Thankfully we have another Walgreens executive quote for that: > “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Ke

Thankfully we have another Walgreens executive quote for that: > “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to retailers using shoplifting as an excuse to close underperforming stores without drawing scrutiny about poor management or strategy: > For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. > One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018. But hey, you might say "how come a lot of different retailers all complained at the same time?" There was a huge push by the National Retail Federation, a group that lobbies on behalf of these huge chain retailers: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret... https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting-retail/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin... https://popular.info/p/lies-damn-lies-and-shoplifting-statistics https://popular.info/p/lies-damn-lies-and-shoplifting-statis...