5 ms·

When store employees are told not to physically detain any shoplifter, it hardly matters at all if they tell a serial shoplifter to leave the store. The shopl

When store employees are told not to physically detain any shoplifter, it hardly matters at all if they tell a serial shoplifter to leave the store. The shoplifter will walk around the confronting employee, grab whatever they like off the shelves, and walk out without paying for it. (I've seen this happen numerous times at 7-11, where the facial recognition is being run by store employees using their eyeballs/brains.) The real victims of this will be the false positives. People who follow the rules, but get incorrectly classified as shoplifters. They will be the ones who are actually turned away at the door.

swiley 5y ago
At some point (at least on the east cost) you end up with legit armed private (or public, I can't tell honestly) security at the front.
derefr 5y ago
Humans won’t detain anyone, but probably in the future there will be mechanistic countermeasures — e.g. the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.) Unmanned stores in the Amazon Go mould are already switching from turnstiles to airlock-style entryways; these can easily recognize and deny shoplifters access. (Never mind that these stores also usually have some form of positive identification, e.g. a card tap or hand-print scan being required to enter; so it’d really just be a matter of blacklisting the account associated with your credential.) There’s no reason that manned stores couldn’t adopt these more-strict entry access systems as well; manned stores just haven’t invested in such technology yet, because they don’t need it in the way unmanned stores do (where an unmanned store without an entry-access system could literally experience 100% “shrinkage”, if someone decided to back a truck up and start loading.) Alternately, the facial recognition could just trigger a phonecall; which, combined with a simple policy that any car belonging to a shoplifter has no right to park in the lot, would mean that such cars would have a tow called on them the second the shoplifter gets out of their car and walks into view of a camera. This wouldn’t work in most of the world, but in the car-centered US, I could see it being a very effective deterrent.
- MichaelGroves 5y ago
  I recently saw a viral video of a seagull shoplifting a bag of chips. The automatic doors didn't open for the seagull, so the bird just waited until a permitted human approached the door. A "mantrap" entrance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control) ) could solve this, but I think many stores don't have the space for it. That 7-11 doesn't. Also, neither the cops nor the towing company will show up in time to do anything about it.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Thank you; a mantrap was exactly what I was trying to describe in my other comments, but didn't know the word for it. It's not true that a 7-11 doesn't have room for a mantrap; remember that an unmanned store doesn't have a cash register / checkout counter, or any space behind such for a person to stand. A manned store could be retrofitted into a secure unmanned store by installing the mantrap entrance into exactly that area.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  > the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.) This is illegal in my state. And, I'm guessing, in most other US states as well.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Do you mean that denying entry is illegal, or denying exit is? Because these unmanned stores do let you leave; they just have separate entry and exit doors, which have mutual-exclusion locking (like an airlock) such that nobody can enter the store through the exit door by getting someone inside the store to open the inner door. (You could slip into the little individual exit hall through the outer exit door; but the inner door in the little exit hall would remain locked until you left and it detected there were no longer people in the hall. Presuming a high-traffic store, this also wouldn't hold anything up, as other customers would continue to exit through the bank of other exit halls to either side of you.) I haven't checked, but presumably pulling a fire alarm inside the store would disable all this security, flinging both the entry and exit doors open. But you can't reach the fire alarm in the exit hall; it's not "inside" the store. The only thing you can do in the exit hall, is exit (which you are always free to do.)

swiley 5y ago

At some point (at least on the east cost) you end up with legit armed private (or public, I can't tell honestly) security at the front.

derefr 5y ago

Humans won’t detain anyone, but probably in the future there will be mechanistic countermeasures — e.g. the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.) Unmanned stores in the Amazon Go mould are already switching from turnstiles to airlock-style entryways; these can easily recognize and deny shoplifters access. (Never mind that these stores also usually have some form of positive identification, e.g. a card tap or hand-print scan being required to enter; so it’d really just be a matter of blacklisting the account associated with your credential.) There’s no reason that manned stores couldn’t adopt these more-strict entry access systems as well; manned stores just haven’t invested in such technology yet, because they don’t need it in the way unmanned stores do (where an unmanned store without an entry-access system could literally experience 100% “shrinkage”, if someone decided to back a truck up and start loading.) Alternately, the facial recognition could just trigger a phonecall; which, combined with a simple policy that any car belonging to a shoplifter has no right to park in the lot, would mean that such cars would have a tow called on them the second the shoplifter gets out of their car and walks into view of a camera. This wouldn’t work in most of the world, but in the car-centered US, I could see it being a very effective deterrent.

MichaelGroves 5y ago
I recently saw a viral video of a seagull shoplifting a bag of chips. The automatic doors didn't open for the seagull, so the bird just waited until a permitted human approached the door. A "mantrap" entrance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control) ) could solve this, but I think many stores don't have the space for it. That 7-11 doesn't. Also, neither the cops nor the towing company will show up in time to do anything about it.
- derefr 5y ago
  Thank you; a mantrap was exactly what I was trying to describe in my other comments, but didn't know the word for it. It's not true that a 7-11 doesn't have room for a mantrap; remember that an unmanned store doesn't have a cash register / checkout counter, or any space behind such for a person to stand. A manned store could be retrofitted into a secure unmanned store by installing the mantrap entrance into exactly that area.
JohnFen 5y ago
> the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.) This is illegal in my state. And, I'm guessing, in most other US states as well.
- derefr 5y ago
  Do you mean that denying entry is illegal, or denying exit is? Because these unmanned stores do let you leave; they just have separate entry and exit doors, which have mutual-exclusion locking (like an airlock) such that nobody can enter the store through the exit door by getting someone inside the store to open the inner door. (You could slip into the little individual exit hall through the outer exit door; but the inner door in the little exit hall would remain locked until you left and it detected there were no longer people in the hall. Presuming a high-traffic store, this also wouldn't hold anything up, as other customers would continue to exit through the bank of other exit halls to either side of you.) I haven't checked, but presumably pulling a fire alarm inside the store would disable all this security, flinging both the entry and exit doors open. But you can't reach the fire alarm in the exit hall; it's not "inside" the store. The only thing you can do in the exit hall, is exit (which you are always free to do.)