7 ms·

NRF retracts its assertion that organized retail crime led to 50% of losses

85 points by pavel_lishin 3y ago

jjkeddo199 3y ago
Crime is high when people have nothing to lose and something to gain. It shouldn't be so politically controversial to say that both carrot and stick are needed to prevent+reduce crime.
spamizbad 3y ago
Not surprised. The portion of “shrink” attributed to shoplifting has hovered around 36% for quite a while. The notion that 50% was all organized is silly.
KptMarchewa 3y ago
>Now the outspoken lawyer has fresh ammunition for his effort to repeal the law: The National Retail Federation earlier this month retracted its April assertion that nearly half of the $94.5 billion in merchandise that went missing in 2021 was stolen by retail rings. The true percentage was only a small fraction of that amount, about 5%. It's still an _absolutely insane_ amount.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  Given the dubiousness of their original number, I am taking all of that with a grain of salt. This page[0] lists the 2022 shrinkage for a few companies, and said Target was at $753M. Target is a huge national brand. Are there really ~100x more companies of Target's size experiencing equal shrinkage annually? How does the math work to get to $95B? [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/08/this-is-how-much-money-retailers-are-losing-to-shrink-retail-theft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/08/this-is-how-much-money-retai...
  - stickfigure 3y ago
    You underestimate the sheer number of small retail stores. Every town, no matter how small, has many.
- microtherion 3y ago
  The $5B must be viewed in the context of roughly $5T in revenue: https://nrf.com/research-insights/state-retail https://nrf.com/research-insights/state-retail So we're talking .1% of retail revenue. Not that I'm fond of thieves, let alone organized ones, but it does not seem an existential threat to me at this level. As a comparison, eliminating cashiers in favor of automated checkout solutions is estimated to a loss of about 1% of revenue: https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/technology/self-checkout-registers-arent-going-anywhere-neither-are-their-critics https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/technology/self-chec...
  - deelowe 3y ago
    Many companies are removing self checkout because of this so I'm not sure that's a great example.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Still a great outcome if that’s the case.
    - somesortofthing 3y ago
      I'm not sure I've ever seen a self checkout removed, even in downtown Seattle locations where everything's been locked up and security is patrolling every floor. I've seen increased surveillance and scare tactics at self checkouts but I think costco is just about the only major store left that hasn't pushed people into using almost exclusively self checkout.
      - deelowe 3y ago
        It's recent. Walmart is removing them in my area.
  - Jiro 3y ago
    That sounds like it's reporting gross revenue. Claiming that the $5B is unimportant because it's a small percentage of revenue, when it's actually gross revenue, is misleading.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Really? $4.7B is $14.11 per capita. Fourteen dollars and eleven cents.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
vaidhy 3y ago
It is too late of an apology. I can’t count how many times it has been used as a justification against minorities, homeless etc. What is the penalty for lying purposely against a population that cannot afford lawyers for filing a defamation suit?
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > What is the penalty for lying purposely against a population that cannot afford lawyers for filing a defamation suit? What lies specifically are you referencing?
- gedy 3y ago
  It may just be "unorganized" retail theft though, and not sure why that or race matters
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
  > A national group retracted its assertion that organized retail crime stole half of missing merchandise. My understanding of this article is not that they retracted their assertions about the amount of missing merchandise. My understanding is that they withdrew their assertion that half of the total missing merchandise was attributable to organized crime.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    There are two important points to be made here. 1) “missing merchandise” or “shrinkage” if you prefer ≠ theft 2) they, and subsequently the media, heavily implied retail theft was on the rise and not just that, but specifically “boogeyman style theft” even though theft numbers have remained the same
- johncolanduoni 3y ago
  Are homeless people "exercis[ing] unauthorized control over the property of a retail merchant with the intent to directly or indirectly distribute the property for resale" (quoting the Indiana law)? If you're stealing something and then giving it away for money, we're pretty far from "stealing food to eat" territory. I don't think it's homeless people walking off with power tools.
obviousman 3y ago
[flagged]
- outside1234 3y ago
  Well, as you can see from the article, there wasn't an increase in crime.
  - mustacheemperor 3y ago
    On the other hand, retail wage theft continues essentially unabated.[0] >By paying less than the legal minimum wage, employers steal an estimated $15 billion every year. This compares to an estimated $14.7 billion lost annually to shoplifting. https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/The%20Steal%20-%20Retail%20Wage%20Theft.pdf https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/The%2...
    - marcus0x62 3y ago
      It is, in fact, possible to be against theft of property and theft of wages. That some employers engage in wage theft does not justify stealing property from them Robin Hood style. Both acts are wrong.
      - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        Both acts are wrong, but one of the wronged parties is a working class person trying to make ends meet, and the other is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that is actively engaged in the theft that is victimizing the former. I'm far more concerned about the person than the corporate entity.
        marcus0x62 3y ago
        Good for you? That sounds like a luxury belief held by someone insulated from the consequences of rampant burglary and theft.
geoffmcc 3y ago
I would not be surprised to find that the numbers provided to insurance/media were not accurate. I suspect a little bit of fraud on the merchants side. While I can't provide proof of any kind, I just suspect after reading that this is what a lot of jewelry stores did upon robbery.
ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
These stats are all political. I dont trust either side. All i know is that when I walk into a CVS/Duane Reade in NYC, everything is locked up. Even the candy.
- marcus0x62 3y ago
  Why would CVS make it objectively more difficult to make a purchase if they didn’t have an earnestly held belief that the risk of theft outweighed the loss in sales of having everything “locked up”? In other words, what motive do retailers have to lie?
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
    Thats my point, they might be saying one thing about shoplifting, but the locked up stores are telling a different story.
    - KerrAvon 3y ago
      being high on their own supply isn't a different story
  - add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
    Because there are dumb regional/store managers who took these now retracted statistics at face value?
    - wlesieutre 3y ago
      The store managers can’t compare how much inventory they ordered with got much of it was sold?
      - meepmorp 3y ago
        If you're really worried about this kind of thing, would you not take precautions to protect against it?
eli 3y ago
Story that led to the retraction was by the team here at Retail Dive https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numbers/699107/ https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numb...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Someone from the Marshall Project was on APM Marketplace recently expressing similar facts. https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-really-rising/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-reall...
rchaud 3y ago
The damage is done. US news channels on both sides saturated the airwaves with doom-mongering about rampant crime, allowing politicians to stoke these fears further for electoral gain. Retailers were only too happy to have a running excuse for store closures, usually a sign of uncompetitiveness that negatively affects the stock price.
- kristofferR 3y ago
  Are you sure? I was a tourist in the US in 2021 and were really surprised by even inexpensive non-prescription products being locked down behind plexiglass at stores like Walgreens or Walmart, things priced below $25. Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > Are you sure? I was a tourist in the US in 2021 and were really surprised by even inexpensive non-prescription products being locked down behind plexiglass at stores like Walgreens or Walmart, things priced below $25. > Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem. In NYC Walgreens locations, the store brand versions for many products are not actually locked up, but the branded versions are and require you to wait for an employee. It's a subtle move, but once you're aware of it you see how prevalent it is.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - kristofferR 3y ago
      Wow, I didn't know that. I hope the store managers/owners remember to not only calculate increased profits of extra purchases of their store brands, but also lost customers in the long run because their shops are so annoying to use. It seems like a "piss in your pants to keep yourself warm"-strategy.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
oatmeal1 3y ago
That's how politics works. You don't get the changes you want by saying "there's a tiny little problem that we probably can get by ignoring. But it would be super great if we get changes made soon." You get it from yelling "THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! MAKE THE CHANGES I WANT NOW!!" Is there any criticism of the laws that were passed as a result of this lie?
- junofan 3y ago
  I’m perfectly fine with tougher laws against organized retail crime. Seems like a loophole that should be closed now that anybody can fence in bulk using services like Amazon FBA.
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  I saw that expressed something like a protest in the street with people chanting "What do we want? Slightly cheaper butter! When do we want it? Phased in over 3 to 5 years!"
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  The article doesn't say what the Virginia law is, but the ones they do saw, I don't see any issue with them. > At least one state — Texas — enacted two laws, one creating a task force and the other allowing potential thieves to avoid prosecution if they agree to an education course designed to steer them away from breaking the law. > Republican state Sen. Aaron Freeman authored the law in Indiana, which makes the organized retail theft of firearms or at least $50,000 in merchandise a Level 5 felony, which carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. > Prosecutors and authorities also describe a menacing picture in Alabama, which this year enacted a law that allows law enforcement and prosecutors to cross jurisdictional lines to pursue bands of thieves who hit retailers in multiple cities. These aren't laws hurting the average person or even people doing petty theft, they target organized crime. Now it seems the organized crime isn't as common as the stores claim, but the laws are fine; the main issue I see is a waste of time and resources, but I don't even think that is happening with these laws.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
0xy 3y ago
Note that this article makes the claim that merchandise that is stolen by opportunistic criminals and then later sold to organized fencing operations is not "organized retail crime". With large organized criminal gangs providing financial incentives to independent opportunistic thieves, then it's all absolutely organized crime. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. If an organized gang or cartel pays a independent opportunistic hitman to kill a target, it's organized crime. San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1] [1] https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-stolen-goods-in-the-tenderloin-isnt-being-shut-down-for-some-reason/ https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-s...
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  > Note that this article makes the claim that merchandise that is stolen by opportunistic criminals and then later sold to organized fencing operations is not "organized retail crime". With large organized criminal gangs providing financial incentives to independent opportunistic thieves, then it's all absolutely organized crime. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. If an organized gang or cartel pays an independent opportunistic hitman to kill a target, it's organized crime. I’ve read the article three times now and I can’t find this claim. Do you have a quote? What I can find in this article is experts saying that there’s a lot of unknowns and police & co who just got shiny new toys based on the myth pinky promising that there truly is an organized crime issue. Whatever the case, you can’t deny that the doom images pretending that hordes are storming a store at every corner are widely exaggerated. > San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1] The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation. That’s not “doing nothing” that’s gathering evidence to build a case.
  - 0xy 3y ago
    >I’ve read the article three times now and I can’t find this claim. Do you have a quote? Sure, specifically, the article says "more than 95% percent of shoplifting incidents are carried out by “one to two people,” -- implying this means it is not organized crime, even if the goods are sold to a large organized fencing operation. 1-2 people shoplifting does not disprove organized crime, particularly if the goods are immediately sold to organized fences. >The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation No, it doesn't. Please read it again. It poses a question of whether it's a sting operation, which seems unlikely given stolen goods have been GPS tracked going to that location and then going to third locations once sold, including by large YouTubers who independently investigated. [1] The goods are not seized by law enforcement and then returned to owners at that location. The stolen goods are sold, which would be a crime in itself. Seems unlikely that police are on-selling stolen merchandise. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWWWyG5ZwG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWWWyG5ZwG8
r3trohack3r 3y ago
Reading the comments here, I’m left feeling like I’ve misunderstood this article. But I’ve now reread it three times and came to the same conclusion: this article does not say crime statistics were exaggerated. Could someone help me understand what I’m missing? If I’m reading it correctly, they exaggerated the amount of _organized_ crime. This article seems to say the amount of shoplifting that was attributable to organized crime was 5% when originally they claimed it was 50%. My understanding from that is that we originally estimated disorganized shoplifting to be less than 50% of missing merchandise, and organized crime was making up at least half. In other words, the crime statistics are the same, but it’s actually randos walking into a CVS and stealing stuff. That doesn’t seem like it is better?
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  >That doesn’t seem like it is better? It will lead to more people saying things along the lines of "They're only stealing so they can feed their families (oh and by the way this is "capitalism's" fault you should totally support the socialist/communist policies that I do)" but yeah otherwise it doesn't change the facts on the ground much.
- inerte 3y ago
  It’s still theft, sure. The point of the article is to contrast the police and lawmakers reaction based on wrong data. It’s a convenient story for police budgets and fear based politicians, and also much ado about nothing. Edit: not that the thefts are nothing, but there is no surge, increase, things are not getting worse, thieves are not bolder, etc…
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  The industry uses a very amorphous metric called "shrink". It's the total delta between inventory the computer says should be there and inventory actually there. It includes product mistracked or mislaid and sometimes even includes product deliberately discarded for economic reasons. Shrink has always been 1-2% of sales, and retailers have long decided it isn't worth it to spend a lot to try and push the number lower.
- devmor 3y ago
mhalle 3y ago
A related story is that the Walgreens CFO admitted during a recent earnings call that the company may have overstated "shrinkage" of inventory and that it had spent too much on "largely ineffective" private security to combat it: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstate... It is hard to fully understand what caused the disconnect from reality. Here's a good NPR piece discussing the issue: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/12/18/is-shoplifting-getting-worse-in-the-u-s https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/12/18/is-shoplifting-getti...
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  They should just return to the 19th century retail model where customers orders are fulfilled by clerks. Shrinkage will be reduced to whatever the dishonest employees are taking for themselves.
  - bootlooped 3y ago
    Immediately upon implementing that we'll start getting presented with the tip screen.
    - ad2k 3y ago
      We already are.
      - droopyEyelids 3y ago
        I was at a gas station in Indiana last week and the pump asked me to choose a tip percent before i could start to pump
  - throwup238 3y ago
    > be reduced to whatever the dishonest employees are taking for themselves. I was under the impression that two thirds of shrinkage was from employees to begin with. Either through error or theft.
BMc2020 3y ago
[flagged]
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
> "Shrink", an industry term to describe all inventory losses from multiple causes, including theft. Including? So what other things is it from if organized theft is only like 5%.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Standard theft, as in the individual is stealing for themselves, not on behalf of a criminal organization. Other losses include things expiring, getting misplaced, miscounted, etc. Say, for example, a shipment is received and signed for, but there were only 99 boxes, not 100. Or maybe one of the boxes has the wrong product. It could easily get overlooked for a long time and only really show up at a point when it's anyone's guess as to whether it was stolen, lost or never received. That doesn't happen as often, but it does happen.
- unlikelymordant 3y ago
  Disorganised theft, damage, mislaid, lost
binary132 3y ago
Everyone is so committed to their own spin that it makes me sick.

85 points by pavel_lishin 3y ago

Crime is high when people have nothing to lose and something to gain. It shouldn't be so politically controversial to say that both carrot and stick are needed to prevent+reduce crime.

spamizbad 3y ago

Not surprised. The portion of “shrink” attributed to shoplifting has hovered around 36% for quite a while. The notion that 50% was all organized is silly.

KptMarchewa 3y ago

>Now the outspoken lawyer has fresh ammunition for his effort to repeal the law: The National Retail Federation earlier this month retracted its April assertion that nearly half of the $94.5 billion in merchandise that went missing in 2021 was stolen by retail rings. The true percentage was only a small fraction of that amount, about 5%. It's still an _absolutely insane_ amount.

fbdab103 3y ago
Given the dubiousness of their original number, I am taking all of that with a grain of salt. This page[0] lists the 2022 shrinkage for a few companies, and said Target was at $753M. Target is a huge national brand. Are there really ~100x more companies of Target's size experiencing equal shrinkage annually? How does the math work to get to $95B? [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/08/this-is-how-much-money-retailers-are-losing-to-shrink-retail-theft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/08/this-is-how-much-money-retai...
- stickfigure 3y ago
  You underestimate the sheer number of small retail stores. Every town, no matter how small, has many.
microtherion 3y ago
The $5B must be viewed in the context of roughly $5T in revenue: https://nrf.com/research-insights/state-retail https://nrf.com/research-insights/state-retail So we're talking .1% of retail revenue. Not that I'm fond of thieves, let alone organized ones, but it does not seem an existential threat to me at this level. As a comparison, eliminating cashiers in favor of automated checkout solutions is estimated to a loss of about 1% of revenue: https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/technology/self-checkout-registers-arent-going-anywhere-neither-are-their-critics https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/technology/self-chec...
- deelowe 3y ago
  Many companies are removing self checkout because of this so I'm not sure that's a great example.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Still a great outcome if that’s the case.
  - somesortofthing 3y ago
    I'm not sure I've ever seen a self checkout removed, even in downtown Seattle locations where everything's been locked up and security is patrolling every floor. I've seen increased surveillance and scare tactics at self checkouts but I think costco is just about the only major store left that hasn't pushed people into using almost exclusively self checkout.
    - deelowe 3y ago
      It's recent. Walmart is removing them in my area.
- Jiro 3y ago
  That sounds like it's reporting gross revenue. Claiming that the $5B is unimportant because it's a small percentage of revenue, when it's actually gross revenue, is misleading.
pessimizer 3y ago
Really? $4.7B is $14.11 per capita. Fourteen dollars and eleven cents.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

vaidhy 3y ago

It is too late of an apology. I can’t count how many times it has been used as a justification against minorities, homeless etc. What is the penalty for lying purposely against a population that cannot afford lawyers for filing a defamation suit?

oatmeal1 3y ago
> What is the penalty for lying purposely against a population that cannot afford lawyers for filing a defamation suit? What lies specifically are you referencing?
gedy 3y ago
It may just be "unorganized" retail theft though, and not sure why that or race matters
r3trohack3r 3y ago
> A national group retracted its assertion that organized retail crime stole half of missing merchandise. My understanding of this article is not that they retracted their assertions about the amount of missing merchandise. My understanding is that they withdrew their assertion that half of the total missing merchandise was attributable to organized crime.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  There are two important points to be made here. 1) “missing merchandise” or “shrinkage” if you prefer ≠ theft 2) they, and subsequently the media, heavily implied retail theft was on the rise and not just that, but specifically “boogeyman style theft” even though theft numbers have remained the same
johncolanduoni 3y ago
Are homeless people "exercis[ing] unauthorized control over the property of a retail merchant with the intent to directly or indirectly distribute the property for resale" (quoting the Indiana law)? If you're stealing something and then giving it away for money, we're pretty far from "stealing food to eat" territory. I don't think it's homeless people walking off with power tools.

obviousman 3y ago

[flagged]

outside1234 3y ago
Well, as you can see from the article, there wasn't an increase in crime.
- mustacheemperor 3y ago
  On the other hand, retail wage theft continues essentially unabated.[0] >By paying less than the legal minimum wage, employers steal an estimated $15 billion every year. This compares to an estimated $14.7 billion lost annually to shoplifting. https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/The%20Steal%20-%20Retail%20Wage%20Theft.pdf https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/The%2...
  - marcus0x62 3y ago
    It is, in fact, possible to be against theft of property and theft of wages. That some employers engage in wage theft does not justify stealing property from them Robin Hood style. Both acts are wrong.
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      Both acts are wrong, but one of the wronged parties is a working class person trying to make ends meet, and the other is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate that is actively engaged in the theft that is victimizing the former. I'm far more concerned about the person than the corporate entity.
      - marcus0x62 3y ago
        Good for you? That sounds like a luxury belief held by someone insulated from the consequences of rampant burglary and theft.

geoffmcc 3y ago

I would not be surprised to find that the numbers provided to insurance/media were not accurate. I suspect a little bit of fraud on the merchants side. While I can't provide proof of any kind, I just suspect after reading that this is what a lot of jewelry stores did upon robbery.

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago

These stats are all political. I dont trust either side. All i know is that when I walk into a CVS/Duane Reade in NYC, everything is locked up. Even the candy.

marcus0x62 3y ago
Why would CVS make it objectively more difficult to make a purchase if they didn’t have an earnestly held belief that the risk of theft outweighed the loss in sales of having everything “locked up”? In other words, what motive do retailers have to lie?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
  Thats my point, they might be saying one thing about shoplifting, but the locked up stores are telling a different story.
  - KerrAvon 3y ago
    being high on their own supply isn't a different story
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Because there are dumb regional/store managers who took these now retracted statistics at face value?
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    The store managers can’t compare how much inventory they ordered with got much of it was sold?
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      If you're really worried about this kind of thing, would you not take precautions to protect against it?

eli 3y ago

Story that led to the retraction was by the team here at Retail Dive https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numbers/699107/ https://www.retaildive.com/news/retailers-crime-problem-numb...

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Someone from the Marshall Project was on APM Marketplace recently expressing similar facts. https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-really-rising/ https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-reall...

rchaud 3y ago

The damage is done. US news channels on both sides saturated the airwaves with doom-mongering about rampant crime, allowing politicians to stoke these fears further for electoral gain. Retailers were only too happy to have a running excuse for store closures, usually a sign of uncompetitiveness that negatively affects the stock price.

kristofferR 3y ago
Are you sure? I was a tourist in the US in 2021 and were really surprised by even inexpensive non-prescription products being locked down behind plexiglass at stores like Walgreens or Walmart, things priced below $25. Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > Are you sure? I was a tourist in the US in 2021 and were really surprised by even inexpensive non-prescription products being locked down behind plexiglass at stores like Walgreens or Walmart, things priced below $25. > Either the retailers are being brain-dead by discouraging purchases or theft is a massive real problem. In NYC Walgreens locations, the store brand versions for many products are not actually locked up, but the branded versions are and require you to wait for an employee. It's a subtle move, but once you're aware of it you see how prevalent it is.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kristofferR 3y ago
    Wow, I didn't know that. I hope the store managers/owners remember to not only calculate increased profits of extra purchases of their store brands, but also lost customers in the long run because their shops are so annoying to use. It seems like a "piss in your pants to keep yourself warm"-strategy.
r3trohack3r 3y ago

oatmeal1 3y ago

That's how politics works. You don't get the changes you want by saying "there's a tiny little problem that we probably can get by ignoring. But it would be super great if we get changes made soon." You get it from yelling "THE WORLD'S ON FIRE! MAKE THE CHANGES I WANT NOW!!" Is there any criticism of the laws that were passed as a result of this lie?

junofan 3y ago
I’m perfectly fine with tougher laws against organized retail crime. Seems like a loophole that should be closed now that anybody can fence in bulk using services like Amazon FBA.
EnigmaFlare 3y ago
I saw that expressed something like a protest in the street with people chanting "What do we want? Slightly cheaper butter! When do we want it? Phased in over 3 to 5 years!"
armchairhacker 3y ago
The article doesn't say what the Virginia law is, but the ones they do saw, I don't see any issue with them. > At least one state — Texas — enacted two laws, one creating a task force and the other allowing potential thieves to avoid prosecution if they agree to an education course designed to steer them away from breaking the law. > Republican state Sen. Aaron Freeman authored the law in Indiana, which makes the organized retail theft of firearms or at least $50,000 in merchandise a Level 5 felony, which carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. > Prosecutors and authorities also describe a menacing picture in Alabama, which this year enacted a law that allows law enforcement and prosecutors to cross jurisdictional lines to pursue bands of thieves who hit retailers in multiple cities. These aren't laws hurting the average person or even people doing petty theft, they target organized crime. Now it seems the organized crime isn't as common as the stores claim, but the laws are fine; the main issue I see is a waste of time and resources, but I don't even think that is happening with these laws.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

0xy 3y ago

Note that this article makes the claim that merchandise that is stolen by opportunistic criminals and then later sold to organized fencing operations is not "organized retail crime". With large organized criminal gangs providing financial incentives to independent opportunistic thieves, then it's all absolutely organized crime. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. If an organized gang or cartel pays a independent opportunistic hitman to kill a target, it's organized crime. San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1] [1] https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-stolen-goods-in-the-tenderloin-isnt-being-shut-down-for-some-reason/ https://sfist.com/2023/09/23/a-known-fencing-operation-for-s...

turquoisevar 3y ago
> Note that this article makes the claim that merchandise that is stolen by opportunistic criminals and then later sold to organized fencing operations is not "organized retail crime". With large organized criminal gangs providing financial incentives to independent opportunistic thieves, then it's all absolutely organized crime. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. If an organized gang or cartel pays an independent opportunistic hitman to kill a target, it's organized crime. I’ve read the article three times now and I can’t find this claim. Do you have a quote? What I can find in this article is experts saying that there’s a lot of unknowns and police & co who just got shiny new toys based on the myth pinky promising that there truly is an organized crime issue. Whatever the case, you can’t deny that the doom images pretending that hordes are storming a store at every corner are widely exaggerated. > San Francisco has extremely large fencing operations that operate with impunity right on the open street! They buy items all the way from single items of soap and hand wash all the way up to stolen TVs. The feds are doing nothing for some reason. [1] The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation. That’s not “doing nothing” that’s gathering evidence to build a case.
- 0xy 3y ago
  >I’ve read the article three times now and I can’t find this claim. Do you have a quote? Sure, specifically, the article says "more than 95% percent of shoplifting incidents are carried out by “one to two people,” -- implying this means it is not organized crime, even if the goods are sold to a large organized fencing operation. 1-2 people shoplifting does not disprove organized crime, particularly if the goods are immediately sold to organized fences. >The article you linked explicitly states that there’s a joint sting operation No, it doesn't. Please read it again. It poses a question of whether it's a sting operation, which seems unlikely given stolen goods have been GPS tracked going to that location and then going to third locations once sold, including by large YouTubers who independently investigated. [1] The goods are not seized by law enforcement and then returned to owners at that location. The stolen goods are sold, which would be a crime in itself. Seems unlikely that police are on-selling stolen merchandise. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWWWyG5ZwG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWWWyG5ZwG8

r3trohack3r 3y ago

Reading the comments here, I’m left feeling like I’ve misunderstood this article. But I’ve now reread it three times and came to the same conclusion: this article does not say crime statistics were exaggerated. Could someone help me understand what I’m missing? If I’m reading it correctly, they exaggerated the amount of _organized_ crime. This article seems to say the amount of shoplifting that was attributable to organized crime was 5% when originally they claimed it was 50%. My understanding from that is that we originally estimated disorganized shoplifting to be less than 50% of missing merchandise, and organized crime was making up at least half. In other words, the crime statistics are the same, but it’s actually randos walking into a CVS and stealing stuff. That doesn’t seem like it is better?

HideousKojima 3y ago
>That doesn’t seem like it is better? It will lead to more people saying things along the lines of "They're only stealing so they can feed their families (oh and by the way this is "capitalism's" fault you should totally support the socialist/communist policies that I do)" but yeah otherwise it doesn't change the facts on the ground much.
inerte 3y ago
It’s still theft, sure. The point of the article is to contrast the police and lawmakers reaction based on wrong data. It’s a convenient story for police budgets and fear based politicians, and also much ado about nothing. Edit: not that the thefts are nothing, but there is no surge, increase, things are not getting worse, thieves are not bolder, etc…
iudqnolq 3y ago
The industry uses a very amorphous metric called "shrink". It's the total delta between inventory the computer says should be there and inventory actually there. It includes product mistracked or mislaid and sometimes even includes product deliberately discarded for economic reasons. Shrink has always been 1-2% of sales, and retailers have long decided it isn't worth it to spend a lot to try and push the number lower.
devmor 3y ago

mhalle 3y ago

A related story is that the Walgreens CFO admitted during a recent earnings call that the company may have overstated "shrinkage" of inventory and that it had spent too much on "largely ineffective" private security to combat it: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstated-theft-concerns.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/walgreens-may-have-overstate... It is hard to fully understand what caused the disconnect from reality. Here's a good NPR piece discussing the issue: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/12/18/is-shoplifting-getting-worse-in-the-u-s https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/12/18/is-shoplifting-getti...

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
They should just return to the 19th century retail model where customers orders are fulfilled by clerks. Shrinkage will be reduced to whatever the dishonest employees are taking for themselves.
- bootlooped 3y ago
  Immediately upon implementing that we'll start getting presented with the tip screen.
  - ad2k 3y ago
    We already are.
    - droopyEyelids 3y ago
      I was at a gas station in Indiana last week and the pump asked me to choose a tip percent before i could start to pump
- throwup238 3y ago
  > be reduced to whatever the dishonest employees are taking for themselves. I was under the impression that two thirds of shrinkage was from employees to begin with. Either through error or theft.

BMc2020 3y ago

[flagged]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

> "Shrink", an industry term to describe all inventory losses from multiple causes, including theft. Including? So what other things is it from if organized theft is only like 5%.

zdragnar 3y ago
Standard theft, as in the individual is stealing for themselves, not on behalf of a criminal organization. Other losses include things expiring, getting misplaced, miscounted, etc. Say, for example, a shipment is received and signed for, but there were only 99 boxes, not 100. Or maybe one of the boxes has the wrong product. It could easily get overlooked for a long time and only really show up at a point when it's anyone's guess as to whether it was stolen, lost or never received. That doesn't happen as often, but it does happen.
unlikelymordant 3y ago
Disorganised theft, damage, mislaid, lost

binary132 3y ago

Everyone is so committed to their own spin that it makes me sick.