Why only the LPs? Were you analog enthusiasts?
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When I lived in Boston, I knew many people who were employed by Store24, a local convenience store chain. I had two roommates both fired from a store as a consequence of robbery. It turns out that the company had (has?) a policy that the employees offer no resistance to theft. BUT also that if it becomes a big incident, they then fire all of the employees present at the store. Because there is no way to be certain that they didn’t collude with the thieves! Ironically, some of the worst shoplifters were police, who would just pocket things as “the cost of doing business” in checking on the stores through the night.
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“I’m cooperating with you!”
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I’m guessing she didn’t think ahead and stole stuff in a bag with personally identifiable items inside. She likely didn’t want to give up the bag because it contained both evidence she had stolen and evidence of her identity. She could have gotten away many times over if she was willing to let go of the bag.
well, if he was WHITE and she wasn’t, let’s not get too crazy and think a black male could shoot a white female anywhere in the US and have it not turn out bad.
yeah, that’s what i figured, she done screwed up.
i thought so too.
also, you could feel how scared the person filming was of filming the cops, and that the cops were aware of it and intentionally avoiding looking that way. really interesting that it felt unsafe to film police, but not a shoplifter.
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Huh, when I worked retail we were told never to even try to detail shoplifters. We even had a cop come in and tell us the laws etc. It’s where I learned the lovely term assportation, which has only one S, but hey.
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Living in Portland, I’ve helped many store employees clean up, and calm people down after aggressive shoplifters. I once helped clean up after an irate shoplifter ripped every piece of makeup off a shelf screaming how she was “raped” by the female store manager. (I am not making that
word seem light with the quotes… I have a wife, sister and daughter). I saw the whole thing…And she was high as a kite. She was never touched by the manager, simply asked to give back the $400 worth of stuff she took.
I prefer to stay away for my own safety as I have a little girl… I’ve seen many hit, kick, bite, and spit their
way out the door. It’s getting worse with the housing crisis, and the crime stats prove it…I just try to help people clean up after the incident. I feel awful for the employees as they are stuck in the middle of it all…I’m not surprised this person detained the shoplifter.
The worst incident was at a liquor store where the shoplifter knocked over a shelving unit and hurt an
employee…They did not detain the shoplifter, merely asked them to give back the bottles of vodka they tried to take.
It’s getting dicey here… Especially on 82nd…
I Never realized how prevalent it’s become here until it was posted. I surely hadn’t put it together until this post…I now realize I see aggressive shoplifters once a week on average.
The housing prices are putting stress on the lower income folks here, and crime stats is proof. Again, I wouldn’t have acted in the manner of the employee, but i do empathize with him. It’s a difficult position
upholding the law without the authority to do so.
The larger question is…How do we prevent this in the future? Not from a store or big box perspective, but from the point of the shoplifter. What made them do it, and how can we lessen that stress in the future?
Is Portland going in the right direction by providing low income housing via bond measure? I’m hoping so…
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Kinda sounds like a pinata…
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Strangest shoplifting incident I’ve ever seen was a drug addict boosting a big basket full of Colgate toothpaste, he nearly knocked me over running out of the store. Same guy got caught a week or two later at another store doing the same thing, he was apparently feeding a heroin habit and had found a way to turn toothpaste into cash (not with some device that printed bills out of Colgate, obviously, I guess he was reselling them or something.) Life can be desperate.
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You know…it was very much like a piñata. That one at least I could about a little.
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- Hillsboro Tribune
I just moved to this town a month ago. I go to this Rite Aid.
I’m going to go for the positive aspects. - So, I’m glad that the teenagers here know to use horizontal video recording.
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It’s one thing to read about and be told in a training session what one should do in a given situation, but one never knows actually what one’ll do until said situation happens.
That’s why they break people down in the military-type groups and then build them back up - so that when the time comes, they won’t go against their training. But some folks do and some folks don’t. Us crazy, wacky humans!
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I remember standing in line at a Record Bar* and one of the people behind the counter (manager?) suddenly turned toward the racks and yelled, “put it back! I don’t have the time or the people to deal with it.” I looked over and a guy (about my age, I was 14 or 15) with a sheepish expression was pulling a cassette, in one of those plastic theft-deterrent frames, out of his jacket.
*This was at a mall in Arlington, TX and the store actually had very good inventory.
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That’s a biggest issue. Desperation can come from many places… feeling trapped with no future prospects, no job or a shitty job, etc, etc. I’ve been pretty desperate myself but never resorted to any crime, however the temptation was always in the back of my mind during the hardest of times.
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It’s not always about need. Some people do it for the thrill.
I’m not saying the lady in the video was doing it for the Lulz though.
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In my teens through twenties, so many stores had so many people rudely tailing me that I starting giving them something to worry about. Instead of stealing, this often meant observing and disregarding lots of unspoken rules (You, Popo? Surely not!). For example, stores offer baskets and carts to shop with, but there isn’t anything posted about needing to use them. So I would simply use my own bag, or put small items in my pocket. These days, stores put cameras everywhere, but back then they used to follow people around, often doing a bad job of trying to look casual. So I would sneak up on them and confront them with questions or weirdness. “Are you an employee of this store? A clerk? Come help me in my shopping. Now.” or “Tell me what you need to know about me NOW or buzz off.”
Probably the biggest challenge to the whole purchase/shoplift model was not using the checkout. Of course, only if I knew that I would never need a receipt. So if they were too cheap or harried to have enough registers open, I would sometimes just hand an employee the money, or put it on their counter, tell them it was there, and walk away. “There’s your $5 for the juice and pack of crisps, got to run!” But for stores with obnoxious “loss prevention” staff, I went further. Such as hiding the payment somewhere in the store, and walking out with the item(s). “Yes, I am taking them. The payment is under the Cadbury Cream Eggs display. No, I am not stopping to discuss it with you. Thank you, Easter Bunny!”
Whereas that all probably sounds annoying, if a proprietor approached me as a mature person and said something like “IF you choose to shop in my establishment, you need to use the baskets provided, and pay at the register over there. Otherwise you are not welcome to shop here.” I would have respected that. But instead, what I encountered was only so much custom and furtiveness. If your store has rules for prospective customers, then a prudent first step might be that of actually posting them somewhere.
I was not entirely unsympathetic to such people. But they did tend to be awfully evasive in their concerns. And the picture I gleaned from employees was that retail tends to be boring anyway, so it gave them something to do and think about.
Like with most areas of my life, the operative philosophy has been “If you have expectations of what people should do, or how they should act, then be explicit about what they are - or otherwise don’t whine about it.”
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Take all the 8-tracks and cassingles you want, but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
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