amazon?Report
Possibly, and eBay and everything else too.Report
Believe it or not, I think that the recent reseller law might actually help with this. The fact that you need a 1099-K now was, I thought, merely going to help with stuff like PS5s and Xboxen and whathaveyou.
If you steal it locally, you’re going to have to sell it locally.
Craigslist, maybe. Hey, that got me wondering… could you get some Arm & Hammer pods there? You could! $25 for 3 packs is a decent price. Normally you’d pay $30 for that.Report
Well done Jay, that’s really interesting. Unfortunately I’d say they’d have to get the local stuff too. Craigslist and similar level stuff would be perfectly adequate for thieves.Report
What is the relationship between shoplifting stats and self-checkout proliferation?
I have accidentally “shoplifted” some gallon jugs of water because I put them in the bottom part of the cart and forget they were there until I got out to my car. And I’m sure other folks are happy to “forget” things in their cart while others may see a complete lack of store employees towards the front end and take it as an invitation to steal. None of that is right to do but all of it seems like a baked-in cost to stores adopting self-checkout, which they do to cut down on labor costs. So while no one should steal, purposefully or otherwise, let’s not pretend like theft is the only part of this equation. Stores making it easier for folks to steal because it saves them money to do so then acting shocked… SHOCKED!… that theft has gone up are being a little disingenuous.
While it wouldn’t solve the problem, I’m confident that shifting away from self-checkout would help improve the problem. So why aren’t schools doing that? That seems a pretty big tell.Report
I don’t think it matters. Self-check out will proliferate because they are cheaper then actual people. And thus “better” for maintaining corporate profits.Report
That’s my point. They want the benefits of it but none of the costs.Report
All the self checkout lanes in my store have a max quantity of items of something like 20 items. There’s @ 12 self checkout terminals and 90% of the time I go into the store they are vacant. This includes all the folks shopping for Doordash, etc.
There are also 1-2 employees watching these terminals….Report
self-checks down here – whether Walmart, or Lowes or Winn Dixie or even Best Buy – don’t have signs posted with limits.Report
We’re starting to see that as well over the last maybe six months.. One grocery store near me closed its second entrance/exit at the same time it implemented a 12-items-or-less policy. I’ve seen a few extra security guards at the grocery store too.
In the past 5 years, the 24-hour pharmacies have disappeared, or rather the stores are still open all night but the pharmacy counters now have fixed hours. They still call themselves “24-hour pharmacies” though.Report
My store used to have 12 self-check stations, two people monitoring six each. Starting at some point last year the state mandated that large chain groceries couldn’t use plastic film bags — only paper (ten cent charge each) or bring-your-own reusable. Shortly before that went into effect they added six more self-check stations. I asked the manager about it and he told me the chain’s experience in other places that had done the same thing was people got a lot pickier about packing and many switched to self check. The third set of six only gets used during predictably busy hours, but the other 12 are quite busy most of the day. Much busier than they were before the bag change.
Oh, and the ten-cent paper bags are significantly larger in volume and made of sturdier paper than the free ones were.Report
My store implemented a similar policy due to state or county law. I did the math. For the cost of buying 2 or 3 plastic reusable bags, I could pay for paper bags for between 5-7 years before buying the reusable plastic bags broke even.
I’m not that picky in bag packing, but I do find the checkers seem to not want to fill the paper bags up completely. Usually there is a line when I go to the store so I end up helping bag just to not take so long checking out. This is actually speedier then self checkout as I don’t have to enter all the vegetable numbers manually. Most of the checks have those products memorized.Report
I TRY to use staffed checkouts when I have to use the wal mart (I try to avoid it, because the walmart here is an aesthetically awful experience). This is because if you self-check out you get inspected even harder at the door – show your receipt, let them rifle through your bags. If you went through a staffed checkout, they usually do little more than glance at the receipt.
Of course, MOST times they have one staffed checkout open. Though yesterday? There were literally fifteen people stacked up at the entrance of the bank of self-checkouts, so I went and waited for one of the staffed ones. Probably got through faster.
But yes, it rankles to be treated as a potential criminal which is why I shop at the small regional chain here in town IF they have what I need (they don’t, a lot of the time, which is why I have to go to wal-mart some times).
I wish I lived somewhere with more grocery choices….And I’m too far away from the other options to do Instacart or similar. (1/2 hour each way)Report
When self-checkout first started, I remember they would randomly spot check. They’d grab random items from your bags and scan them to make sure they pinged on the receipt. But that was time consuming and, more importantly to them, labor intensive.
I have lots of thoughts on this sort of automation in general but, as it pertains to shoplifting, it seems rather obvious to me that using more self-checkout is going to increase theft and that pushing for the former while griping about the latter just means they want someone else to absorb the costs of their profit seeking.Report
oh yes I am sure the big box stores want to load the cost (and effort) onto the customers; I’ve joked the future is us being sent into a warehouse with a headlamp and a box cutter and one of those scanning guns, and told to find our own damn groceriesReport
“DO ALL THE WORK BUT DO IT PERFECTLY OR WE’LL ACT LIKE VICTIMS!”Report
This was one of the things I didn’t get to as the piece was already running long. Many stores started using self-checkout years ago because they thought it would save them money, recognizing that increased theft (or mere forgetfulness) would be part of the cost. Some stores have decided years later that it’s not worth it and have rolled the self-checkouts back. Others, like Walmart is solving this theft problem with more technology. If you use a Walmart self-checkout you’ll notice that they now show you a live video of you scanning the items. The video does more than let you know they’re watching. The system is now sophisticated enough to know when you bag an expensive item after putting in the code for bananas, or if you didn’t scan the bar code at all either by accident or on purpose. In the future I expect the technology to get even better in making sure that if you go through self-checkout you end up paying for everything that’s in your basket or cart.Report
To me, that is the right way to go about it. They want the benefits of the technology but they have to account for the costs. Instead they throw up their hands and shout, “PEOPLE ARE MONSTERS! THEY WANT SOMETHING FOR FREE!” with absolutely zero sense of irony.
I’ve noticed the stores that have added the cameras (Target seems to have always had them… Whole Foods has since added them) and have no issue with that. I have not seen any stores that have gone backwards on self-checkout but I imagine that may be specific to particular stores and the gains/losses they’re experiencing.Report
my broke-ass wal-mart doesn’t have the cameras, so we come in for “greeter inspection” when we leave and I hate it. As I said, it makes me want to shop there less despite the mom and pop grocery here being more expensive and having much more limited stock.
I would mind the cameras less. (The local Lowe’s does have them, did not realize that’s what they were for)Report
They’re probably rolling it out several stores at a time so your Walmart will eventually have them. It takes time to install and then train all the employees in how to use the new system.Report
Back in the day when I worked in restaurants they had a similar ‘do not try to stop theft/crime’ policy and IIRC one of the places I worked had us do a training on it every year. The message was basically nothing in here is worth your life, and I think they meant it sincerely, even as I am sure they had also done the math and concluded nothing in there was worth the liability/lawsuits.
Anyway I can understand why businesses are upset about it. Even the perception of a crime problem can be death to storefronts.Report
I find myself vaguely angered when I hear about serial shoplifting. Like, I’m willing to forgive the Jean Valjeans out there but the people stealing stuff to resell it makes me think “something ought to be done about this”.
From there, I extrapolate out and wonder how unique I am in this.
Maybe only conservative types care.
If so, the “why do you care? What about different topics?” arguments won’t move anything come election time.
If swings care, though, I imagine that the “why do you care? What about different topics?” arguments will communicate being out of touch more than it communicates humility and deep empathy with real issues.Report
Yes moral grandstanding about crime is a good stance, especiallly if your party standard bearer isn’t behind bars.Report
I am unsure as to how much “Trump stole classified documents” might end up being a great counter-argument to people complaining about quality-of-life crimes.Report
Yes, grandstanding about crime is a good stance, if there weren’t hundreds of videos online of your tribe beating cops and rioting at the Capitol.Report
Yeah, I imagine footage of violence or crime could really blow back against any party who tried to explain it away.
If the topic were violence or crime.Report
Are you open to the possibility that even people who want more secure streets see the Democrats as still the better choice?Report
On a National level? I can see the argument.
Locally? Well, I’d probably look for news articles talking about crime and whether people find that they’re happy with how it’s being handled at a local level.
(And, of course, I’d like quotations from local politicians. If they start saying stuff like “WE NEED MORE COPS!” when, a couple of years ago, they were saying “WE NEED TO DEFUND THE POLICE!”, I’d also see that as notable. Let’s face it, if the issue is “crime”, local Democrats calling for more police funding would probably put people at ease, at a local level.)Report
Mayor Karen Bass is the answer to your query.Report
I admit that I was thinking of Shivanthi Sathanandan.
But if even the Progressive mayor of LA is doing a 180 on “Defund” and calling for a larger police budget and additional crime task forces, I’d say that the Democrats might be able to do a good job of communicating that they’re the party that is “Tough On Crime”.
They probably need to get the DA on board, of course.Report
Please list the prosecutorial priorities of a reasonably well-run DA’s office and tell us where petty larceny fits in.Report
Fair enough.
I imagine that funding the police without funding the DA’s office will lead us right back to exactly where we are right now.
Maybe, by that time, it’ll be a stable equilibrium.Report
Way to not answer a direct question Jay.Report
I imagine that petty larceny is fairly low on most DA’s agendas.
Which means that the police might arrest more shoplifters… but they won’t get prosecuted.
The arrests probably won’t increase the “price” of shoplifting too much. Not enough to reduce it significantly.
And that will lead us right back to exactly where we are right now.
Maybe, by that time, it’ll be a stable equilibrium.Report
Way not to answer a direct question Jay.
Or did someone already say that?
And since we don’t post cops in stores, and probably shouldn’t on any regular basis, how do we get more arrests?Report
If the request was not “please say how high petty larceny is on most DA’s agendas”, I’m going to need to need the question restated.
Because I imagine that petty larceny is fairly low on most DA’s agendas.
As for “how do we get more arrests”? Well, if the answer is “WE WON’T!”, then I imagine we’ll be pretty much exactly where we are right now.
Maybe it’ll be a stable equilibrium by then.Report
1. Here’s the question:
Please list the prosecutorial priorities of a reasonably well-run DA’s office and tell us where petty larceny fits in.
You may have overlooked “reasonably well-run.”
2. The second question called for YOUR answer, not the implication of what some answer you don’t give might be. What is it?Report
Oh, I need to provide a list. I’ll use Colorado Springs. I imagine it’ll be easy to swap out stuff that is local to me to stuff that is local to you.
Okay. Off the top of my head:
1. Murder, Negligent Homicide, other stuff that creates a body that needs to be investigated
2. “Hate Crimes”
3. Particularly lurid crimes (think stuff that, if videoed, would go viral)
4. Burglary, auto theft, stuff above a particular dollar amount
5. DUI
6. Meth
7. Petty Larceny
Crimes in the area of The Broadmoor, around Colorado College/Old North End, or around Briargate get higher priority than crimes in, say, Knob Hill. So petty larceny in the Safeway up around The Broadmoor will get addressed. Petty larceny around Knob Hill will get cops that show up 3 hours after you call and write down a report and shrug.
“How do we get more arrests?”
Without an immediate police presence? We’d need seriously good cameras and some light detective work to get arrests. Without that, you won’t get arrests.
There are parts of town that will have, more or less, an immediate police presence. There will be other parts of town that won’t.
I imagine that, in the parts of the country that are most complaining about this, there is enough stuff to keep the DA occupied that petty larceny will be on the bottom half of the DA’s list.
If that’s true, well… we’ll be pretty much exactly where we are now.
Maybe it’ll be a stable equilibrium by then.Report
To translate: a well-run DA’s office will give low priority to petty larceny and that’s OK, or at least inevitable.Report
So would you say that the crime task force that Mayor Karen Bass is setting up would need to get the DA on board if significant movement is to be made on petty larceny?Report
I wouldn’t say because I don’t know much about it. A hard concept for high-volume hot take manufacturers to grasp but there it is.Report
Well, given that a well-run DA’s office will give low priority to petty larceny, I think that getting petty larsons behind bars will require getting the DA on board.Report
The mayoral race in LA saw the moderate Republican Rick Caruso try very hard to position himself as the LawnOrder candidate but it failed.
It also saw the election of new Councilperson Eunisses Hernandez who was outspoken in using the the actual word “Defund”.
On the other hand, I think you are the one who has repeatedly pointed out that black and minority voters are actually hawkish on police even as they criticize them.
Bottom line, I don’t think LawnOrder is a weakness for progressives.Report
Well, I’m not sure how much swing there is in LA.
In 2020, for example, LA went something like 64 Biden, 32 Trump, 4 Other.
So if the argument is “California won’t change!”, I imagine it won’t. That is certainly true.Report
I imagine if I were a suburban mom in a swing district whose kids were locked down because of school shootings and I saw a politician telling me that there is simply nothing that could be done so I should probably get my kids a bulletproof backpack, it might be an important consideration in my vote.Report
Or if the local police barricaded themselves outside of the school and arrested people who wanted to go in and face the gunman themselves!
“Sorry! The police have a union!”, I imagine the Republican saying. “There’s nothing that could be done.”
“Except Defund them”, he could laugh.Report
That assumes that body armour is allowed to be sold to civilians in your state. In mine, it is NOT. I thought about buying it when the DC sniper was on the loose. Yah, illegal.Report
“Maybe only conservative types care.”
Cite?Report
I imagine that progressives would, instead, give speeches about children going hungry.
“If you see someone shoplifting food, *NO YOU DIDN’T*.”
What about wage theft?Report
Your imagination is not a citation but okay.Report
If it’s true that swing voters and even some liberal voters care very much about law and order, I imagine that the “why do you care? What about different topics?” arguments will communicate being out of touch more than it communicates humility and deep empathy with real issues.Report
“Your imagination is not a citation but okay.”
welp
maybe you could provide some counterexamples? after all, right now you’re just imagining that there are plenty of liberals who Definitely Do Care About Shoplifting And Are Concerned That It’s Happening.Report
We’ve all been inconvenienced by shoplifting, whatever our politics. It’s certainly annoying having to wait for someone to unlock the sugar-free candy I’m allowed to eat, while the regular stuff that kills me remains on open shelves. No one likes shoplifting. But if you’re looking for people who post videos of private security guards not doing their jobs or rant about civilizational decline, while having no practical proposals for dealing with what is, in the general scheme of things, far less important than homicide, assault, rape, robbery, and burglary, you’ll have to look on your side of the fence.
That said, back when I read more law and economics literature than I do now, I recall studies purporting to show that the most cost-effective way to deal with petty crime (and almost all shoplifting is a misdemeanor) is to forget trying a consistent pattern of enforcement, and instead make sporadic, almost random, bursts of intense enforcement activity for short periods of time followed by the harshest allowable punishments. Shoplifting Week! (This approach would be unacceptable for major crimes like homicide for reasons that should be obvious.) I’ve never really bought into the theory, but it’s worth a try, and, unlike a persistent program of anti-shoplifting policing and prosecuting, which would be an ass-backward use of police and prosecutorial resources, actually doable.
If you care about what’s doable, that is.Report
I’m not THAT conservative, but I would object to the sort of “smash and grab” stuff that makes the news, mainly because it feels like it puts other shoppers at risk. I mean, a dude who just snatched $400 of gold chains out of a case isn’t probably going to flinch at knocking me down to get out of the store in a hurry. And all the ordinary folks just trying to make it day to day find their lives a little more difficult….
I hate the loss-of-agency that doing all curbside pickup makes me feel (I felt that hard during the pandemic) but if I felt actively unsafe going into a store, I guess I’d do it.Report
I know that if there were a DA election and one of the commercials talked about compassion and the other commercial talked about locking people up and throwing away the key, my immediate assumption would be that the “compassion” commercial was a sneaky attack ad run by the opposing campaign.Report
Isn’t “Smash & Grab” a bit like spree shooters?
That is, things which are shocking but rare, and already massively illegal.
Its not like the cops are unable to prosecute theft rings, and assuming it is grand theft, no DA has made a policy of not prosecuting them.
But because they are shocking, there is a powerful need for government to do something about it.Report
I don’t know how uncommon they are but I think they get reported on a lot because it is a pretty sensationalistic story. Long before COVID, I had a case where a client sold high-end pocket books at a fancy schmancy department store. She thought she was terminated because of changing demographics in the area not being aligned with her national origin. It turns out she was terminated because she failed to file company protocol and showed way to many fancy handbags at once to a potential client and it was part of a dash and grab operation when she got distracted by another person who was in on the whole thing.Report
“Isn’t “Smash & Grab” a bit like spree shooters?
That is, things which are shocking but rare, and already massively illegal.”
so you’re arguing that we don’t need to worry so much about spree shooters because they’re very rare and already illegal?Report
On the contrary, both are urgent problems needing attention.
Precisely for the reason we are all talking about, that although rare, they shake people’s faith in civil order.
And the responses- ” You should arm yourself/ Lock up your goods” ignore the problem.Report
“On the contrary, both are urgent problems needing attention.”
If they are, as you claim, “shockingly rare and already illegal” then are they really urgent?Report
Yes, for the reasons explained clearly by Lee Esq and my previous comment.Report
A lot of the increase in both actual shoplifting _and_ pretend ‘shoplifting’, (aka, shrinkage in other ways that stores refuse to distinguish), is pretty directly traceable back to unwillingness of stores to actually staff themselves. It is so much easier to shoplift when you have automated checkouts and _maybe_ one person watching over them, and also easier to accidentally not pay for something, which is indistinguishable from shoplifting.
Likewise, how much more produce get damaged and rendered unsalable due to lack of correctly trained staff? And despite North claiming it’s a conspiracy theory, stores have _every reason_ to summarize ‘We did not have people to unload the truck so the food spoiled’ or ‘the forklift operator accidentally dropped a pallet of TVs’ as ‘shrinkage’ and leave the implication it was criminals…that plays better to stockholders and sympathetic media.
Also…it’s rather obvious easier for unsupervised _employees_ to steal than it is in a business full of other employees, and there’s a lot less incentive not to do it if someone is underpaid.
A lot of the problem here is stores thinking they can operate with almost no employees, and also treat their employees like crap, and it turns out that employees are sorta important at managing the product, so you need them and need to treat them well.
In fact, I’m rather suspecting that’s the explanation for most of the increase in shoplifting, such that there is.Report
Point of order: I am asserted upthread that it’s conspiracy thinking to presume that store closures or physically locking up store inventory and requiring employee help to access it is a corporate scheme instead of a response to shoplifting.
I agreed with Chip that it’s likely that the stores fold all kinds of non-shoplifting loss of inventory under the shoplifting category. If we were going, only, off the stuff stores “say” is shoplifting I’d be utterly indifferent to their complaints. But site closures and physically locking up inventory is a very different animal.Report
That might be a valid point if we believed companies were managed by competent people who understood what was going on.
But it’s actually much easier to assume that almost all business are operated by complete imbeciles, because that’s where all the evidence points.
In fact, we can prove they’re imbeciles: Locking up shelves actually requires more staff. To get products.
Have any of these places actually hired more staff? No? Weird, wouldn’t that be literally the first thing a competent person dealing with theft would do? In fact, you’d do that _before_ you started locking up stuff, maybe the new staff alone would solve the problem, and if it doesn’t, you’ll need them anyway once you do install the locks, so you should hire them first!
And yet they don’t.
Feel free to replace ‘complete imbeciles’ with ‘people who literally only care about stock price, which is currently completely disconnected from actual profit and losses, and they find it plays better blaming shoplifters’, if you want. It produces the exact same outcomes at the corporate policy level.
The people running huge sections of this economy are not actually attempting to make money by selling goods and services, but have instead decided to make money by stock price manipulation…and a good chunk of them are nepotism babies with no skills at all. Do not assume that business decisions ‘make sense’ in any manner that normal humans would understand them.Report
Or to put it another way: Locking up products is just another step in the neverending race to the bottom, where corporations have literally no expenses and manufacture no goods and don’t make any sales or produce any services, but all the rich kids from Yale still get paid millions of dollars to make the stock price bounce at the right time. It’s the dream they’re all aiming for, and the fact that most of those (1) companies have to (ugh) employ people and (ugh) sell other people things is just a current inconvenience.
At some point we will reach the platonic ideal form of Corporation, which will be pure stock that just owns a brand name, which will continue to be randomly valued by the stock market.
1) But not all. Some have graduated to landlordism, where your company doesn’t have to make anything, but sadly that doesn’t make as much as CEO.Report
This is Jeff Bezos’ life story.Report
I mean, sure, you can theorize that large corporate chains stores in different, often competing, companies are all suddenly investing in the (significant) cost of locking up their inventory and the (significant) inconvenience to employees and customers of same because a collection of nepo babies across all these companies are doing it to (somehow) manipulate share prices. That sounds very conspiratorial to me.Report
Oh, no, they’re not ‘doing it to manipulate stock prices’, they’re doing it because they are complete idiots who see other people doing it and think it might be something that they should do.Report
It is pretty obvious why store owners upset about shoplifting regardless of whether they are a sole owner or a big corporate chain. What liberal and left leaning people usually fail to do is focus on why ordinary people get upset about shoplifting and aren’t that sympathetic about it. That is large scale shoplifting is a sign of visible disorder and as much as the wonk and activist sets like to harp about wage theft being the biggest form of larceny, most people care about crime that they can see rather than invisible crime. People can see how being in a store and being entirely lawful gets disrupted by some of the more obvious shoplifting.
People also don’t like scofflaws. Most people take the position that they are hard working and not that affluent people but they don’t shop lift. They work hard for their money and buy what they need and their luxuries with that money. Shoplifters come across as cheats rather than underprivileged persons going against merchants and big corporate chains to most people. The wonk and activist set believes that with just enough graphic presentations we can get people to stop caring about a little shoplifting and focus on the thing that really matters and everybody should remember that shoplifters generally read underprivileged in the wonk-activist cosmology. This isn’t how it works though. People do not like visible disorder.Report
The only real way to combat visible disorder is both a heavy police presence and a heavy taxation regime to keep up public spaces. Absent both those things, you aren’t going to tamp this down.Report
I do not entirely disagree. There are countries that manage to really crack down on visible order through cultural ideas. The East Asian developed democracies are like this.Report
There’s a third way, actually.
You’re going to need a *VERY* heavy police presence to fight against it if it establishes itself, though.Report
In modern economies, you don’t need heavy taxation to provide law and order. The cost of policing is really very small compared to the welfare state. Even a relatively small cut in subsidies to private consumption could fund a large increase in policing and corrections.Report
Wasn’t the American right very approving of disorder and scofflaws when they were asked to wear masks?
Isn’t ” This is 1776″ a rallying cry of the Trumpists?
Isn’t “Be Ungovernable”a meme used by both right and left?
Rebellion and disorder isn’t something waved away only lefty wonks.Report
Wasn’t the American right very approving of disorder and scofflaws when they were asked to wear masks?
Why do you care? You know that you need to wear them, right?Report
It’s a valid question.Report
And I gave the answer I got back when I disapproved of people engaging in disorder and law-scoffing by not wearing masks despite being in places where mask mandates applied.Report
I really don’t recall you disapproving of maskless MAGA rallies.Report
Were the rallies outside?Report
In fact if memory serves, the only times you ever disapproved of maskless gatherings were when your opposing team did it.
I’m doubtful that it was the scofflawing you objected to.Report
Please, find me where we had a post about maskless MAGA rallies. Find me the comments section.
I’d like to demonstrate something.
If you can’t do it, you can’t do it, of course.Report
You have inserted refeerences to the George Flyd rallies and AOCs Met Gala into at least a dozen posts having nothing whatsoever to do with them.
Oddly, not once a comment about MAGA rallies and the disorder caused by scofflaws storming stores and restaurants without masks.
The claim that you are merely concerned about the principle of order is not believable.Report
Show me the maskless MAGA rally post from during the pandemic where I failed to comment on how there was a mask mandate.
If you can’t do it, you can’t do it, of course.Report
“In fact if memory serves, the only times you ever disapproved of maskless gatherings were when your opposing team did it.”
oh, hey, so not only is BSDI good now but it’s actually mandatory?Report
Yes, if someone is trying to convince us they are simply acting on principle and not partisan bias, it is.Report
You can’t provide a single example of me not piling on when we were discussing maskless MAGA rallies but I can provide examples of you dismissing criticism of democratic *POLITICIANS* who *SET MASK MANDATES* and then *FAILED TO FOLLOW THEIR OWN MANDATES*.
And you’re saying that these two things are not only equivalent, but I’m acting according to partisan bias but you’re being coldly pragmatic about whether or not masks work for me and my grandmother despite AOC not wearing one?
Does that sum it up?Report
That’s not a denial.Report
Find me failing to do it. Provide an example.
Lemme guess: “I can’t prove a negative!”
Then we’re in a weird place where we’re comparing something with nothing.Report
Go back to Chip’s original assertions at 3:05 and 3:44. You didn’t deny them. You talked about something else. I’ve cross-examined witnesses like that. Jurors hate them.Report
Well, I’d say that Chip really misapprehends what my problem was.
It wasn’t that someone who wasn’t on “my team” was not masking.
It was that the politicians in charge of setting mask mandates were not masking despite being inside. Whether it be Gavin Newsome at the French Laundry, London Breed dancing in the club, AOC at the Met Gala, or Pramila Jayapal blowing out the candles of her birthday cake in a restaurant, I was very frustrated that our elected leaders who set policy were found not following it.
I was primarily upset because *I* was following policy. I was masking when I went to Safeway. I was avoiding gatherings (including birthday parties with friends). If I ate food from a restaurant, it’s because it was delivered or because I went through a drive-through.
And, nope, there were politicians doing all of the above. The ones whose policies that I was following.
And I was pissed about that.
And my being pissed about that is being compared to my lack of comments in threads that we didn’t have about Republicans failing to mask in rallies for Donald Trump?
I say this: It’s apples and oranges.
Though I will say this: had we a thread devoted to how bad it was that people were going to rallies for Trump and not masking, I’d have probably dug up old comments about the importance of going to BLM rallies and mixed them with people asking why I cared about the politicians who set policy not following their own policies when I know that the policies were good for me and their behavior had no bearing on my health.
Maybe even some public health types explaining that BLM rallies were important enough to ignore recommendations.
And then I would have asked the difference.
Now I ask you: Is the difference between a BLM rally and a Trump rally larger than the difference between being upset at Politicans who set mask mandates not following them and private citizens not following them?Report
That’s still not a denial; it’s a “yes but…” That’s on you, not on Chip.Report
His framing of my position of not liking Authorities not following their own mandates is not steeped in partisan opposition.
It is steeped in not liking Authorities following their own mandates when I am playing by the rules and doing my part to hold up my end of the “social contract”.
“You don’t like it because they’re democrats doing it.”
“No. I don’t like it because THEY’RE DEFECTING AGAINST THE DEAL THAT THEY SET UP THEMSELVES.”
Can *YOU* tell the difference between being incensed that the people who set the rules aren’t following their own rules and not commenting in a post that wasn’t written?Report
If you want to talk about something else, that’s your prerogative. The rest of us don’t have to follow your lead.Report
“If you want to talk about something else, that’s your prerogative.”
…you’re aware that it was Chip who started talking about something else, right?Report
And that was his prerogative. Jaybird would have been well within his rights not to go down that rabbit hole.Report
Lots of folks don’t / didn’t care that politicians on “their side” did that stuff, but woe the other side. It’s just hypocrisy Jaybird. They are on team X, allowances must be made…..right up to they find themselves standing against a wall and they realize they are expendable.Report
It’s not just hypocrisy.
They were the ones who set up the standard and then defected against it.
And then, when I complained about the defection from those who set the standard, I was asked why I cared… by the same people who accused me of not caring if I was not wearing a mask.
Hypocrisy is “do as I say, not as I do”.
There was more than that going on here.
For one thing, THERE WAS OSTENSIBLY A PANDEMIC.Report
“Well, I’d say that Chip really misapprehends what my problem was.”
No, I think he understands what you’re saying; he just thinks you’re lying, and he’s too gutless to come right out and say so.Report
No I’ve said that openly. Jaybird is telling thing he knows are not true.
On several issues, repeatedly.Report
The problem is that I can point to things that corroborate my memory.
When I ask you to point to things, you cannot. It’s not even important to be able to.
Which you don’t even see as a red flag for yourself.Report
Public order I think is universally understood by its proponents as “The order which inconveniences me the least.”Report
They were. They are being hypocritical about this. That doesn’t change the fact that most people besides the Very Online and wonk-activist set loathes the public disorder created by shoplifting and other crimes.Report
Right, and by “most people” that includes 95% of the Democratic Party and George Floyd protesters.
And to the set of “Very Online wonk activist” we can include the radical rightist who wink at abortion clinic violence and Jan 6 as righteous violence in service to the revolution.
I’m rejecting the idea that shoplifting or crime itself is somehow an Achilles heel of progressives and that we should somehow allow nutpicking to define us.Report
Well. I guess someone has decided that crime is an urgent problem that needs addressing:
California to Make Largest-ever Investment to Combat Organized Retail Crime
The state is poised to award the largest-ever single investment to combat organized retail crime in California history this week — sending over $267 million to 55 cities and counties across the state to hire more police, make more arrests, and secure more felony charges against suspects.Report
Huh.
Prominent Republican calls for defunding the police:
Vivek Ramaswamy lays out plans to eliminate federal agencies including FBI
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/shows/meetthepress/blog/rcna95409
Bold move Cotton, let’s see how it works out for them.Report
Once the FBI went “woke” – by which we mean they started investigating Republicans – it was only a matter of time. The Department of Education has been a GOP budget whipping boy since it was set up. The NRC is an interesting choice – I guess this means we could expect to see a proliferation of nuclear power plants under his watch?Report
This would usually be the sort of comment leading to the charge of hypocrisy against Republicans, but the reality is much worse.
For Republicans, all the organs of state are tools of the party. The FBI is behaving contrary to the party’s wishes and must be brought under control.Report