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Retailers are spending millions to combat organized theft from stores

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

#181

Post by chrischen »

ryandrake wrote: post #75
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't understand putting your personal safety at risk (who knows if he had a knife or something) over £100 of goods belonging to a £20B 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.

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.

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

#182

Post by betwixthewires »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #9
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.]

I thought pawn shops were places you could sell random stuff and buy random stuff, never knew they loaned money!

It's the oldest form of credit, the collateralized loan.

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

#183

Post by ChefboyOG »

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.

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.

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

#184

Post by jokethrowaway »

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…

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.

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

#185

Post by crazy_horse »

rconti wrote: post #173
nitrogen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#186

Post by 908B64B197 »

legitster wrote: post #59

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 allowe…

> 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.

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

#187

Post by Stronico »

pjc50 wrote: post #170
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!

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

Nice catch actually

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

#188

Post by wccrawford »

astrea wrote: post #16
lotsofpulp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought pawn shops were places you could sell random stuff and buy random stuff, never knew they loaned money!

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.

With interest, of course.

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #176
valdiorn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

...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]

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

#190

Post by canada_dry »

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.

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