7 ms·

I started reading the article with the same viewpoint you have, but I found the arguments reasonably persuasive. Dollar General and similar are willing to sell

• lopmotr 6y ago
  Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? Perhaps they just need more policing. How does a shop prevent a person from shooting somebody else in its carpark? Even then, won't they just shoot each other in the street outside the carpark instead? Without the shop, won't they shoot each other at home? It's hard to see that it's causing crime rather than just being the place where inevitable crime happens more often.
  • chii 6y ago
    > prevent violent crime? well, i don't think that's ever the mandate of the police - they are there to punish after the fact, not prevent before the event.
    • lordnacho 6y ago
      This is like saying the health authorities have no interest in what you eat, they just treat you after you show up with a heart attack.
    • ARandomerDude 6y ago
      This is an overly simplistic view. If law enforcement isn't a deterrent, even in principle, why do it?
      • baddox 6y ago
        The fact that the view leads you to ask “why do it?” does not mean that it is an overly simplistic view.
    • cheesecracker 6y ago
      What a nonsensical belief.
      • donw 6y ago
        A belief upheld by the supreme court: Warren v. District of Columbia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
        • aliante 6y ago
          Nope. Just that police are not liable for failing to prevent crime.
          • donw 6y ago
            How are those different in practice? (Genuine question, no snark intended)
            • aliante 6y ago
              If I blow up a production system through an error, my employer can fire me. They generally cannot sue me for the costs of their losses. There can still be consequences, just not compensation for losses.
          • baddox 6y ago
            If you are not liable for failing to do some thing then by definition you are not responsible for doing that thing.
            • aliante 6y ago
              No. I cannot be reasonably sued for blowing up my company's software systems for a failure on my part as an employee. It doesn't mean I am not responsible for keeping them up and running. You can fire me. You cannot successfully sue me for the costs of my failure.
  • dpeck 6y ago
    | Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? There have been several Supreme Court cases that have answered that question with a hard “No”
    • ReptileMan 6y ago
      While it may not be job of the police, it is definitely in the mandate of the local government. How they achieve it is their own problem. You are owed security in the streets not by the PD, but by the mayor.
      • dpeck 6y ago
        Through what means?
        • hedora 6y ago
          Community outreach, mental health care and drug rehabilitation programs have all been proven effective at reducing violent crime. However, education is even more effective on a per-dollar and quality of life basis. Ohio used to have one of the best public school systems in the region. Now, there’s a saying in Ohio: “We cut our schools so much, our neighbors are making fun of us, and out neighbors include Kentucky and West Virginia!” The saying popped up when both those states started beating Ohio on standardized tests, if I remember right. It was partly because those states improved their schools, but largely because Ohio slashed funding.
    • aliante 6y ago
      > There have been several Supreme Court cases that have answered that question with a hard “No” No, they cannot be sued for failing to prevent crime. You are not guaranteed a crime free life by the presence of or even reports to the police force.
  • CaptainZapp 6y ago
    > Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? It seems that Walmart is of the opinion that all crime, no matter how lowly, should be handled by Police[1] [1] https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-safety/walmart-police/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-safety/wa...
• fuckyah 6y ago
  Is it the job of the store to keep people safe or your underfunded/defunded police?
• core-questions 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Have you seen some of the very glassed-in sorts of "safe" stores that exist in high crime areas? Tons of bulletproof glass, nothing directly accessible without asking the cashier. It doesn't scale to any kind of a store where sales are made by people walking around and seeing items and being inspired to buy them. It only works for gas stations and restaurants, for the most part, and even then it's a hassle for the staff. > whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe Never mind economics, it might just be logistically impossible unless you invest heavily in security personnel, who really won't do very much in the event of any kind of more serious criminal action. Food deserts, etc. form in high crime areas because the crime drives them away. The current anti-police attitude is going to make this worse in the short term; I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll. > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. What does that last bit actually mean? How do stolen items "externalize as violence"? It sounds like GPT-3 regurgitated a sociology textbook.
  • austhrow743 6y ago
    Externalities are costs of doing business that you the business don't directly pay. Their point seems pretty straight forward to me. What part of it is confusing?
    • core-questions 6y ago
      Could you maybe just restate it? How are stolen items costs that businesses "don't directly pay"?
      • CharlesHorsey 6y ago
        OP said: > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. So they're saying that the business does pay the cost of stolen items ("shrink") but not the cost of the violence, which is borne by its victims.
• lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Retail has terrible margins. It's financials are public, see the single digit margins: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... It obviously is economically infeasible to make the stores safe. Any store in the neighborhoods where the dollar stores are would find it economically infeasible.
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    Still way better margins than a grocery store (1-3% IIRC). Do you have any idea how turnover might compare?
• kgwgk 6y ago
  > The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies. Anyway, if they did more they would be criticized for treating all their customers as criminals and creating a self-perpetuating threatening environment or whatever.
  • malux85 6y ago
    What a load of rubbish. Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door, and nobody is claiming they are treating all customers as criminals. Everyone understands they are there to stop the few malicious people from stealing or causing trouble.
    • kgwgk 6y ago
      "Is receipt checking a practice that violates civil rights while treating customers as criminals until proven otherwise, or are retailers simply trying to cut shrink and avoid passing on the related costs to the same people who are loudly complaining?" https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-and-wrong-of-receipt-checking.aspx https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-a...
    • rascul 6y ago
      > Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door I have only ever seen this at Best Buy. Perhaps it varies from on area to another, though.
      • blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Even then that guard isn't going to try to stop people, even obvious offenders. They're there to get a good look at you on the way out, and spook the low-effort thieves who may chicken out. Workers comp for 3-5 stitches and a day or two off of work would cost way more than just letting someone walk out with a couple Nintendo games or some headphones.
    • 6y ago
• zozbot234 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Making the dollar store a "safe space" for customers would mean having lots of armed guards around and bulletproof glass everywhere. Also every item behind the counter, like in a general store of old. You just know that the New Yorker would find ways to complain about that, too.
  • chmod775 6y ago
    But that can't be an acceptable solution, can it? If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country. You might as well not pay taxes then.
    • r8ru4rbfhfu 6y ago
      I'm not clear on why any responsibility falls on dollar store here either way. Dollar store didn't place unsafe individuals in the community and dollar store didn't have a say in structuring the police force. Is the idea that if you're going to do business in a crap neighborhood then you become responsible for fixing it?
    • blaser-waffle 6y ago
      None of those points follow or make sense. > If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country Welp might as well just move the dollar general to mexico! Those poor people will have to travel there to buy things. > You might as well not pay taxes then That makes sense if you're a charity, but dollar general is a for-profit org -- and does make a profit.
• curryst 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. One thing I'm curious about is the liability for having armed security guards. I'm operating under the assumption that unarmed security guards are unlikely to have a real impact on the armed robbery rate, so I'm assuming that armed guards are what we're discussing here. Quick Googling says Dollar General generates $2.3 billion in profit per year, across "over 16000 stores" from their site. So the average yearly profit per store is roughly $143k (which is surprisingly low to me). A security guard per store is going to eat a lot of that, but it's probably feasible to do. I think the bigger question is whether Dollar General could potentially bear any liability in the event one of their security guards shot someone, and I would be stunned if they didn't bear any liability. Even the legal costs associated with winning a wrongful death suit could eat an entire year's profits. I strongly suspect that is the reason why they fire any employee who is carrying a handgun. As an agent of Dollar General, Dollar General probably assumes some liability for shootings that happen while on the job. I also suspect the violent crime is part of the reason other groceries moved away. Being undercut certainly doesn't help, but other groceries were faced with the same economic decision regarding customer safety, as well as damage to their brand from being associated with violent crime. One solution would be to place police officers at or very near these stores. I lived in a college neighborhood at one point, and there was a convenience store that was well known for being robbed almost weekly. The police set up a substation there, and it basically vanished. On the other hand, that was one store, not an entire chain, and it was the campuses PD that set it up. And campus PD had precious little else to do at night other than rounding up underage drinkers.
  • edmundsauto 6y ago
    It's also unclear whether the police substation discouraged the crimes or pushed them down the street.