The “crime panic” was a myth. But an analysis by The Appeal shows the narrative helped local police buy facial recognition software, drones, license plate readers, social media surveillance tech, and more.
Who was panicking? I don’t care if some chain stores get robbed
Corporate America, who the cops are actually here to protect, not us.
Yet, has a single shoplifter been arrested in the last 20 years?
Is this a joke? Some cities have forced Walmart to pay for satellite police offices because of how often they call to have shoplifters arrested. They’re a major drain on local resources.
Maybe it’s a California thing. The police take pride in not doing their job.
Stupid suburban white people, maybe?
There are people that think if you walk around downtown Brooklyn you’ll be double mugged. People of the land. Common clay of the new West.
I heard two people yesterday at work saying they won’t arrest you if you have less than 1200 dollars worth of stuff. They’ll just follow you around until you get to that much. People are idiots that believe the dumbest things. Anyone who thinks they are going to walk out of Walmart with a cart with of $500 worth of shit and they aren’t going to call the police and get arrested if they aren’t gone before the police (who are normally in the parking lot already here) get there is an idiot.
The prison system makes money off those people going to jail. The largest private prison company is from here. “But the News said!”
$1200 is when it becomes a felony (at least where you are it seems). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some stores’ loss prevention didn’t physically stop a person until they know they’ve hit that threshold. Most stores won’t stop people at all for liability reasons, so maybe they start taking it more seriously when it hits the felony threshold.
Maybe local police don’t want them to call them every time there’s a misdemeanor level shoplifting, because who fucking cares.
The prison system makes money off those people going to jail. The largest private prison company is from here. “But the News said!”
Prison and jail are two different things. If it’s about private prisons making money, then it would make sense to go for felonies over misdemeanors. You generally don’t go to prison for misdemeanor shoplifting so nobody is making money in that case.
$1000 is a felony here. And less than that is up to a year in jail and $2500 fine.
No they aren’t going to physically stop you, they are going to call the police, and report your tags and report your face.
Yes jail and prison are different. People wind up on probation for stealing less than $50 worth of things. Unless everyone is stealing from the place all the time, it is always worth it on their end to report stupid shit like that. Keeps police around their parking lot, which cuts down on more crime. They aren’t going to report everything, but you’re not taking a 65" TV out the front door which is only about $400-500 dollars without getting a call
I just said it wouldn’t surprise me if they did… Aside from that, I was just arguing that the whole, “they’re going after the small ones too so prisons can make more money” just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know about the US, but in Spain if you steal less than 400€ it’s not considered a felony, just a lesser crime, and they let you go with a slap on the wrist. Not saying that cops are going to follow you around until you steal more though lol.
As a suburban white person, fuck a chain. If you see someone stealing from one of the big guys, no you fucking didn’t.
But I know I ain’t the only guy in the burbs. And I know my neighborhood ain’t the same as the ones 30-40 miles north. I can absolutely imagine those folks would be terrified if they found out that I didn’t give a shit about folks stealing from Walmart or Kroger.
You will once the prices will go up to offset losses to theft. The theft doesn’t hit the chains, it hits your pocket.
Even if everthing they were saying was true (it wasn’t), the amount of shoplifted goods pales in comparison with the amount of money their CEOs pocket just because they feel like. If you’re really concerned about the losses, maybe that’s what we need to panic about
Stores have a obscene loss rate from workers damaging product, forgetting to scan it out, it simply coming broken and other such “Just business” costs. Theft is seriously just not a problem. I work at a Fred Myers and awhile back we locked up our soap isle and whatever. Know what we do now? We leave that shit unlocked because it’s stupid and a waste of people’s time to have to go and open it up. Know what else we did? We installed a new system for the carts which is supposed to prevent theft (if you don’t go through self checkout or a register one of the wheels locks up when you try to leave). I has been believe 3 months now. It’s either still not actually been activated or people who steel stuff don’t use carts… weird. And my final thing is how just completely irrelevant even pretty significant numbers are in the grand scheme of things. I know for a fact we’ve had 10k worth of stuff get yoinked. Good chunk of money, no debating that however how much of an impact does that actually make on the store? A single department makes more than that in a day in profit. If that doesn’t immediately seem possible that’s only 100 people spending $100 each (assuming 100% profits for simplicity). That’s like an hour ish if two registers are open and self checkout is closed.
TLDR theft (at least for the big stores) is completely irrelevant, it’s such a small slice of the pie compared to other losses.
Well good thing the entire thing was fake then.
I worked in a rural county where there were roads so bad, so riddled with potholes, that you could barely drive more than 5 mph. Undulating speedbumps and you’d have to zigzag to avoid the holes large enough to catch your wheel entirely.
The county’s solution to poor response times from 911 calls? Cops bought a humvee.
Never doubt that cops in the United States will leverage any and every horror if it gives them the upper hand.
Thafuq did you think it was for? Us? 🥲
