OTOOH, I have worked in SF for 24 years. Back then I don't think I ever saw anyone shoplift. I'm sure it happened, but I never personally witnessed it. In the last year or so, I have personally witnessed people shoplifting in various SF retail establishments probably more than 30 times. On only two occasions have I seen anyone attempt do anything to try to stop the perpetrator. In my opinion, I think the CNN article is incorrect in its assertions. Based on my personal experiences, I would say it's happening a lot and with increasing regularity. I think the people who do it should be punished.
There’s second order effects as well. When the law abiding witnesses theft, particularly repeated theft, they associate the location with a lack of law and order. If they’re going to steal, what other laws are they willing to break? Do I feel physically safe here?
This has a cascading effect where the law abiding will consciously avoid the locations where these thefts happen, causing even more of them relative to the legitimate customers entering the store. It’s a vicious cycle.
> I think the people who do it should be punished.
Agree. Plus companies have an interest in downplaying the theft rates when it suits them (to encourage shoppers without fear of being surrounded by thieves etc), and other times it’s in their interest to play it up (esp when security costs are too high).
Walgreens made $32 billion in profit last year and they announced all of these store closings about 4 years ago. They're looking to change business models, but it's easier to blame store closures on shoplifting to save face for leaving communities. They have acknowledged this in city council hearings.
That article is playing a bunch of statistical games, like comparing 2022 to 2023 instead of to prior to the mass mob looting incidents, using national data to hide effects of primarily regional issues, citing figures with obvious reporting bias by only counting incidents reported to the police that could do nothing without caring about their severity as a way to cast doubt on the idea that they actually needed to close the stores in the problem areas.
And even then it was forced to admit that shoplifting is up even if one retailer's shrinkage numbers (which includes a lot more than just shoplifting) went down. Never mind their other interventions, like closing stores in problem areas or spending more on security.
You're right to believe your lying eyes here. There were a lot of statistical errors in the article and they all went in the same direction, working to downplay the kind of problems you witnessed first hand.
Umm, I'm sorry sweaty, but since I didn't read this on CNN or the Huffington Post, your lying eyes are guilty of spreading dangerous far-right misinformation.
That's an odd way to frame it when you're citing corporate reports and an executive's statements as evidence that the many videos of groups of people ransacking stores in broad daylight are overblown.
They play with stats a lot, comparing 2022 to 2023, instead of to prior to the problem, using national figures to hide a regional problem, ignoring interventions, etc.
I mean there is a point that a lot of crime is done by a few people, such as the 327 people in New York who were responsible for about 1/3rd of the shoplifting arrests. But I don't think the usual answer to this is going to be "it's okay to do crime, actually."
Maybe the answer should be to incapacitate those 327 people so they don't keep hurting people continually, since it sure looks doubtful that reform is even possible.
If you're stealing from Dollar Tree, you're either truly needy or just in it for the thrill of being antisocial. Their stuff hasn't got any value in the store, much less fenced.
They often sell products that are just overstocked elsewhere. Near me, they've lately been selling bags of Starbucks brand coffee for their typical $1.25, and my wife used to buy a brand of juice that easily cost 2-3x that much elsewhere.
I mean, it's likely not the same as what you'd buy in a Starbuck in the USA. It's was probably packaged for Mexico or someplace, didn't sell, and the overstock was sold to Dollar Tree.
They did this with Colgate Toothpaste a while back. It was a minor scandal. It was real Colgate, but not the USA formula. It was not ADA approved and didn't have the same flouride content.
This is flatly untrue. There are both sophisticated and basic criminal enterprises based around stealing from places like dollar tree and selling to your corner store.
I don't get it, if Dollar Tree sells basically everything for $1.25 the wholesale cost must be so low that corner stores have basically no room to save money by buying stolen goods.
Anyway, if there are really criminal enterprises doing this it seems like it would take marginal investigative work to uncover and nail down.
They’re basically saying that criminal organizations can steal incredibly cheap trinkets and sell them below cost… apparently at volume. Seems ridiculously unlikely.
I don't know about incredibly low priced items (Dollar Tree), but the kjist is correct around organized shoplifting at retail.
Retailers say organized retail crime has made their theft problems only worse. Crime gangs often look to steal products from stores that can easily and quickly be resold on online marketplaces such as Amazon and through other illicit markets.
“More products today are locked up because the problem has gotten so much bigger,” said Lisa LaBruno, the senior executive vice president of retail operations at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “Criminal actors can steal high volumes of products and sell them with anonymity.”
Retailers have supported a bipartisan bill that would require online marketplaces to verify state-issued IDs for millions of high-volume third-party sellers. President Joe Biden supports such a measure and this week also called on Congress to impose liability on online marketplaces that sell stolen goods on their platforms.
Amazon said it does not allow third-party sellers to list stolen goods and works closely with law enforcement, retailers and other partners to stop bad actors.
“We regularly request invoices, purchase orders, or other proofs of sourcing when we have concerns about how a seller may have obtained particular products,” a spokesperson said.
A lot of the official stories about security and theft at retail stores are just not true, of course. Locking up products correlates well with under-staffing: the grocery near me went from having liquor for sale on the shelf and a dedicated checkout counter staffed right there, to having all the liquor locked up and no staff member visible for miles.
And this feels like a plot from a movie. Plausible, to a large extent, but ridiculously improbable. Do you have any references to dig into on this? I'd, sadly, expect that the majority of real "theft" in places like this are going to be wage theft.
Movies have convinced people that theft is this major, glamorous affair. It's really not, 99% of the time. People steal excavators from construction sites. People steal from themselves to defraud their insurance. Employees and managers steal from the stores they work at. Sometimes I leave the office with a dry erase in my purse. And yeah, wage theft is a major problem.
Are you unfamiliar with the multi million dollar business that criminals have figured out? Turns out homeless people don’t steal deodorant for fun but because they’re paid to do so by organized gangs.
Can you engage with comments only through a dense layer of thoughtless hyperrationalism? Or is there a point that's been made here which you're missing?
Are you sure you replied to the right comment? This thread is about the sophisticated and organized homeless gangs robbing us of generic branded eau de toilette
Is anyone truly needy enough to shoplift? I’m not sure how we would get good data but I’ve known a lot of shoplifters and none of them needed the food.
I like this reasoning. To take it further, is anyone truly needy enough to shop at a dollar tree? I’m not sure how we would get good data, but I suspect everybody has what they need at all times based off of the fact that I’ve never known anyone that is starving.
I'm not especially needy, but I enjoy Dollar Tree shopping for a few reasons.
One, it's literally the closest store to my home with any inventory. It's around the corner in my backyard. So that's a plus.
Two, I was introduced to this mode of shopping when I told my friend I needed to purchase a greeting card. Of course, cards cost $4-5 retail and she protested, saying the Dollar Tree would have cards for $1 and under. I found this to be true; they have two-for-ones, and they even have packs of ten. So I pick up all my greeting cards there.
There are other items that are ideal to source from the Dollar Tree. When you want some tacky, simple holiday décor. When you want books full of glittery stickers or markers for a kids' project. Crystal Geyser spring water, or a simple sore-muscle cream that only contains capsaicin.
I don't think choosing where to shop is a question of being needy, but judicious about value vs. cost vs. effort. I do plenty of thrifting and big-box shopping as well. There are certain things where I simply insist on purchasing new/retail and you won't catch me pulling it off the shelf at a thrift.
You've misunderstood the person you're replying to. He's not saying that dollar tree is for poor. He's intentionally making a logical fallacy - 'no one needs to go to the grocery store [in this case, dollar tree] since whenever I visit my friends' houses, they always have food!'
>Or as he puts it: I suspect everybody has what they need at all times based off of the fact that I’ve never known anyone that is starving.
He's making fun of the guy in the original comment, who questioned whether anyone needs to shoplift, because his personal friend circle didn't include people who had to shoplift out of necessity.
This is just bad. You are not making the clever joke you think you are.
For one thing, shopping at Dollar Tree is not an antisocial behavior that harms other people, so you do not need to justify it by saying you needed to do it. You are free to shop at Dollar Tree whether you "need" to or not if it pleases you to do so.
The equivalency you're trying to draw between shoplifting and shopping at Dollar Tree isn't there.
> For one thing, shopping at Dollar Tree is not an antisocial behavior that harms other people
Clearly, anyone who believes “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” would disagree. A fair number of the people who would readily acknowledge that there is ethical consumption under capitalism, and even those that see consumption under capitalism as presumptively-but-not-categorically-ethical would also disagree. [0]
“Having ethics beyond ‘whatever acts of trade are legal are ethical and ‘harmless’ regardless of their context and actual consequences’ is crazy” is, well, I’d describe that as a crazy thing that, apparently, some people believe.
Ethics might as well be religion. People decide based on emotion and come up with reasons after.
If you read an article about Dollar Tree and it makes you feel bad and you don’t want to shop there, that’s your prerogative.
For me, I’m not interested in being guilted into assuming ethical responsibility for the decisions of the Dollar Tree management. I presume they are adults of sound mind so the responsibility for their choices is theirs alone.
FWIW I can probably count on one hand the number of times in my life I’ve shopped at any dollar store so it’s a moot point.
I regularly buy products there. For instance, if I need something for cleaning my car, they often have smaller-sized products (like Armor All wipes in packages of 10 vs the big canister at larger stores). When I was packing up my old house, I bought cheap products for the bathroom after all our good stuff was packed up. I've bought cheap batteries there when I was traveling, shipping tape, etc - all kinds of stuff when I really don't care about the quality or quantity.
Almost 10% of children in the US are food insecure, 60% of Americans can't afford a $1,000 emergency, and 40% can't afford a $400 emergency. We also have a homeless population of 500,000 and rapidly growing. Do you happen to live in a place that's considered to be a bubble?
I’m not arguing that starvation doesn’t exist. I’m arguing that most shoplifters aren’t starving. And if they were, they wouldn’t shoplift food from dollar tree as the food is all in small packages. People who starve don’t become stupid and would likely shoplift more expensive, nutrient dense items.
I like this reasoning. The act of stealing from a dollar store indicates that a person is not starving because a starving person would plan out a more efficient theft at an establishment that carries larger items.
More like there are two piles of food: one large and easy to access, one small and harder. Which is a starving person more likely to take?
Starving people are just as rationale as the next person, there’s no reason to think they stop making decisions the same way a non-starving person would.
I made no logical statement about whether stealing indicates you’re starving or not. I said that starving people are less likely to steal from the dollar store.
This makes sense, the answer is certainly not “the one that’s in front of them at a store that’s likely in the part of town that they live in.” The first thing a starving person does is sit down and do a SWOT analysis of various foodstuffs that factors in location, transportation, and nutrient value. After they finish their individual analyses they compare notes with other members of their criminal cohort and split up territory based off of who is hungry and who is saving up for a Lamborghini Urus.
* Buying anything on sale, because you can't buy anything else, and anything is better than nothing.
* Mom/dad don't bother saying "we'll buy it next paycheck"
* Clothing is something we only buy for the oldest.
If these things are foreign to you, I am very glad. No one should have to deal with these choices.
I will accept the idea that many (most? almost all? i don't care) shoplifters could have paid for the product. That still means the idea that "being poor enough to need to steal" is incomprehensible tells me that you either never experienced poverty, or forgot.
I've been lucky enough to not need to steal to provide for my family. If I was hungry, I'd might steal some food.
If my wife was hungry, I'd do a hell of a lot more than stealing food.
I am originally from one of the poorest countries, and my family constantly struggled with food for about 10 years. So I am well aware of the struggle. As well as I am exposed to poor people who immigrated to the US.
With all of that, no, I don't believe that there are people who actually starve in here. There are extensive food bank networks, generous religious organizations (most of them not that pushy), and in general people in the US are kind, despite what media says. I saw plenty of videos of people from my country showing food they got from a food bank, and most of them highlight how generous it is.
Despite all the struggle, my family never stole. And poor people around me rarely stole as well. Thieves whenever caught were judged by people around, and there was always social pressure to keep everything orderly.
What surprised my in the US is how normalized the whole thing is. It's always "stores have an insurance", "they are just trying to survive", and other excuses from people who never lived in poverty and just want to feel better about themselves.
I was unable to afford food around 1995. I have both dated and had family members on food stamps/EBT, which will easily keep you alive in California and Washington state (don't know about the rest of the nation). I know multiple people who could afford food, but spend it on alcohol/drugs consistently and end up with very little to eat (going to food banks and such).
EBT eligibility varies substantially across the nation. California being on the maximally eligible end of the spectrum AIUI.
Even if you have EBT though, not all stores accept it, and you can't put gas in your car using EBT, nor buy non-food items like booze.
So it's easy to understand why broke people would shoplift. Baby formula in particular is a hot item for shoplifters since it's so easy to turn into cash. (and also why it's locked up near the cigarettes in many stores)
It’s not appropriate or accurate to think that because someone is hungry and can’t afford food that they would steal. That’s stereotyping poor people as criminals.
"{I, a loved one} is hungry; I will steal to feed {myself, them}"
is an amazing thing to me. I am so glad people exist who can't understand this thinking.
Not because of any moral idealism about "stealing is wrong", but the fact the person thinking this has obviously never been in a place where the options were "stealing" or "starvation".
Not to go Les Mis, but it is an easy choice for me if my wife was hungry, to go out and steal some bread.
> Not to go Les Mis, but it is an easy choice for me if my wife was hungry, to go out and steal some bread.
It’s nice you have such certainty. If you were actually starving and wanted to get food for your wife, there are more efficient methods than stealing.
It’s funny that you assume that people don’t know starving or stealing. If it’s obvious to you then you need to rethink your reasoning as while you may find it obvious, you’re wrong as I certainly know both these things.
It’s not idealism to say “stealing is wrong.” That’s the law of the land.
Of course, this article isn’t about starving people stealing food. It’s about jerks stealing from the dollar store. Maybe they are all starving. Probably they aren’t.
If you want to say that it’s ok to steal if you’re starving, then say it.
I’m not sure where you live, but I’m fortunate enough that in my city, state, and country we help people who are hungry so they don’t need to steal. If anyone here steals food, I don’t think it’s due to starvation. Other areas may be different, but I’d like to hear people’s basis for thinking starvation is a significant factor for stealing.
I feel like you’re taking a hypothetical edge situation “starving people just steal and it’s ok for that” and applying it to a situation where criminals are stealing from the dollar store and increasing prices for people who shop there, who happen to be vulnerable populations including people who are hungry and perhaps even starving.
It's not that they truly need it at all. It's that they have gotten so used to doing it due to the non-existent consequences that it has become a way of life for them now.
Until you do it enough times that it adds up to a felony amount. That's when they'll go to the police with the security footage they've been collecting on you the whole time.
That's how they do it these days. They know you're stealing. They don't care about giving you a slap on the wrist. They want to put you in prison.
If retailers really want brick and mortar style shopping, go back to trading post style. Take orders at the front, they pay, wait for the goods to be neatly packaged for them, then leave with goods. It halts all shoplifting and people can have the same selections.
A major advantage of brick-and-mortar is that you can browse and look at things up close. Lose that, and there's very little reason left not to shop online.
That's going to result in needing more employees. When the cost of the shoplifting exceeds the cost of the employees, some companies will probably do that.
In California, it is generally unlawful to defend property. So, like I said, either the state needs to do it for me with its sovereign right to use of force, or it needs to step aside.
Of course the state should enforce the laws - if you look at the New York case someone posted in this subthread they're often already enforcing the laws. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't.
As I asked another person in this subthread - what amount of force should the police be allowed to use against shoplifters?
I'll assume you're being serious with your comment. Shariah has conditions for when Hudud penalties are to be applied. Just because someone stole does not mean the harshest punishment automatically applies. There are factors such as adulthood, not being in a famine, the value stolen being over a certain amount (approx 1gm of gold), and so on. An investigation is conducted and the judge rules.
This is not to say that other punishments cannot apply for those other cases - there's something called Ta'zeer that can be applied. Of course we're not making small of the matter, theft is a very very serious crime, and we'd have a lot less of it if Hudud were applied ;)
Other than that I agree that Shariah would set today's world straight back in place.
There is no way that is correct as any sort of generally true statement.
A random google shows that it's highly sector dependent, but it's probably closer to 20%.
Having worked in consumer electronics, and knowing rough BOM cost of products that we made in the millions, I can say (at least for the companies I worked for), that there wasn't anywhere close to a 300% multiplier, even going from BOM cost to MSRP. Even extreme outliers like Apple (who supposedly have a raw BOM cost of $475 on an MSRP of $1099 for the 14 Pro Max) don't get to 300%. That markup goes directly to Apple; As a retailer, you might be making 10%.
That reflects the lost income potential from the shoplifting. Not just how much money it took to physically build an individual unit (and package and ship and stock it etc).
Now if they never sell at MSRP, then probably a slight discount from MSRP when reporting is fair. But definitely not just the BOM cost or similar…
Isn't the income potential only lost if it causes a loss of a sale (either because it runs out of stock, or if the shoplifter would have otherwise bought it)?
Nope, because shrinkage is an expense against inventory in the accounting books; fundamentally, it's a "tax" on your COGS to get to your revenue. Overreporting losses is just a bit of financial kabuki to shift underperformance over to something other than executive leadership.
This is about stealing something physical, not bittorenting a song.
Eg an Apple laptop has a cost to build (cost being money, materials, time). If Apple sold that laptop at $2k, I don’t think they would value the loss at six figures. Given how little Apple discounts things, they probably value the loss (fairly) around the MSRP or ~10% or that.
