> The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. It has been my understanding that for like at _least

> The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. It has been my understanding that for like at _least_ fifteen, twenty years major retailers have had a "Do not attempt to physically stop shoplifters." policy. The opinions I heard were split on whether it was to protect against an injury suit file by the thief if he were injured during the detention, or having to pay a _ton_ if an employee got seriously injured during the detention. (Source: talking to friends who worked on the floor for major retailers at the start of the century.) TBH, it smells like both to me. Anyway, all this is to say that retailers haven't been _physically_ restraining thieves walking out of their stores for quite some time... but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they've stopped reporting the thefts. (Indeed, the SF Mayor's Office's crowing about retrieving items from Retail Theft Rings suggests that -at minimum- a subset of the affected retailers _do_ report thefts.)