I have a relative who worked at Walgreens in the bay area. Mind blowing daily theft. The walgreen shut down.
Local politicians say theft is falling. But at least this location did not report each theft - it wasn't worth it, they'd be busy filling out forms to report theft all day and even if caught nothing would happen.
The big risk was actually that a thief would be caught and get hurt and then sue. There was a much higher chance of consequences for that then the theft itself. This location at least went to extreme lengths to tell employees not to stop the thefts.
I got my booster shot scheduled in one of the Walgreens about a week before it closed (300 gough st), this is anecdotal but it's what it felt like there.
I live in dogpatch and like SF (the area I live is nice).
The shelves were 90% empty (likely because they were closing shortly), what remained on the shelves was entirely locked down. They had one security guard. Behind the counter in the pharmacy was a sign that said "we will get through this together" that looked like it had been put up by the employees (it wasn't some corporate poster, but something that looked printed). The lighting was harsh, the employees seemed stressed out.
The tiny room they took us into for the shot was dirty, and the entire place was in generally pretty poor shape. This was one of the ones that got hit a lot by people with garbage bags emptying shelves repeatedly.
Relatedly the raids in Union Square also looked pretty extreme and there are lots of pictures of boarded up retail to try and prevent future raids. There's also a ton of car smash and grabs and you see a lot of window glass on the street walking around. I think London Breed's response is the right one, hopefully she's able to do what she says.
This is controversial off topic politics for HN, but lots of police presence in the tenderloin, a strong crack down on dealers, and giving addicts on the street an option of treatment or prison seems like the way forward (in addition to building a lot more housing to increase supply/lower costs generally).
The US is a big and varied place and the culture is interesting - though I’m biased. People are free to meet their ambitions and achieve great things without as much cultural cynicism. That said, even across states that have wildly different politics, there’s a unifying cultural thread that makes Americans more similar than different (it’s easier to notice after spending some time out of the country).
There are regional quirks though and problems with incentive structures that can lead to bad outcomes nobody wants. The politics in SF right now are pretty bad, but there are 2 recall elections coming up that are likely to pass. Hopefully things are starting to turn around.
The UK isn’t immune to these issues either I remember looting in 2011 or so? It’s hard to get the full picture from these kinds of snippets.
I really dislike the trend where reporters invent narratives in a headline and then throw out some BS statistics in the story that readers will inevitably skim and then walk away thinking they were "informed" by.. Take the following statement:
> If organized retail thieves steal $70 billion annually, and California accounts for 10% of the U.S., California’s losses add up to $7 billion, meaning the Bay Area “is likely in the billions itself.”
CA being 10% of the population does not mean you can take a national $ of retail theft and divide it by 10. Yet, the author tries to conflate this multiple times in the article and then comes up with a non-sensical conclusion in the last paragraph. There are so many leaps of logic that it made my head hurt.
Did you miss the part where it was a California Retail Association staffer who made that comment:
"Asked how the organization arrived at that figure, a CRA staffer said that “there’s no way of knowing exactly” how much organized retail crime affects the bottom line of businesses. The staffer said the estimate was based on a back-of-the-napkin calculation: If organized retail thieves steal $70 billion annually, and California accounts for 10% of the U.S., California’s losses add up to $7 billion, meaning the Bay Area “is likely in the billions itself.”"
It was immediately followed by,
"Leaving aside some of those assumptions, how did they come up with that $70-billion number? The staffer pointed to a report from the Retail Industry Leaders Assn. published this year. But that report didn’t find that organized retail thieves stole $68.9 billion per year at all — it estimated that all retail crime combined, including employee theft, regular shoplifting and fraud, added up to that number."
In other words, a rebuttal of the quote.
The final paragraph is,
"On the other hand, stolen merchandise can sometimes be recovered. The CHP reported that it contributed to recovering $20 million in merchandise stolen by organized theft rings in 2020. If the national average of 0.07% losses holds for California — Mathews at the NRF said the group could not break out data by state — that’s more than 10% of losses to organized retail theft in the state, well above the national recovery rate for stolen items (excluding cars), which hovers below 4%, according to the FBI."
They report everything missing that wasn't sold when they do inventory at least once a week so they can get reimbursed from their insurance and so they can be restocked. It's no additional work for a store.
These are "shrink" numbers not police reports.
Source: former front end/grocery manager for a grocery store.
The purpose of insurance is not to reimburse an expected loss. The insurance rates will promptly go up to cover these losses. Insurance companies are not charities. Ultimately, the losses will be borne by the business, and then their customers.
I don't see the benefit to a major retailer chain to even buy insurance. Are we sure they do? Insurers would simply look at Walgreens' specific loss amount and charge them that same number plus overhead and profit.
In Silicon Valley speak: RAaaS - Risk Aversion as a Service. Most retail runs on pretty thin margins so simultaneous robberies means a low quarter which means someone's head on a platter at corporate. It's a wash on the day to day, and the insurance comes out ahead on a big robbery because of the premiums, but the corporate keeps it's numbers versus the previous year.
It's mainly an accounting hack with little value to negative value for the company as a whole after your company reaches a certain size, I agree. There is the classic idea insurance idea that because retail runs on thin margins, keeping the money flowing is important so the whole house of cards doesn't fall down from a huge decrease at an inopportune time, but the relationship stays around way longer than is necessary because of the social organizational effects above, IMO.
Which is why the stores use it as a service to mainly to account for a big robbery, and the insurance is OK with pretty close to a wash on the day to day in order to have way more data for their actuaries.
I had close friends working in retail / warehouses who told the worst stories but I've never heard about insurance scams.
If this was possible, more and more businesses would do it, increasing the cost of insurance (for the insured and for everyone else in their business) until what you pay in insurance balances out what you scammed for.
Sure, maybe one store could do it and get a bit more money than competitors or maybe they just all claim a little bit, part of which is real shoplifting, part is wrong data (whether intentionally wrong or not).
Considering insurances are still standing and making more money than ever, what you say can't be more than anecdotal.
That's the whole point of essentially opening your books to the insurance company on as a regular a basis as corporate sees. They're a lot better than corporate at noticing 'systemic irregularities' that correspond to org charts, and have a financial interest in rooting them out. And insurance knows this and so gives you a better rate on it all because of the 'close relationship'. Additionally corporate typically values smooth revenue streams over strictly maximized revenue streams which is why they have insurance for shrink in the first place.
Commercial insurance often covers theft but not shoplifting.
At least locally, these stores would be uninsurable even if coverage was offered. Insurance companies are not idiots. "Insurance" is not intended for ongoing steady losses, but irregular hard to predict losses.
Are you sure this was insurance paying? Did you ever see a claim form?
Many businesses do have a shrink budget, and if corp doesn't want action taken (ie, no stops) a local store can claim back shrink to be fair to its local managers in terms of their numbers.
I didn't see the initial claim forms, but I was involved in the dispute processes.
And like I've said below, insurance isn't an idiot here. They come out ahead on pretty much every situation, either as a wash for money but with way more data for their actuaries, or they increase premiums if larger robberies occur more frequently. 'Insurance always comes out ahead' is a great axiom to live by.
Yeah, it's all automated. You have to go through the whole store and mark what you have at least once a week. The system internally matches that against what the cash registers sold, and then makes an order for new stuff and corporate runs a report and submits that to insurance. It's all pretty orthogonal to if anything was actually stolen or if there was just process mistakes like saying 4qty for something when each was a different flavor/SKU or something.
I doubt that any insurance will cover it considering you can't prove missing inventory was stolen vs misplaced vs fake inventory on the computer unless you have the thieves check out as they leave. Also insurance is to hedge against unusual and infrequent occurrences, while inventory shrink is a normal feature of a store. Like the insurance company would have to charge more than the inventory losses to make it work for them.
"The country’s largest retail industry group, the National Retail Federation, estimated in its latest report that losses from organized retail theft average $700,000 per $1 billion in sales — or 0.07% of total sales — an amount roughly 330 times lower than the CRA’s estimate."
0.07% is the estimate for "organized retail theft" which does not include "employee theft, regular shoplifting and fraud". How often did gangs of thieves break into the Walgreens to steal all the cosmetics?
"The walgreen shut down."
There was a restaurant near me, a local landmark. It closed down when the original owner retired, but was reopened by one of his relatives several months later. It lasted about a couple of months, then closed abruptly with hilarious signs on the door about the government stealing all the money---apparently the new operator hadn't realized that employment taxes were a thing. Was it the evil government that killed the restaurant, or the new operator's incompetence?
Imagine 10 years ago if someone posted videos like the ones we see today of flash mobs shoplifting major retailers, or of stores literally BOARDING UP their windows in major urban centers. there would be no discussion, no debate, no “deconstruction of modern crime” - none of this handwringing pseudo-intellectual nonsense.
In 2010 This would have been handled. Not sure what changed but these cities and their bureaucrats really don’t seem to care. People, however, do care about themselves, their families and their businesses. if this continues you can expect a major outflow of people, capital and talent.
The difference is that 10 years ago "someone posted a video" was in its infancy as a driver of policy. Today it's quite a mature, potent force (and worthy of deconstruction).
I'm having trouble figuring out what to believe, whether this is a handful of brazen thefts amid normal theft rates, a small increase, a true theft epidemic, or maybe theft has decreased even.
I honestly don't know and don't know how I could gain that knowledge. Watching a few videos isn't going to do much for me though, evidence wise.
Violent crime is another matter, with differing statistics for 2020 and 2021. on the other hand, it has quite a bit to go before it gets from 2019's 379.4/100,000 to 1990's 731.8/ 100,000.
Comments like these are indicative of nothing more than the fact that many people have been able to live very sheltered, vacuum sealed lives in gentrified areas of cities for a while now. It is psychologically understandable, your shock, I would just urge you to realize that economic austerity and the crime that follows from it is not new, and is in fact more normal than otherwise.
I grew up in affordable housing in Queens, went to school in Brooklyn and remain in the heart of NY S*tty. As of reading your asinine ridiculous comment I write to you from Pomonok Houses. I invite you to come experience some “sheltered vacuum sealed lives” of the fine people here. Explain to them that they should rejoice in the wonders of economic austerity and defer their angst towards the gentrification demons of corporate America.
I think, perhaps, we are not sharing the same definition of economic austerity, and that is causing confusion here? Regardless, I will clear myself up: people should be able to steal and shoplift as much as they want, there is no doubt in my mind that any shoplifter is the victim of far more injustice than anything they could ever accomplish themselves. Most people have it hard, and it's not their fault. It's a hard a world. People who are shocked and feel like it's a "problem" that people shoplift, seem to not really have this idea, and think society "just ten years ago" is better, which I guess we can respectfully disagree about. What can I really say? Are you really just that angry at every individual shoplifter, and nothing more?
"I will clear myself up: people should be able to steal and shoplift as much as they want, there is no doubt in my mind that any shoplifter is the victim of far more injustice than anything they could ever accomplish themselves."
This has to be a troll, right? I like how you assumed the person was privileged, got corrected and then doubled down like this.
Clearly the folks doing the shop lifting are on the lower end of the economic spectrum. This does not give them the right to steal. Every society in history has had rules against theft. We want to live in a society where we don't have to bolt everything down to the ground and cover it in chains/fences.
Not every store is a faceless evil mega corp. The small timers are getting hurt by these flash mob robberies as well. Small stores in Oakland are getting hit multiple times.
I know somebody that sold shoes at a flea market. A very humble business. Somebody followed him home one night and stole his truck filled with $20k of shoes. This was a massive financial setback for him. Do you think the people that stole his truck has the right to take his livelihood away from him? Actually don't even bother answering....
When discussing these things, who are you angry at? Other than me now lol. Like even if the numbers that this article is calling into question were true, tell me what the precise crisis is? Is it simply, as you all seem to be implying, a moral crisis? Or is it a crisis or proper determents, of punishment?
I'll grant you I'm crazy for this, but I simply dont understand this implicit worldview that the primary problem in these matters is so many different bad actors; the moral conceit that some people are just "bad" and will steal, they were born and/or raised that way, and the most we can hope for is to keep them at bay.
I simply do not subscribe to that belief about people, I am not saying these things are free from injustices large and small. I just dont think its fruitful to think about it how you seem to be. We should try and put it all in the context it is happening in, not within trans-historical "society".
I dont expect you to agree, or to make many friends, but at least I don't live in a world full of evil people without explanation, and the only thing to do is find them and punish them.
How about people should be able to murder as much as they want?
Just because someone was a victim in the past or currently does not give them the right to victimize other people.
There are social and economical injustices in America but destroying the physical businesses will not solve that, it will make it worse.
Do you really think that the only way to resolve all these issues is to burn the whole place to the ground just so everyone can be equally worse off?
Because that will not work either, there will still be people who will use that to their advantage so instead of having some middle class the country will end up with the de-facto feudal system of few rich lords with private armies and peasants fighting over leftover crumbs.
I just feel like once we begin talking about these things at the scale of trends or patterns, or as a crisis in the social order, what have you, we kinda naturally tend to treat them as symptoms. Its not this crime or that crime, its just social phenomenon. Like, an aberration in statistics or data for a doctor isn't the disease itself, because its just data, but a clue or symbol into a larger thing going on. (I'm not a physician).
Now if you want to grant that view for a second, I think its rational, what are we left with to say? Is it a symptom of the forces of evil that exist, and must be kept at bay? I dont like that view! At some level, I just don't understand precisely where this anger is directed at, its always like people have someone in mind..
I think I'm radical only in the idea that if society is going to manifest symptoms, so be it. We are all doing what we can. I maybe know some ideas of how to fix some things, but that doesn't even need to be the point!
I get that like everyone is angry at people who steal, I have been a victim of great theft in my life.. But I don't think its ultimately the evil of that person I am angry at, its the world where he is compelled to or not. And if he was just some low life scoundrel in an otherwise utopian society? Well I'd probably be angry for a bit, but it would be fine.
You are making the assumption that deprived areas lead to crime, but maybe it is crime that ruins areas because nobody wants to open a business there, and those who can (generally those who would provide a positive, stable influence) leave?
"their bureaucrats" - I don't remember a single election in CA/Bay Area where the GoP was in danger of winning in 10+ years. So the majority has been clearly happy with the state of affairs for a long time. They just decided not to use a unique opportunity to fire their governor. SF mayor/DA were elected recently, they never tried to hide their agenda, and they still won.
What is more puzzling is that the real estate prices show no correlation with any of this 3d-world stuff. The FAANGs don't show any sign of concern for losing engineers either. So apparently they don't expect much impact.
I'm not so sure. Almost 10 years ago where I was living back then, there was a large homeless tent city put up right on a courthouse lawn, to circumvent anti-camping bans in municipal parks. The courthouse land was provincial land so it didn't count.
It still made crime rates skyrocket in the area, people were advised not to walk in the area alone, etc. It didn't get "handled", it festered a long while before it was finally dismantled.
there's nothing different about 2010. How do you think it would have been handled? People are just realizing what they can get a way with. I worked reatil in 2010, if there was a shoplifter we were told to let it go, same as now. Police don't patrol retail stores
I remember Fry's used to have cops visiting daily to pick up the shoplifters they had detained. I think policies tended to be more along the lines of try to detain them, but if they become dangerous to let them go.
Just watching a thief pocket something and walk out the door without saying a word to them seems nuts. I still have difficulty believing this happens in most of the country, apart from urban areas. Certainly where I live there's lots of employes working in stores and no homeless around. meanwhile downtown the stores all seem to have minimal staff and incidents seem to be pretty common.
"Broader crime statistics paint a picture of a decreasing problem, not one on the rise. National crime statistics from the FBI show shoplifting decreasing steadily every year from 2015 through 2020, the most recent data available. Larceny — the taking of property without using force or breaking in — declined 16% between 2010 and 2019, then dipped even lower in 2020, the data indicate.
"At a local level, more up-to-date statistics sharpen the image of a waning problem. Property crime in Los Angeles is up 2.6% from last year, according to LAPD numbers published Nov. 27, but down 6.6% from 2019. The category that includes shoplifting — “personal/other theft” per LAPD — is down 32% from 2019. A San Francisco Chronicle analysis of that city’s shoplifting crime data showed that the number of monthly reports had changed little in the last three years, though it also raised some major questions about the accuracy of shoplifting reporting to law enforcement. Smash-and-grab thefts are classified differently because they involve violence, trespassing and high-value hauls, and suspects have been charged with robbery, burglary or grand theft after recent incidents in L.A. and San Francisco."
Anecdotes weren't data in 2010, either. Not that any body cares then or now. But that's pseudo-intellectual nonsense. How long do you expect it to be before SFPD has an officer in riot gear with military weapons in every Walgreens, convenience store, and bodega?
What's changed in 10 years? My personal feeling is from watching the remaking of the executive and judicial branches over the last decade is that the law is meaningless and merely a tool of political whims. Sadly I think people on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me would say much the same. It seems that nihilism, unlike money, does indeed trickle down.
I decided not to move to the states because of how disorderly you generally (also taxes being as high as Europe for comparatively little benefits, the mental health epidemic and school shootings).
"According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), total U.S. tax revenue amounted to 26 percent of GDP in 2014, with about one-third of that coming from state and local government taxes. In contrast, the OECD average was 34.4 percent of GDP and the highest rate was 50.9 percent in Denmark.
"If Trump was talking about the federal income tax rate that individuals pay, Americans still do not face the highest tax rate in the world. Again according to the OECD, the country with the highest national income tax rate is the Netherlands at 52 percent, more than 12 percentage points higher than the U.S. top federal individual income rate of 39.6 percent." ("Is the U.S. the Highest Taxed Nation in the World?": https://www.crfb.org/blogs/us-highest-taxed-nation-world)
Note: "top federal individual income rate" is the tax bracket and your actual tax rate would only approach that as your income approaches infinity.
I can't speak to mental health epidemics (twitch, twitch), and while we seem to lead the world in school shootings, they are in practice rather rare. But we are pretty disorderly.
I saw this happen in front of my own eyes in FiDi. The manager of the Walgreens said they don’t call the police anymore because SFPD won’t even come. I don’t trust any of the numbers coming from SFPD or the government of San Francisco.
Not just the large chains here -- my local bodega has had, for years now, teenagers rushing in, stealing a bunch of merchandise, and leaving. This was happening pre-pandemic. The shopowner said then that he doesn't bother filing police reports anymore, they won't go after kids anyway.
Certainly? If they do, their insurance rates will go up.
I know if I report a reimbursable event to my insurance company, my rates will go up until the reimbursement is more than paid back, then will fall back. So I consider whether it is worth it to clam it or not.
The situation with the "crisis" feels very manufactured consent. Right around the time "defund the police" is getting serious attention, suddenly there's a crisis of theft to take the wind out of the movement.
I think there's a simpler explanation. The theft crowd and the "defund the police" crowd have semi-independently come to the conclusion that policing and legal systems are not very good at stopping or preventing most crime.
These types of crimes are indicators of underlying social and societal flaws. America has a very high incarceration rate. Either our people genetically are just predisposed to crime or we’re doing something wrong with our policies, governing, and equality.
I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out. I suspect the numbers would start to be much closer to the European numbers.
I personal theory is that there are two types of criminals - normal people who do the occasionally stupid thing (stealing a single item from retail or getting into a bar fight), and people who make crime their career path. The US model is to treat everybody as being in the latter group, while the Scandinavian model is to treat everybody as being in the first group. Instead we should treat people based on who they are, even if that means very different sentences for the same crime to different people.
>I would like to see the stats with people who are in prison for low level drug offenses taken out.
Lucky for you, criminologists have crunched the numbers over and over again. Only 20% of prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses—not just “low-level” ones. Furthermore, many of them are violent offenders who pleaded down to lesser offenses as part of a plea bargain.
In other words, the United States could release every single drug offender from prison and still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Mass incarceration is overwhelmingly driven by violent offenders. America is simply a much more violent country than any European one.
It's unfortunate that the US views the carceral system as a punitive one instead of a rehabilitative one. Recividism is so high because even if you go in a decent person who made a mistake, you'll come out violent and often broken.
The whole point, though, is that incarceration rate is (assumed to be at least) a trade-off against crime rate, which is what really matters. And the US is not the highest there.
There are organized groups recruiting significant numbers of people to do retail theft, bike theft, and car break-ins. The police and legal system haven't been very effective at combating this, so over the past few years the theft has become very public and visible.
It might also be companies keen to popularize facial recognition cameras as a replacement for store cards. Make everyone think that theft is the problem they are trying to solve when, in fact, they just want to automatically track everyone that walks into their store. (EDIT: typos)
Cause and effect is more likely than a grand conspiracy. Reduction in police, reducing felonies to misdemeanors, eliminating bail have indeed taken root... and as was predictable, crimes have increased.
The experiment failed, and it's now time to clean up the mess and resume normal order.
Very few places actually did any defunding of the police. The SFPD's budget for 2021 is only about 1% lower. The evidence in TFA shows the public's subjective perceptions have no correlation with actual crime rates, and subjective crime rates also seem to have no correlation with police budgets. Also, TFA shows crime hasn't increased, it's the whole point of the article.
Is crime going up pretty uniformly across the US? (Violent crime seems to be, last year and this, but I've seen claims that it is only rising in the larger cities that had race riots last year.) Is crime anywhere near where it was in 2000, much less 1990?
I've been hearing about police defunding/abolition for longer than just since last year. It just only got a jolt of attention because there was a 9 minute filmed incident that was pretty unambiguous. "Give the police lots of money" has been the status quo for a long time, and there's also been pushback against that for a long time.
Correlation does not mean causation, and even if it does, it could be reversed... so less money for the police, police does less, more crime. Add to this the however high the limit even is to make it a felony, and people will steal, because effectively, nothing will happen to them.
I believe organized retail crime in general is already a felony in most states, and the violent breaking-n-entering of the current "crisis" certainly is.
Funny, that’s how I felt last year when every respectable media outlet and seemingly every Fortune 500 company unanimously pivoted to amplifying BLM and promoting street demonstrations after they had just been telling everyone to stay home because of the pandemic. If anything, Americans are just now sobering up and surveying the damage after last summer’s wild drunken party.
I really hate this extremely politicised takes. The article just tries to refute the "outlandish claim" by saying it's not "organised crime" but shoplifting and fraud as well.
I don't care if it's theft by individuals, shoplifting by employees, by customers or fraud. I don't care whether it's "organised or non". There is a 70bln figure of lost products to people who got something for free.
Theft is theft and it's happening because people know they won't be punished.
Same as the BLM riots, this is wrong, it's symptom of a society which doesn't function properly and it damages mostly honest low earners (with increased prices from businesses having to recoup losses, increasing risk of working in retail, etc) but criminals as well (because they learn crime works and don't join the productive side of society).
There's a couple possible ways to interpret this information.
1) Retailers are lying (or, more likely, in the grip of a meme and convinced the numbers are spiking without any past objective data to back up the assertion)
2) Specific market sectors are being hit disproportionately hard, but it doesn't show up in the numbers because the market is growing or moving in a way that other sectors are utterly side-stepping this kind of theft.
If the latter, the next thing we can predict is the collapse of sectors (given the data sources, the predicted collapse would be most of the country would be fine but California towns would suddenly find mom-and-pops decide to do something else and major chains expect large conciliation from local governments to open a franchise location in their town).
1) considering that retailers aren't actually behind the moral panic, but rather politicians who run on law-and-order platforms and the funders that back them. Funders who couldn't care less about retail theft but have a vested interest in those politicians.
2) A gang of unarmed teens robbing a store at once is good footage for the news, and now that everyone has a cellphone it'll get filmed, and since the kids aren't armed, filmed with impunity.
Some of my childhood was spent living on military bases.
A friend of mine was caught shoplifting before he left the PX (the general store on the base). The MPs put him in a room, and summoned his father, an officer. In the Air Force, officers are considered responsible for the behavior of their children (on and off the base). The AF considers an officer unfit for command if he cannot control his children.
The MP, with the permission of the father, gave my friend a good lecture about just what was going to happen to him if he did it again. Scared the crap out of him. Never did it again.
They never really made sense, because stores can not and have never prosecuted for any crime - that's the job of the state and it's entirely up to the state to initiate it.
I discovered this form of theft in 2003 ... In high school, I realized I could fill my cart, commit no crime until I was near the exit of the store, then transfer the items from cart to a shopping bag, and walk out without paying, running halfway around the block to my car (No plates on camera). I later believed in karma when there was a break in and only my stolen dvds(as well as my entire collection) were taken.
"The numbers" they are using under report because most victims have stopped filing reports due the DAs in LA and SF not bother to prosecute people and bailing them out on the cheap.
Further the state source is 1 year old delayed. So not contemporary or current.
Then again, the LA Times is akin to CNN in being 100% leftist propaganda, all the time so they have no more credibility than the National Inquirer!
These are internal numbers and so stores are free to account for shrinkage however they wish. For many stores the process of accounting for shrinkage is a routine matter and does not require any extra process.
Also I wouldn't consider the NRF to be a state source; they are an industry retail group.
"The numbers" used in the article mostly come from the National Retail Federation, not the Po-po.
There are two main sources of crime information in the US: the FBI's reports of reported crimes, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' surveys. (https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ntcm_2014.pdf) The latter do not depend on police reports.
"The numbers" would have to climb quite a bit to get close to peaks in 1990 or so.
Will this sort of breakdown prevent us from needing to present a biometric id to enter a shop in the future? (Frankly in the present too - eg Lithuania, China, France, etc.)
Unfortunately I don't think so, as the id is being marketed as a health security issue, rather than a anti-theft one. And mostly it seems we accept it on health marketing grounds.
Witnessing people going into a store and taking stuff feels dangerous, very wild west, and it seems symbolic of a decaying social order. I know that's an ill defined complaint but I suppose I trust my gut more than "eh in dollar terms it's a write off".
There was a smash and grab this weekend at a jewelry store in a large, crowded mall in Austin, TX, which resulted in a lockdown because people mistakenly thought there were gunshots.
I was surprised at the sheer brazenness of the theft - the jewelry store is basically smack dab in the middle of the mall, and the theft occurred during a crowded Sat evening, so it's not like the thieves were attempting to get out undetected.
What many people are reacting to is the clear belief by thieves that they won't be confronted or significantly prosecuted, and that breakdown in the social fabric is what many people are reacting to.
There are so many other, bigger examples of this "breakdown in the social fabric" to observe. Wage theft, the disappearing living wage, the shrinking middle class, bankruptcies from medical bills, extreme political polarization, a growing mental health crisis, people no longer caring about or even knowing their neighbors.
But, no. "Stealing from Corporations" is the headline crisis that exemplifies the shredding of our social fabric..
The frequency and scale has been increasing. Walgreens is closing stores in SF. And the flashmob smash-and-grab trend is newer, it is criminals organizing on social platforms like instagram.
Having seen a bunch of HN articles about Walgreens closing stores in SF, is this a SF phenomenon? Or even a SF Walgreens phenomenon? It feels a little weird to see lots of people drawing national conclusions from a situation which doesn't feel national.
I didn't mean to draw national conclusions. Regionally in the SF Bay Area, the frequency and scale of shoplifting and smash-and-grab is definitely increased.
I also feel like the social order is slipping - anecdotal, of course, but I've noticed a couple of indicators:
I'm seeing an explosion of blatant moving vehicle violations - things that are hard to believe are "oopsie dasies". I drive _less_ now than I did ten or fifteen years ago, but I'm seeing double of careless red light running, stop sign running, excessive speeding, people spinning donuts in the middle of intersections, hit and runs. It's appalling.
On a similar token, I feel like I've never seen the level of clearly unregistered vehicles on the roads - expired temporary tags, expired tags, and often, no registration displayed at all. They seem to operate with virtual impunity.
Then you have people raising a fit about mask mandates, stealing in broad daylight, and the like. They know there's basically nothing going to be done about and it police departments all over are unlikely to respond. Petty theft of property (bikes, cars, etc) is through the roof and rarely is anyone implicated.
It's honestly depressing. I understand a lot of the factors are likely to be traced back to a diminishing economic prospects, but it's hard to see society coming apart at the seams like it is.
It's the brazen nature of it all. Implicitly, what is being said is: "Go ahead, try and stop me from taking what I want. The repercussions you risk facing are far greater than the risks I'm facing right now."
This article comes off very cavalier. "Some times you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette."
It reads more like "There's so little theft that it would cost far more to prevent than is lost, but some people are spending an ton of time and effort to give everyone the impression that isn't true."
So many people in this thread proudly explaining how they trust their guts over the statistics. That's how you end up in a police state.
I don't think this sort of theft is that widespread. I see it occasionally in my east coast city but not often. I do think it's bad, it makes people dislike their community and has a negative effect on social frabric. We should think seriously about how to prevent it, which I'm sure we can do without veering into a police state.
If many people shoplift an item here and there, versus come in as a gang of 20 and steal items by the garbage bag, even if the $ values are equal, the latter is qualitatively different and has lasting effects that the former does not and may not immediately be apparent in the data collected
What if there's no good argument from data that non-violent crime is bad? Should we just accept it?
When you see someone steal something, it's like hearing a discordant note in a song. It makes you feel bad. I think that feeling is to some degree responsible for all social harmony and we really have no choice but to trust it.
Worse, people are trained and paid to manipulate your guts. Don't be a mark.
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edit: All confidence games rely on people who put their guts first. Trust me.
No, don't, really. There are actual numbers you can consult, and the methods they used to compile those numbers are transparent and can be objected to.
That's not what banality of evil means: "evil acts are not necessarily perpetrated by evil people. Instead, they can simply be the result of bureaucrats dutifully obeying orders".
This is a rather strange article. Rather than focus on a rise in crime, and its impact on communities, it seems to fixate on this one number and downplay the problem to death.
Exactly. Inventory loss is an expense just like any other of the company (cf. rent, utilities, labor, etc.). For those retailers operating on a thin profit margin, an increase in inventory loss expense affects profits just like an increase in rent, utility, or labor expenses.
Sure, but people understand negative numbers. The pony is that if my profit margins are slim, then a smallish loss in theft can be a big deal. Comparing theft loss to gross sales just obscures the reality.
People may understand negative numbers, but if I read a title that said "Retail theft accounts for -15% of net profit for Walmart", I'd be pretty confused.
Hell, I'd say comparing theft to gross sales is most fitting comparison, as it's the cost that the consumer actually sees. 50% of gross sales would mean for each 2 sales of an item, 1 gets stolen. Maybe it doesn't give a good view of how much it impacts a business with theft being priced in, but it sure does paint a good picture of how much theft happens.
You can easily avoid negative percentages by rephrasing. e.g., "Walmart profits are down 15% because of retail theft."
Theft loss makes sense to present in relation to profits because the thieves in these cases resell the goods. The profits that the retailer would have made are literally transferred to the thief. The retailer still has its fixed expenses (rent, utilities, labor), so the theft basically comes directly out of the bottom line.
What is this article?! What's the point? It's seemingly arguing in favor of ignoring the crime by downplaying it. That's crazy, and also probably part of the problem.
Article makes no mention of the policies that explicitly prevent authorities from apprehending shoplifters, from lowering requirements of arrest for less than ~$900 value, to defunding the police. There is no mention of any of this, yet it still tries to justify this by alluding to how little impact it causes on the large corporation. Not only is that besides the point, but think about the wellbeing of the store workers, and the customers witnesses, which will certainly change their behavior adding to the losses in the long run.
This states that thefts under $950 are still illegal, but the actual amount of prosecution that happens is still up to the DA. I'm interested in how many of these cases (as a percentage) are actually prosecuted.
Probably not many, because prosecuting a case in court is expensive, resources are finite, and doing a trial or grand-jury for $500 is difficult to justify.
Texas has far more lax gun laws. If somebody was robbing a store they could very easily be shot and the police wouldn't bat an eye. Good luck trying to do that in California.
I suggest you consult the Texas Penal Code or an attorney before drawing that conclusion. In no state is there a defense against using deadly force to stop someone fleeing from the theft of a third person's property. If you used deadly force against some guy who ran out of the Walgreens with an armload of cough syrup, you'd attract a manslaughter charge, minimum.
There are multiple cases where people have argued they were justified in shooting a thief and won. I am only aware of people who owned the business themselves not employees, so there could be issues there.
In California you almost certainly won't win in a case like that. In Texas depending on the situation you very easily could.
It is of course not a guarantee and if the person is running away and you shoot them in the back you will probably lose.
The issue is whether crimes are being prosecuted and criminals are actually prevented simply stealing some more the next day.
This typifies why most of the fact checks from mainstream media organizations are worse than useless.. they're literally anti-informative. But left wingers get to keep feeling smug while they wonder why all the walgreens are leaving town...
Even if it's decriminalized, it's still a violation and the police can still show up and stop it (like a speeding ticket). Police have not been defunded. They don't show up because they are protesting the new district attorney and trying to make him look bad.
The police in a nearby town were explicitly forbidden from issue citations or removing the residents of an unofficial homeless encampment that took over a city street two blocks from the police station, a county jail, and an official homeless encampment. Piles of stolen bikes. Harassment of employees and customers at local businesses. Frequent trespassing. Assaults of other homeless people, sometimes with weapons. Vandalism. All totally fine.
It took years and the death of a homeless person by being burned alive for the 'compassionate' city council to do something about the problem. Their solution was to put up 2-hour parking signs—it was already illegal to park for more than 72 hours—and finally allow the police to do their job.
I think the purpose of the article is to point out that a large retail association / corporate interest group is most likely lying to push an agenda or policies of their own.
I don't believe the group's claims of damages. Could you visualize stealing 3.6 Billion dollars worth of retail items in just San Francisco and Oakland a year? Making up such a figure serves no one any good, especially not your own interests because it reduces your credibility.
Many stores have closed, and it wouldn't be a stretch to connect a bad shopping experience to lower sales, to then having to close the store, which could easily be millions of dollars that year. We can argue whether that was the only factor for these closed stores, but it's certainly a factor.
It can still be an exaggerated number, but not only does the article offer no details as to how exactly this number was determined (which would have been interesting), it also fails to mention the potential intentions of why stores would report that... maybe it's the only way to get some attention to UNDO some of the legislation that has caused it.
The point is that the supposed wave of retail crime sweeping the nation is probably bullshit, or in the very least there is no data to support it, which I would expect would be important to people reading HN.
There are videos floating around, and many people in these cities like SF/LA can tell you of some experience. If calling out the large retail store's bullshit is the point, then I would find a breakdown of that dollar estimate interesting, but it seems the intention is to turn a blind eye, potentially making things even worse by keeping people in denial.
Why not make it mandatory (otherwise it will be a factor of competition to not have one) to install airlock-like gates in stores that sell expensive stuff, like they do in banks? These can also detect weapons.
I don't think that these smash-and-grab thieves will dare to upgrade themselves to armed robberies or hostage taking in this case, because that easily carries a death penalty which, given how many cameras are everywhere, will be nearly impossible to avoid.
I have a relative who worked at Walgreens in the bay area. Mind blowing daily theft. The walgreen shut down.
Local politicians say theft is falling. But at least this location did not report each theft - it wasn't worth it, they'd be busy filling out forms to report theft all day and even if caught nothing would happen.
The big risk was actually that a thief would be caught and get hurt and then sue. There was a much higher chance of consequences for that then the theft itself. This location at least went to extreme lengths to tell employees not to stop the thefts.