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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

#221

Post by a9h74j »

Cd00d wrote: post #95
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 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 .

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.

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

#222

Post by a9h74j »

everybodyknows wrote: post #64
ceejayoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

So will we see a startup: Uber for alternative policing to whom small retailers submit surveilance camera footage, and expect a series of crimes to be merged into a single case?

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

kevinpet wrote: post #207
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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by SavantIdiot »

carstenhag wrote: post #194
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…

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

Who's gonna detain some meth head with knife for minimum wage and risk getting killed for poverty wages?

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

#226

Post by barnesto »

Maybe spend those millions on lobbying state and local governments to address the reasons this has become a problem in the first place. Also, all either does is make the products we have to purchase that much more expensive since, you know, the retailers are passing those expenses to customers.

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

#227

Post by SavantIdiot »

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…

> choice not to prosecute theft

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

"The judicial branch of California explains on its page about Prop 47 that the new law “reclassifies certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.” Thanks to Prop 47, shoplifting offenses involving property valued at less than $950 are prosecuted as misdemeanors, not felonies, but they are still prosecuted. Such offenses are punishable by up to six months in county jail."

Get your facts straight before spreading disinformation.

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

#228

Post by kibblesalad »

barnesto wrote: post #226

Maybe spend those millions on lobbying state and local governments to address the reasons this has become a problem in the first place. Also, all either does is make the products we have to purchase that much more expensive since, you know, the retailers are passing those expenses to customers.

Most of it is fabricated and fudged statistics as part of publications catering to corporate PR and the pro-surveillance narrative anyway:

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-organized-crim...

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

#229

Post by bpodgursky »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #225
carstenhag wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who's gonna detain some meth head with knife for minimum wage and risk getting killed for poverty wages?

Honestly a lot of security guards would have fun subduing a guy like this (as heroically as possible), and that's why the stores have policies against it.

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

#230

Post by tzs »

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…

A misdemeanor can still get up to 6 to 12 months in jail depending on if it is a gross misdemeanor or an aggravated misdemeanor, so I’m not sure I buy the theory that the downgrade from felony in 2014 is why these shoplifters are not prosecuted.
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