How the retail lobby sold a $45-billion whopper about organized shoplifting

*Note: there is another thread ( https://www.pmbug.com/threads/update-on-their-black-lives-matter-operation.4692/ ) that's similar to this but it's a bit over the top for me.

LA Times

Column: How the retail lobby sold a $45-billion whopper about organized shoplifting​

If you're making a list of big news stories of 2023, here's one you might want to check twice: The surge in "organized retail crime," or gang shoplifting.

I've written before about the news media's fixation on this phenomenon despite the unreliability of retailers' claims about it, and especially when compared with the much more prevalent crime of employer wage theft, which gets almost no coverage.

But there's been a recent development on the topic, which demands your attention. Put simply, the retail lobby has admitted that its most eye-catching and widely publicized statistic about it is a lie.

Read the rest:

While I appreciated the meat of that report, wading through so much tortured prose was difficult. The author must think his farts smell like roses.

pmbug said:

The author must think his farts smell like roses.

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Don't they all

Reads like a hit piece on Trump.

Truth be told... I'm old enough to remember when Mayor Richard J. Daley back in 1969? gave the order to shoot to kill any rioters on the streets of Chicago.

Rioting ended that night without a shot fired.

A store owner caught well-dressed women shoplifting—then posted the videos to TikTok​

Videos of masked men brazenly ransacking San Francisco store shelves and displays have flooded social media feeds in recent years. But recently, a viral TikTok exposed a different breed of culprit: well-dressed white women carefully pocketing goods.

The video, viewed over 80,000 times, shows the thieves casually swiping merchandise from Post.script., a gift shop in Lower Pacific Heights. For Chandler Tang, the shop’s owner, it spotlighted how crafty shoplifters can be, challenging stereotypes of who is behind the retail theft crisis plaguing the city and region.

After the second theft in one week late last month, Tang was at a loss for what to do. The gift shop, which opened in 2019, has dealt with shoplifters in the past, but experiencing two thefts back-to-back was unsettling.

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Hysterical! So now we are supposed to believe that it isn't organized gangs of blacks looting businesses like all the videos portray, but rather those insidious well-dressed White women who are the real scourge to society.

Shoplifters rampant
When everything permitted
Society dies

Well, I see gaslighting the public by "nooze" establishments, is permitted.

Who ya gonna believe. The videos we see posted, that correspond to closing stores, abandoned regions, locked-up shelves...or some smarmy "journalist" out of the Circle-D School of Mediuh Ethics and Public Nudging.

CiscoKid said:

So now we are supposed to believe that it isn't organized gangs of blacks looting businesses like all the videos portray, but rather those insidious well-dressed White women who are the real scourge to society.

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Yah.

Rich people who make millions in money-changing and insider trading, are ALWAYS the ones to load up bags with Hot Pockets and leave without paying.

Especially when well dressed. Normal middle-class behavior - it's how White Privilege was born.

I can find 100 videos of feral blacks looting stores in two minutes for every story about a well-dressed, wealthy woman stealing makeup or something.

Orwell was right. Sad that so many blindly believe the lies spun by the corrupt media.

SilverSamurai said:

Shoplifters rampant
When everything permitted
Society dies

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Enjoy reading these. Reminds me of the quatrains of Nostradamus.

Last week I was in a suburban Walmart to pick up a script for someone. Took a walk through the men's clothing section. Underwear, t shirts and socks locked up. Big turn off for me.

Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America​

Several years ago, Americans emerging from the early days of the pandemic found that aisles at some of the country’s biggest retailers had begun to change. After a year of shoppers mainlining online deliveries and battling unpredictable product shortages, stores finally replenished their shelves, but with a catch: Many products were locked behind acrylic barriers. The plastic shields, once used sparingly to secure certain kinds of expensive or heavily regulated items such as cellphones or cigarettes, were now holding hostage run-of-the-mill toiletries and cleaning supplies. To negotiate their release, you’d need a key-wielding store employee. If no one was around—and no one ever was—you could press a call button and hope for the best.

The practice has since metastasized to so many kinds of products in so many more stores—big-box discounters, beauty retailers, chain pharmacies—that it’s become routine to discover entire aisles transformed into untouchable product galleries armored in plexiglass. The whole thing has a whiff of pawnshop, which might actually be unfair to pawnshops. They, at least, have someone ready and waiting to take things out of lockup.

More:

searcher said:

Took a walk through the men's clothing section. Underwear, t shirts and socks locked up. Big turn off for me.

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That lets ya know you are in a high crime area. It cost$ to install all that crap, and they don't go to that expense due to nothing much having been stolen.

Where I live, we don't see any of what you are describing.
.....but I also live in the largest R controlled city in America.

Coincidence?

Nope.

It's because here, they'll stop you and have you arrested for stealing a pack of gum.
.., ain't no $900 threshold on shoplifting in order to be prosecuted.

Also, the reason they have those thresholds in some areas, is because there is so much shoplifting, that to charge everyone stealing less than that would require more police/court resources than they have available.


It's the lib/dem and supposedly "progressive" policies those cities adopt that caused your shopping experience to become a big turn off for ya.

On a related mote, I saw where the courts have given the green light to Texas bussing more illegals your way.

Get ready, your problem caused by Joe amd Kackles is gonna get worse.

Joe King said:

That lets ya know you are in a high crime area. It cost$ to install all that crap, and they don't go to that expense due to nothing much having been stolen

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I figured that since I was there I'd pick up a pack of pocket t-shirts. When I saw they were locked up I split. Didn't expect this where I was. Oh well.

Dollar General in Ft. Lauderdale ghetto off Broward Blvd has deodorant and many other items locked up. As soon as the lease runs out I would leave the area.

searcher said:

I figured that since I was there I'd pick up a pack of pocket t-shirts. When I saw they were locked up I split. Didn't expect this where I was. Oh well.

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People tend to get what they vote for, and are willing to put up with.

searcher said:

Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America

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If police locked up their shoplifters...there wouldn't be a need to lock up products, and do whatever that did to America.