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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

#261

Post by learc83 »

jdavis703 wrote: post #216
unexpected wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even in the ultra-liberal Bay Area my Walgreens, Target and Best Buy employ armed security. I find it doubtful that Texas of all places doesn’t have armed security. (Oddly I’ve only seen unarmed, tired looking security in CVS. Perhaps they’re too cheap to pay for armed gaurds.)

The only time I’ve seen an armed guard at a retail store in the southeast is when they have off duty cops late night at very high crime locations. It is extremely uncommon here for a Target or Best Buy to regularly employee armed security.

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

#262

Post by jzb »

rayiner wrote: post #251
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…

One of my observations coming from Bangladesh, where policing is pretty inadequate, is that criminal law is really there to prevent the growth of organized crime. So you have to think about crime as a system not in terms of individuals. Harsh punishment may not deter a given criminal. But it may well make it hard to recruit dozens of low level people to engage in low value illegal activity that adds up to something s…

That doesn't seem to be working so well with drugs. We've filled prisons with people engaged in low level illegal activity but we don't seem to have made any dent in illegal drugs. In fact, probably the opposite.

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

#263

Post by tzs »

hamburgerwah wrote: post #214

In my experience retailers are lying in a bed of their own making. They have had more than a decade to implement RFID based UPCs and have steadfastly resisted it at every turn because of the few pennies it adds in the supply chain. While not perfect RFID allows for much better security controls that the status quo. Instead they continue to underinvest in adequate technology skills and will just rely on shady third pa…

How would RFID help?

The issue is that when they do catch someone shoplifting the stores do not want to apprehend them themselves for various legitimate reasons such as safety of their employees and customers, liability if they make mistake, and police that will not come and arrest the caught shoplifter (either they have too much other more serious crime to deal with, or the prosecutor's office won't prosecute).

RFID tags would not address any of that.

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

#264

Post by desmosxxx »

coderintherye wrote: post #244
rayiner wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody will risk prison for $950 of stuff. If you make it basically a ticket, then you can easily get dozens of people to be able to steal a meaningful amount of stuff.

This is patently false, do you think people didn't go to prison prior to the law change? In fact, so many people were risking prison time for petty theft that is what led to enacting the law in first place to deal with the overcrowding in the state prison system, as summed up in this layman article: https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-160551360299

> overcrowding in the state prison system

and so our solution is to change the law, instead of dealing with whatever is causing people to steal in the first place.

Theft is a grey area between non-violence and violence, I'd rather we deal with the root causes rather than just making it less of a crime.

If murders were overcrowding prisons, i doubt many people would be calling for reduced murder sentencing (although im sure some would)

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

#265

Post by refurb »

realitygrill wrote: post #166
legitster wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- get baby diagnosed with formula allergy

- get Medicaid to pay for supply of $30-40/can hypoallergenic formula

- sell hypoallergenic formula for $0.90 on the dollar

- pocket cash

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

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!

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by fragmede »

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 fact that Amazon will fence stolen goods for a thief is absolutely part of the story. Used to be a whole criminal enterprise to be able to make money off of stolen goods. Now, anyone can start shoplifting and turn that into cash through FBA. If you can find someone selling something for cheaper, you can turn around and sell it online via Amazon FBA. Turns out, stealing is a great way to drive down costs (assuming no morals). There's absolutely a wider societal discussion to be had, but lowering the bar on how to make cash via shoplifting deserves some recognition as well.

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

#268

Post by google234123 »

jzb wrote: post #262
rayiner wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my observations coming from Bangladesh, where policing is pretty inadequate, is that criminal law is really there to prevent the growth of organized crime. So you have to think about crime as a system not in terms of individuals. Harsh punishment may not deter a given criminal. But it may well make it hard to recruit dozens of low level people to engage in low value illegal activity that adds up to something s…

That doesn't seem to be working so well with drugs. We've filled prisons with people engaged in low level illegal activity but we don't seem to have made any dent in illegal drugs. In fact, probably the opposite.

Well, looks at Japan and Korea for a counter example. There is much less prosecution of low level drug crimes now and an increase in the amount of fatal overdoes from illegal drugs

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

#269

Post by dls2016 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #47
dls2016 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me when wage theft is prosecuted anywhere near as seriously as shoplifting. Both have been estimated to cost the economy around $40 billion per year in the US. (Simply search “shoplifting cost in us” or “wage theft cost in us” and find your favorite estimate. They’re surprisingly close.)

> Wake me when wage theft is prosecuted anywhere near as seriously as shoplifting Given the article is about the effects of not prosecuting shoplifting, time to wake up?

The article also describes some companies forming their own quasi-police departments staffed with former cops.

This country is in no danger of prosecutors around the country failing to prosecute shoplifting. But the country is in danger of these quasi-police forces extending their reach. There are people posting here working on automated checkout systems which will absolutely be used to perform more general intelligence... either for the company's or The Company's purposes.

Also... are we to believe that organized crime rings are a problem that the courts are unable to deal with because of some meddling prosecutor? Loss from retail shipping was one of the mafia's prime rackets! Jimmy Hoffa was the IBT president!

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

#270

Post by Lucasoato »

bsanr2 wrote: post #249
j_walter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data. However you can't go to a single SF neighborhood and find people that think crime has dropped recently. There are boatloads of articles about people having their cars broken into so often they leave them unlocked because replacing windows was so expensive. Videos of people shoplifting while security stands by and does nothing bec…

No one considers that perhaps ever-increasing inequality in the Bay Area has also increased both the incentive to commit crime and the disincentive to prosecute it. It would stand to reason that the people who are desperate would be more desperate than ever, while the people who are well-off would be more able to eat the costs than ever. No one is happy but the dynamic is grotesquely sustainable.

Why unvoting? Of course it would be too easy for themselves justifying their actions blaming inequality, but if in some place life isn't sustainable for others but the super-rich... That's of course going to push people to commit more crimes.
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