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A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

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Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#91

Post by feet »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #55
feet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copying my other comment here. There definitely is a moral issue >busting people who are shoplifting items that they either need to survive or items that they can sell to survive to say, pay rent, because our capitalist system has shit on them and left them with no options Property rights should not be above human life. Full stop.

A lot of it is just to buy booze and drugs in cities where the social services are decent (food is easy to get, shelter is available if are somewhat sober), but those two things are not provided, and many see it as a survival need. It is also much more organized now: rackets have a list of stuff to steal that they can then pawn off more easily. That is why LEGOs and laundry detergent are increasingly locked up.

Yea let's just shit on the people who are at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. The existence of people in poverty is absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#92

Post by ohCh6zos »

yadaeno wrote: post #32

> “A LOT of people are like, ‘How, MORALLY, can you do this job?" I only know of one or two people in my entire life that think that preventing theft immoral. "A LOT" is there to mislead readers into thinking there is a moral dilemma around loss prevention. There is no moral dilemma. Not stealing is the most basic rule of society.

Theft not only takes resources away from the person stolen from, but increases costs across society as security has to be implemented. It is a negative externality.

I don’t understand the other side as presented.

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#93

Post by jnovek »

trs8080 wrote: post #57
mikysco wrote: post #7

The article strangely seems like it's framing the entire industry/profession of loss prevention in a negative light. Hopefully everyone realizes the more retail theft a store experiences, the higher prices become for those of us who pay... and the more likely a store is to shut down if theft becomes too prevalent. I'm not here defending a subreddit I've never visited but in general, those in the loss prevention indus…

> Loss prevention is there to prevent loss - not make moral judgements. So that's just the way it is and it will never change? Maybe we should have less jobs where someone is authorized to use violent force and can check their morals at the door.

I have no idea why you were downvoted for this.

“Loss prevention” is just private security and it’s definitely problematic. Through profiling it reinforces racism and classism. Can you imagine how unpleasant it must be to be treated with suspicion every time you walk into a Target?

I think retailers could absolutely develop more compassionate ways of preventing things from being stolen, but why would they? There’s no incentive.

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#94

Post by slg »

gretch wrote: post #8
canjobear wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem as long as it's directed toward a prosocial aim.

Yeah if a doctor said “I don’t really care about my patients’ lives. I just like the power of being able to prevent death” I really think that’s perfectly fine

That would be fine, but what if it is a slightly different "I don’t really care about my patients’ lives. I just like the power of having a hand in whether people live or die."? Doesn't that start to sound a little questionable?

As Dan says "The goal is to protect the business — not to ruin people’s lives." Is Alex getting that "huge adrenaline rush" from protecting Walmart's property? Or is he getting that adrenaline from having power over people? Because his desire "to move back to the field side, where we actually deal with people" seems to imply that it is the power over people that he craves and not the loss prevention.

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#95

Post by colpabar »

lancesells wrote: post #84
colpabar wrote: post #17

> As of April 2022, over 134,000 loss prevention officers — many of them white men — were employed in the U.S. What is the purpose of mentioning the "white men" part?

I was a little confused by it as well and thought maybe they would go to imply there are racial injustices later in the article but I didn't really see that. Loss Prevention Demographics - https://www.zippia.com/loss-prevention-officer-jobs/demograp... 70% White, 13.7% Hispanic, 8.4% Black US Demographics - 57.8% White, 18.7% Hispanic, 12.1% Black It's a poor choice of words.

Yeah I clicked the link as well, and I disagree with your conclusion. I poked around the rest of the site, and I am pretty sure they included that because their audience likes to read about why white people are bad.

Would it just be a poor choice of words if they included stats on the people who shoplift, and it included "many of them black teens"?

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#97

Post by autoexec »

slg wrote: post #26

>“That’s a huge adrenaline rush,” he says. “I think that’s a major factor in why people are in this field.” This should be a huge red flag that should preclude someone from working in the industry. As Dan says later in the article: >“They’re more concerned with punishing and catching, and they see asset protection as a game,” adds Dan, who requested that Input give him an alias. “I don’t think it’s healthy to have th…

Yeah, I'm certain there are folks who get off on the power trip and just love seeing people punished. Those are the kinds of people you want to keep an eye on or keep out of those positions.

I don't have a problem with seeing it as a game and enjoying that part of the job though. Security work is just like that in general. You'll always have someone constantly probing your defenses and modifying their tactics and if you got rid of everyone who thought it was fun to deal with that you wouldn't have anyone left willing to do the job.

I also think loss prevention in general has a potential to be really depressing. Sometimes you're just dealing with kids and thrill seekers, but other times you're having to deal with people who are genuinely desperate with limited ability to get the things they need for health and survival. There must be, at least to some degree, a tendency to dehumanize the people who are caught to protect the mental health and self-concept of the people working in that field. Nobody wants to be the bad guy and when you've repeatedly had people arrested for trying to get food or medication for themselves or their children it must make you question if you're doing the right thing. Defending stores from theft isn't wrong or immoral, but after repeatedly protecting Walmart, which has hundreds of billions of dollars, against impoverished and humiliated mothers who hate themselves and what they're doing, but are just trying to get diapers for their babies has to make you question that. It must make it harder to keep compassionate people around.

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#98

Post by seanmcdirmid »

feet wrote: post #91
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it is just to buy booze and drugs in cities where the social services are decent (food is easy to get, shelter is available if are somewhat sober), but those two things are not provided, and many see it as a survival need. It is also much more organized now: rackets have a list of stuff to steal that they can then pawn off more easily. That is why LEGOs and laundry detergent are increasingly locked up.

Yea let's just shit on the people who are at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. The existence of people in poverty is absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations

> at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis.

A lot of them are in the position they are in now due to drugs and booze. Let's not conflate those homeless for economic reasons with the ones that just burned all their bridges via substance abuse.

> absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations

I used to live in Switzerland and the cops were pretty rough on the local drunks as well. They got a place to sleep at night, but were spared no quarter on everything else.

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#99

Post by slg »

lancesells wrote: post #84
colpabar wrote: post #17

> As of April 2022, over 134,000 loss prevention officers — many of them white men — were employed in the U.S. What is the purpose of mentioning the "white men" part?

I was a little confused by it as well and thought maybe they would go to imply there are racial injustices later in the article but I didn't really see that. Loss Prevention Demographics - https://www.zippia.com/loss-prevention-officer-jobs/demograp... 70% White, 13.7% Hispanic, 8.4% Black US Demographics - 57.8% White, 18.7% Hispanic, 12.1% Black It's a poor choice of words.

>thought maybe they would go to imply there are racial injustices later in the article

They did imply it by mentioning that white people are overrepresented in the field. Retail security following Black people around a store is one of the more common forms of everyday profiling and racism. Is this not common knowledge anymore?

Re: A subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

#100

Post by heavyset_go »

frlmaowtf wrote: post #68
unreal37 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw a guy stealing a Moleskine notebook. Maybe that notebook can be resold, and he uses the money to pay rent? Or more likely, he uses it to buy drugs. So preventing the shoplifting might just save his life from a drug overdose. It's hard to say that stealing is clearly right in almost any scenario. It's almost always anti-social.

What's the law called where you can't tell if someone is being sarcastic or actually thinks the ridiculous things they say aloud? "Stopping someone from stealing a notebook prevented a drug overdose death". I hope you and folks like you realize that encountering rhetoric like yours only reinforces the thought that some people are just really out to feel like they have power over others, and some folks are capable of…

It's Poe's law.
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