Target’s decision to close nine of its stores in major cities, citing persistent large-scale theft at those locations, is the latest signal that retailers may be struggling in their battle to contain a growing and dangerous problem.
I work at a community mental health center in a major urban area and this affords me a lot of contact with the lower-SES people in my area. While not many, I do know of some of our clientele who engage in this sort of “flash robbery”-style theft, wherein they’ll go into a store with a group of people (while the store is open) and just start walking out with merchandise, not even bothering to hide it. The stores security personnel are under strict orders to not physically intervene, due to the potential for lawsuits against either the store or its security company, and so all they can do is call the police. These sorts of operations are always done in mere minutes, so the police never get there in time, and they’re often not even called. The stores have policies that essentially require them to eat the loss and just try to make it up, which obviously they’re failing at as these kinds of burglaries become more common.
I’m sure it’s not just poor people doing this crap, but the ones in my community that are definitely are not doing it out of need. From what I’ve seen, these are also the type of people that everyone in their community tends to hate, the “trashy” people that make neighborhoods bad places to live. They have poor emotional control, get into arguments easily, pick unnecessary fights, etc. Also worth noting, although I’m sure this isn’t representative of the overall trend: all of the people I know of in my clinic’s population that do this are women.
It’s a very serious problem, because it’s obviously much more economical for these companies to simply close down the burgled stores and open up new ones in areas with lower crime and lower rent, which ultimately just harms the poor communities they move out of, making them poorer and less attractive to other retailers. So, a very tiny group of thieves can harm their entire community in some pretty severe and systemic ways. Sadly, i think the best solution would be for cities to increase police presence in major shopping areas, which will cost taxpayers rather than corporations, but it’s ultimately for the good of the affected communities and the cities as a whole.
That to me seems like it would turn it to vigilantism fast, and that’s exactly what maga wants though… thats why they walk around with their open carry, intimidate people they don’t THINK belong and feel like a slippery slope…
I don’t think that’s what they are talking about. Police forces used to have walking beats and the officers on those beats knew the entire neighborhood. The presence of authority tends to slow down some forms of crime.
Yeah the people who are responding to this saying “who cares, it’s just corporations being harmed” are thinking too small picture. The corporations aren’t going even harmed that much by this, not on a global scale, they’ll just shut down the most affected stores. Then who suffers? All the residents of those communities.
Look, I don’t like big mega corps like Target and Walmart, but the fact is that they can afford to sell goods to people at way lower prices than small retailers. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that’s because they’ve put a stranglehold around suppliers and built giant monopolies, but the effect is the same. The world would be a much better place if giant retail monopolies all disappeared, but it would have terrible consequences for them to only dissappear from the poorest and most crime laden communities
I work at a community mental health center in a major urban area and this affords me a lot of contact with the lower-SES people in my area. While not many, I do know of some of our clientele who engage in this sort of “flash robbery”-style theft, wherein they’ll go into a store with a group of people (while the store is open) and just start walking out with merchandise, not even bothering to hide it. The stores security personnel are under strict orders to not physically intervene, due to the potential for lawsuits against either the store or its security company, and so all they can do is call the police. These sorts of operations are always done in mere minutes, so the police never get there in time, and they’re often not even called. The stores have policies that essentially require them to eat the loss and just try to make it up, which obviously they’re failing at as these kinds of burglaries become more common.
I’m sure it’s not just poor people doing this crap, but the ones in my community that are definitely are not doing it out of need. From what I’ve seen, these are also the type of people that everyone in their community tends to hate, the “trashy” people that make neighborhoods bad places to live. They have poor emotional control, get into arguments easily, pick unnecessary fights, etc. Also worth noting, although I’m sure this isn’t representative of the overall trend: all of the people I know of in my clinic’s population that do this are women.
It’s a very serious problem, because it’s obviously much more economical for these companies to simply close down the burgled stores and open up new ones in areas with lower crime and lower rent, which ultimately just harms the poor communities they move out of, making them poorer and less attractive to other retailers. So, a very tiny group of thieves can harm their entire community in some pretty severe and systemic ways. Sadly, i think the best solution would be for cities to increase police presence in major shopping areas, which will cost taxpayers rather than corporations, but it’s ultimately for the good of the affected communities and the cities as a whole.
Bring back community policing
That to me seems like it would turn it to vigilantism fast, and that’s exactly what maga wants though… thats why they walk around with their open carry, intimidate people they don’t THINK belong and feel like a slippery slope…
I don’t think that’s what they are talking about. Police forces used to have walking beats and the officers on those beats knew the entire neighborhood. The presence of authority tends to slow down some forms of crime.
Yeah the people who are responding to this saying “who cares, it’s just corporations being harmed” are thinking too small picture. The corporations aren’t going even harmed that much by this, not on a global scale, they’ll just shut down the most affected stores. Then who suffers? All the residents of those communities.
Look, I don’t like big mega corps like Target and Walmart, but the fact is that they can afford to sell goods to people at way lower prices than small retailers. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that’s because they’ve put a stranglehold around suppliers and built giant monopolies, but the effect is the same. The world would be a much better place if giant retail monopolies all disappeared, but it would have terrible consequences for them to only dissappear from the poorest and most crime laden communities
Uhm … it’s called dystopia… read up on it. 😋
Isn’t this how the book Ready Player One worked? Everything outside a metroplex was a lawless wasteland.