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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

#211

Post by literallyaduck »

bushbaba wrote: post #53
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…

If each item had a unique id. And the stores could indicate unique ids that are stolen. The. Amazon & eBay could monitor and prevent stolen merchandise

You could probably get some milage with just a local store id and date on the box. If you want to get cute you could change the pill stamp.

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

#212

Post by rahimnathwani »

908B64B197 wrote: post #180
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!

You can do the same thing in education by closing down magnets schools and lowering the bar for everyone...

You don't even have to close them. Just remove merit-based admission, in the name of equity.

Then, because many students won't be able to keep up, the 'magnet' school will lower standards.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

codezero wrote: post #99
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.

Prices are rising in California too, so an exodus can’t be the explanation, probably inflation and investors driving prices up?

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by hamburgerwah »

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 party, privacy destroying, false positive generating facial recognition.

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

#215

Post by floren »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #184
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

> 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.

I'd prefer to fix the cops rather than sign up for a MetaCops subscription in my burbclave.

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

#216

Post by jdavis703 »

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.

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.)

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

#217

Post by sabarn01 »

mint2 wrote: post #121
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…

How much is it DAs vs cops just not wanting to do their job to prove what they said would happen is true? Cops don’t always arrest based on the law, but what they feel like doing. See Oregon where they decided not to police proud boy protests and tend to arrest anti-white supremacist type protestors much more. How much is it the cops found they can prove their own point? If I make a bet that I’ll get last in a race,…

My leo friends have said its morally wrong to arrest someone for something they won't be prosecuted for.

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

#218

Post by sabarn01 »

sizzle wrote: post #171
sabarn01 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

murders are hard to fake. The rest of crime data is more subjective than people realize. I was robbed at gunpoint for 1$. I did not report the crime.

That’s really scary, over a damn dollar?!? What was the context here if you don’t mind sharing, why one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun?? Isn’t that a felony? Won’t police respond immediately to the report of someone threatening your life via brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not caught)?

They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but on their porch. They did call the cops.

As for why I don't know.

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

#219

Post by sabarn01 »

sabarn01 wrote: post #218
sizzle wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s really scary, over a damn dollar?!? What was the context here if you don’t mind sharing, why one dollar and not your whole wallet? Why pull a gun?? Isn’t that a felony? Won’t police respond immediately to the report of someone threatening your life via brandishing a gun in public (more people in danger if not caught)?

They walked up and indicated they had a gun in their pocket. They had a buddy that was across the street. They asked for 1$ which is what I gave them. Other people I knew in the area were also robbed at gunpoint for 1$, but on their porch. They did call the cops. As for why I don't know.

Also the police don't come quickly in most places. My wife was pistol whipped and it took 30 minutes to get a car to our house 1 mile from the station. Also I lived in a bad neighborhood for a long time so this may not be typical.

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

#220

Post by CardenB »

j_walter wrote: post #141
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, did the multi-decade drop in American crime, regularly discussed by academics who have some tentative theories to explain it, happen or was it all faked? https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...

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…

??? A couple of months ago I literally saw a man get tackled for stealing ties from a high end store in SF nearby union square.
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