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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

#301

Post by dcolkitt »

sabarn01 wrote: post #143
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...

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.

Even murder is ambiguous over time, because trauma care has substantially improved. The same gunshot wounds that would have resulted in a homicide 50 years ago now are now just assaults (which may not even be counted) because of skilled ER physicians.

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

#302

Post by Aerroon »

neither_color wrote: post #78
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!

We're approaching a strange post-empirical world where the right chart or graph can be used to justify any public policy, and often changing how the data for the chart is collected, analyzed and presented is easier than solving the issue. The collective anecdotes of thousands/millions of people can be dismissed because the chart says otherwise. Disagree that crime in your neighborhood has dropped? Just because your c…

Humans like having justifications for their actions. We prefer the tool that can do 5 things to the tool that can only do 2. We like charts and graphs because we can use them to justify our policy positions. The trouble, as always, is that when you rely too much on metrics then the metrics become the target instead of the real thing (Goodheart's law). It makes you wonder how many (economics and sociology )studies exist to provide support for policy rather than further science.

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

#303

Post by patmcc »

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.)

Guards/security in Walgreens and Target carry firearms? Really? That boggles my mind (Canadian).

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

#304

Post by voldacar »

mycall wrote: post #278
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…

Maybe if the CVS/Wallgreens/etc took a different tactic. Don't let people inside. Take orders online or line outside, deliver or pick up at the door. Distribute more intelligently.

This should not be necessary in a first-world country. Public institutions should actually do their jobs, or we should stop having to pay for them

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

#305

Post by josephcsible »

dcolkitt wrote: post #301
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.

Even murder is ambiguous over time, because trauma care has substantially improved. The same gunshot wounds that would have resulted in a homicide 50 years ago now are now just assaults (which may not even be counted) because of skilled ER physicians.

Are they really just assaults and not attempted murders?

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

#306

Post by theptip »

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…

> That was real and everyone can agree on that based on what they see as well as the data

It’s a pretty well-observed fact (opinion polls etc) that most people across the country think crime has been going up over the last few decades, even as the crime rate has been going down.

So I don’t think “just ask people what they think” is a sound approach here. Most people are just wrong on this point.

That said I’m open to the general causal chain we’re discussing here; I’d just like to see some actual data on prosecution rates and crime reporting in SF.

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

#307

Post by dcolkitt »

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.

The difference is that drugs are a victimless crime. Vast networks can operate outside the law, because no one has any incentive to defect. Outside extensive and ubiquitous surveillance, it’s virtually impossible to disrupt a disciplined drug distribution network. Maybe you get a few lucky hits here or there from random traffic stops or the like, but it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

In contrast victim crimes like theft create a huge surface area of vulnerability. Every time the crime is committed, by definition the criminals are interacting with an adversary who’s extremely motivated to collaborate with law enforcement. Victim based criminal networks are basically unscalable and extremely short-lived for this reason. Unless the political classes are complicit and refuse to let law enforcement do their job of protecting victims.

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

#308

Post by dcolkitt »

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.

A simple solution is that the amount should be be based on the value stolen by the entire organization. RICO laws work much the same way with the mafia.

So, if your crew stole $10,000 worth of stuff over the past year, you’d be looking at a $10k theft charge even if you individually only stole $50 of merchandise.

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

#309

Post by vkou »

voldacar wrote: post #304
mycall wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if the CVS/Wallgreens/etc took a different tactic. Don't let people inside. Take orders online or line outside, deliver or pick up at the door. Distribute more intelligently.

This should not be necessary in a first-world country. Public institutions should actually do their jobs, or we should stop having to pay for them

> Public institutions should actually do their jobs, or we should stop having to pay for them

There's been a rather noteworthy series of protests over the past summer on the subject of whether or not it's worth it to pay for some of these institutions.

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

#310

Post by vkou »

crazy_horse wrote: post #42
ErikVandeWater wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it's the same situation as Seattle; Prosecutors in California refuse to prosecute these cases, meaning the cops refuse to waste time trying to apprehend them. Here's an excellent clip about a famous criminal living free in Seattle that happily expounds on his illegal activity: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=868

There are plenty of things about my state that get hated on all the time, and deservingly so, but I'll never get how the West Coast is happy driving productive people away and coddling those that have no intention other than to fuck over society.

In what world is 500,000 people moving into the greater Seattle area over the past decade and raising housing prices into the stratosphere called 'Driving productive people away'?
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