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Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

wsj.com

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

#161

Post by AlexandrB »

josephcsible wrote: post #157
AlexandrB wrote: post #156

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.

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?

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?

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

#162

Post by kook_throwaway »

alamortsubite wrote: post #146
kook_throwaway wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Plenty of folks from all walks of life down there get their CCW.

So given the opportunity, Texan bystanders with guns would shoot unarmed shoplifters?

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...

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

#163

Post by josephcsible »

AlexandrB wrote: post #161
josephcsible wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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?

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.

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

#164

Post by incone123 »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #92
baybal2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simpler way — just put all merchandise behind the glass. Any touching only with supervision of a store manager.

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.

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.

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

#165

Post by throwaway894345 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #149
throwaway894345 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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?

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.

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

#166

Post by realitygrill »

legitster wrote: post #111
joezydeco wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some goods serve as an alternative currency, like bottles of Tide laundry detergent: https://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/...

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).

I would love to hear more about this, particularly the Medicaid fraud angle.

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

#167

Post by kook_throwaway »

unexpected wrote: post #142
sfasf wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

#168

Post by rossdavidh »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #50

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/opinio…

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"?

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

#169

Post by pjc50 »

valdiorn wrote: post #41
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.

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 p…

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.

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

#170

Post by pjc50 »

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!

Unintentional consequences of the California three strikes law perhaps? Prosecutors unwilling to hand out mandatory 25 year sentences for petty theft?
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