6 ms·

The great American shoplifting freakout

18 points by Terretta 5y ago

refurb 5y ago
This is such a weird article. It seems to hyper focus on shoplifting and uses explanation like “oh, that’s armed robbery, not shoplifting”. Yeah? That’s worse though?
- dogleash 5y ago
  When I read an article like this I remember to ask myself “what does the author want to be true?” Then you can start making sense of it.
  - KwisatzHaderack 5y ago
    Ding Ding Ding! The author is pushing a narrative, not reporting reality.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Yes, that's the point. Its a common trick to lump things together but highlight one of them that's actually materially smaller to make something seem worse. e.g. if you wanted to make an event where 1 person died and 20 suffered minor injuries sound even worse you could say "21 people killed or injured" and be technically correct but misleading.
  - refurb 5y ago
    But this article is doing that in reverse. Finding out that miscategorized shoplifting cases were in fact armed robbery, is worse, but author paints it as better.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  I’m not sure what you are trying to say, the article does try to separate the types of thefts and dive into the details but my impression was that their discovery was the numbers were not nearly as bad CNN et al have been reporting or implying (and were actually still down from pre-2020 numbers, which had been falling for ages)
josephcsible 5y ago
People stealing stuff is way up, and that's a really really bad thing. The fact that there's a bunch of different crimes for different kinds of stealing, and that sometimes the wrong word gets used, doesn't make it any less bad.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  > People stealing stuff is way up The article says the opposite, that robberies are down and shoplifting is up from 2020 which ”is still not enough to bring the area’s theft rate back up to pre-pandemic levels, which themselves had been dropping for decades.”
mattzito 5y ago
This article is sadly a little disjointed in how it articulates the various problems, and I don't live in SF, so it's hard for me to assess the specifics that are being described there, but as someone who lives in NYC where there are similar concerns (and from speaking with police acquaintances) it seems like there are a few things happening: - "Organized" rings of theft are nothing new - groups of kids (and adults!) figure out that product X are easily acquired, aggregated, and resold and there's a mini-wave of thefts of X - a few years back it was ice cream, Tide detergent has been a thing for a while, etc. These things get sorted out through some combination of the stores making product X harder to get (glass doors, sensors) and police arresting some of the folks responsible, and it drops off quickly. - Random shoplifting is up a lot - from seeing a lot of this in nyc, it's usually the same thing - random person (often homeless) shuffles into a store, walks to wherever, grabs something, runs on out. A couple of times I've seen a store manager look at someone coming in and say "I just want you to know I'm watching you", and they turn around and head back out - Bail reform/defund the police is a massive red herring - from speaking with cop friends, while they're annoyed about "defund" and bail reform, there isn't actually any evidence there's any correlation between the two, other that in some cases prosecutors were using bail as a cudgel to keep low-level offenders in jail. The cops in general feel that was a feature, not a bug, despite that not being the point of bail. Otherwise, overtime is up, violent crime has mostly stabilized or gone down, reopening of the homeless shelters have made it easier for homeless people to get indoors which reduces the amount of police interaction with them. The wave of police retirements in nyc were good for everyone - police pensions are dependent on your most recent (or highest?) two years of income, so pandemic + protests mean that lots of cops are going to make more money by retiring last year vs. the coming 4-5 years with budget uncertainty. For the rest of everyone staying, more overtime. In my neighborhood, the overall response has been for uniformed, on-duty police to be posted in a lot of the stores during high-traffic times. From chatting with managers, it's had a huge benefit. The cops think it's boring duty, but it beats being out in the cold. All this to say - there's lots of stuff getting stolen, but it doesn't actually impact the businesses besides them locking up more stuff (it's annoying to get toothpase now). There's no grand wave of organized crime, at least any more than there was before. Cops are not "under siege". Everything is fine relative to everything else that's on fire in the world right now.
egberts1 5y ago
The best way to solve this problem in the quickest manner possible is to: - Jackup the price so that the cheapest item is just above the state law’s minimum threshold for a theft that can be promptly filed by its district attorney. Then you discount the item by its inverse percentage of its price increase … at the cash register. - Problem solved.
- JoeyBananas 5y ago
  I severely doubt that would work.
  - egberts1 5y ago
    I merely co-opted the current legal framework for protection of merchants.
xyzzy21 5y ago
Semantic BS in the article but it's The Atlantic so not a surprise. Akin to AOC's claim "it's not really theft".

18 points by Terretta 5y ago

This is such a weird article. It seems to hyper focus on shoplifting and uses explanation like “oh, that’s armed robbery, not shoplifting”. Yeah? That’s worse though?

dogleash 5y ago
When I read an article like this I remember to ask myself “what does the author want to be true?” Then you can start making sense of it.
- KwisatzHaderack 5y ago
  Ding Ding Ding! The author is pushing a narrative, not reporting reality.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Yes, that's the point. Its a common trick to lump things together but highlight one of them that's actually materially smaller to make something seem worse. e.g. if you wanted to make an event where 1 person died and 20 suffered minor injuries sound even worse you could say "21 people killed or injured" and be technically correct but misleading.
- refurb 5y ago
  But this article is doing that in reverse. Finding out that miscategorized shoplifting cases were in fact armed robbery, is worse, but author paints it as better.
tehwebguy 5y ago
I’m not sure what you are trying to say, the article does try to separate the types of thefts and dive into the details but my impression was that their discovery was the numbers were not nearly as bad CNN et al have been reporting or implying (and were actually still down from pre-2020 numbers, which had been falling for ages)

josephcsible 5y ago

People stealing stuff is way up, and that's a really really bad thing. The fact that there's a bunch of different crimes for different kinds of stealing, and that sometimes the wrong word gets used, doesn't make it any less bad.

tehwebguy 5y ago
> People stealing stuff is way up The article says the opposite, that robberies are down and shoplifting is up from 2020 which ”is still not enough to bring the area’s theft rate back up to pre-pandemic levels, which themselves had been dropping for decades.”

mattzito 5y ago

This article is sadly a little disjointed in how it articulates the various problems, and I don't live in SF, so it's hard for me to assess the specifics that are being described there, but as someone who lives in NYC where there are similar concerns (and from speaking with police acquaintances) it seems like there are a few things happening: - "Organized" rings of theft are nothing new - groups of kids (and adults!) figure out that product X are easily acquired, aggregated, and resold and there's a mini-wave of thefts of X - a few years back it was ice cream, Tide detergent has been a thing for a while, etc. These things get sorted out through some combination of the stores making product X harder to get (glass doors, sensors) and police arresting some of the folks responsible, and it drops off quickly. - Random shoplifting is up a lot - from seeing a lot of this in nyc, it's usually the same thing - random person (often homeless) shuffles into a store, walks to wherever, grabs something, runs on out. A couple of times I've seen a store manager look at someone coming in and say "I just want you to know I'm watching you", and they turn around and head back out - Bail reform/defund the police is a massive red herring - from speaking with cop friends, while they're annoyed about "defund" and bail reform, there isn't actually any evidence there's any correlation between the two, other that in some cases prosecutors were using bail as a cudgel to keep low-level offenders in jail. The cops in general feel that was a feature, not a bug, despite that not being the point of bail. Otherwise, overtime is up, violent crime has mostly stabilized or gone down, reopening of the homeless shelters have made it easier for homeless people to get indoors which reduces the amount of police interaction with them. The wave of police retirements in nyc were good for everyone - police pensions are dependent on your most recent (or highest?) two years of income, so pandemic + protests mean that lots of cops are going to make more money by retiring last year vs. the coming 4-5 years with budget uncertainty. For the rest of everyone staying, more overtime. In my neighborhood, the overall response has been for uniformed, on-duty police to be posted in a lot of the stores during high-traffic times. From chatting with managers, it's had a huge benefit. The cops think it's boring duty, but it beats being out in the cold. All this to say - there's lots of stuff getting stolen, but it doesn't actually impact the businesses besides them locking up more stuff (it's annoying to get toothpase now). There's no grand wave of organized crime, at least any more than there was before. Cops are not "under siege". Everything is fine relative to everything else that's on fire in the world right now.

egberts1 5y ago

The best way to solve this problem in the quickest manner possible is to: - Jackup the price so that the cheapest item is just above the state law’s minimum threshold for a theft that can be promptly filed by its district attorney. Then you discount the item by its inverse percentage of its price increase … at the cash register. - Problem solved.

JoeyBananas 5y ago
I severely doubt that would work.
- egberts1 5y ago
  I merely co-opted the current legal framework for protection of merchants.

xyzzy21 5y ago

Semantic BS in the article but it's The Atlantic so not a surprise. Akin to AOC's claim "it's not really theft".