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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

#61

Post by nitrogen »

hncurious wrote: post #34
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!

I don't know if that was the intention or not, but that is precisely the outcome of SF policies.

It seems to apply to traffic, too. Sabotage the road system to prove that driving is terrible. A few extremely major streets were basically off road driving for a year while I was living there. Light timing is terrible at several intersections, guaranteeing gridlock. Traffic cops get stationed at the next intersection over, so nothing changes.

Mission accomplished: fewer cars on the road! But no money coming in either.

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

#62

Post by aurizon »

Back in the old days, you asked for items the clerk got them and you paid. There was too much theft in the old days for open shelves. Now we leave it open and trust - which has now been massively abused has expanded to fill that void. The clerks were labor intensive, but the similar robots to used in Amazon warehouses could serve people at a screen, the order assembled, paid and then handed to the client - much like online order and deliver - but in person. These huge costs will force this. Small stores will go to the old one at a time model service - most do this with cigarettes and liquor. It is a fine tuning of the retail chain that I feel will inexorable be forced upon us.

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

#63

Post by nuclearnice1 »

valdiorn wrote: post #41
tyoma wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The felony theft limit for Texas is $2,500, but their retail establishments do not report massive shoplifting sprees. Clearly there is more than misdemeanor/felony classification at work here.

but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner to be armed, and actually confront you? No way that would happen in California. I keep thinking of this event that happened to me in the UK, where laws are equally useless at preventing theft, and staff are just powerless to do anything about it. I chased down a shoplifter. I cornered him in an alley. He stopped, looked at me, and this brief conversation took p…

I love a good foot chase!

Given the sentiments of your last paragraph, why did you choose to send the criminal away and return Tesco’s stolen beef?

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

#64

Post by everybodyknows »

ceejayoz wrote: post #22
Workaccount2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure in CA it's that police do not respond to calls for anything less than felony theft. 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.

> 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.

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

#65

Post by nikanj »

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!

Same with bike theft in Vancouver. Nobody bothers reporting it, so the statistics aren’t too bad

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

#66

Post by baybal2 »

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 simpler way — just put all merchandise behind the glass. Any touching only with supervision of a store manager.

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

#67

Post by adolph »

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…

Large numbers without a comparison are difficult to understand. Is 10M a large or small number in this context?

CA has 1,180 CVS pharmacies. [0] Northern CA has 40% of CA pop. [1] Assuming regular distribution of CVSes in CA, there are 472 in Northern CA. 10M is 21k/store. Is that a lot? Not certain.

0. https://www.scrapehero.com/largest-pharmacies-in-the-us/

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_California

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

#68

Post by nitrogen »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #35
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…

Can you link to some sources on this? edit: I'd seen this mentioned recently, but hadn't realised it was a long running culture war thing so it had already been discredited by research years ago: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...

That's 2018. Wr're here in 2021 watching videos of stores being actively raided.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #20
tyoma wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The felony theft limit for Texas is $2,500, but their retail establishments do not report massive shoplifting sprees. Clearly there is more than misdemeanor/felony classification at work here.

That's a good point. I don't think the felony theft limit is the only consideration the deters organized theft. One obvious difference between Texas and Bay Area is Texas has a lot of guns. > In TX can You Legally Shoot & Kill a Shoplifter? The short answer is…not unless they somehow injure you in the process of committing the theft, making it a robbery. “During the process of committing the theft” would include whil…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by hpkuarg »

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.

Yes, exactly.
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