Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#121

Post by mint2 » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #13

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 attorn…

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.

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#122

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

sfasf wrote: post #85

bluedino wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#123

Post by sneak » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #19

tyoma wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

"They were robbing the store, and I think one of them had a machine gun!"

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#124

Post by sneak » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #56

bushbaba wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everything is easy if you assume a panopticon.

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.

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#125

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

axus wrote: post #32

JackFr wrote: post #13

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 attorn…

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]

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#126

Post by gryz » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

Could a setup like with Amazon Go stores help here? Let in only customers with a verified account.

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#127

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

neither_color wrote: post #78

floren wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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 c…

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...

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#128

Post by AtlasBarfed » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

floren wrote: post #30

bko wrote: post #3

> 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 th…

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!

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.

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#129

Post by floren » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #128

floren wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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. H…

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...

Re: Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

#130

Post by rtkwe » Fri, Sep 03, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

"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.]

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