I’m sure they did. But the SF shoplifting apparently exceeds the operating margin they have for shoplifting by a significant amount.
I get that corporations will try to spin things in their favor, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced high levels of theft in SF that may have been by organized theft rings. Organized shoplifting rings are a thing. It’s possible for a corporation to be greedy and for there to be very high shoplifting rates that make an individual store’s profitability impossible.
But how will the poors learn to accept their positon in the pecking order if every single dollar they earned is not sucked out of their pockets and they’re thrown in prison for not being able to pony up for petty crimes they commit because they are poor!!! /s
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Mom & Pop shop, or one of a thousand locations owned by Super Monster Mega Corp, no proprietor should be expected to stay in a location where they’re forced to tolerate a populace routinely helping themselves to $949.99 worth of Not Their Property without the fear of recrimination.
Such short sightedness only leads to urban deserts, be they food or pharmaceutical. It is a 100% avoidable situation, but those in power aren’t that interested in fostering an environment where businesses can freely operate without the fear of flagrant theft.
It’s lawlessness, clear and simple. And, yes, “grossly inappropriate”.
Failure of reading comprehension. The threshold of $950 is between misdemeanor and felony theft. Note also this only applies to nonviolent offenses. So it’s not that there’s no recrimination, it just appropriately prioritizes police and prosecution resources to violent and high-value crimes while making it less of a life-wrecking situation when someone shoplifts some baby formula to feed a starving baby.
Note also that most retail businesses already have policies in place not to interfere directly with shoplifters. The effort is typically put into deterrence rather than enforcement due to liability for both employee and customer harm, which can greatly exceed the cumulative loss.
People in poor neighborhoods still need to buy stuff, and often they need to buy locally.
My father and his partner chose to open their record store on the South Side of Chicago, as there was a market, rent was cheap, and there was a pool of good people in the neighborhood who needed jobs. Even if shrinkage was higher than it might have been in the millionaire suburbs up north, the low overhead made up for it. They did OK.
Huh? Why would they close shop because of a change in law that has no effect on their business? They already are ignored by law enforcement, except when some cop demands a “discount” with the implication that the proprietor will have trouble with a health inspection/business license/liquor license if they don’t. They already deal with loss on their own.
That’s literally how all stores used to work traditionally. Stores where customers served themselves with a cart or basket and then paid for their selections are an invention of the 20th century (often attributed to the US Piggly Wiggly grocery chain in the 1910s). While the traditional type of store certainly was more secure from shoplifting, it was more costly to run – moving to self service wasn’t unlike the current move to self checkout – it may be presented as an innovative new way to shop, but the customers’ preferences weren’t the issue.
You know a misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail, right? That’s a pretty significant punishment.
The problem isn’t that shoplifting under a grand’s worth of goods is a misdemeanor, its that our justice system is almost entirely dependent on using felonies to over charge so that they can force a plea bargains rather than go to trial.
Despite the importance of recognizing and working to combat the existence of food deserts, some thought leaders reject the term “food desert” altogether. Black farming activists Leah Penniman and Karen Washington prefer the term “food apartheid.” They argue that real deserts are a naturally occurring phenomenon, while food deserts are rooted in social inequalities. Apartheid, they tell us, refers to a system of segregation and unequal treatment based on skin color, and as such, it better defines a problem that has been precipitated by long-standing discrimination at nearly every level of society — from redlining and housing discrimination to unfair working conditions and lack of access to healthy food.
Some who prefer the term “food apartheid” believe that as long as there are profits to be made hiring from a large pool of vulnerable workers — workers willing to work for very little compensation and without basic protections — there will be some who hold a financial stake in the prevalence of poverty. There are companies that will make more money if they can keep certain communities in a state of distress. So, the argument goes, racism and “food deserts” aren’t an accident — they’re by design.
