Watch this brazen Walgreens shoplifter fill a garbage bag with stolen stuff and ride a bike out the door

Probably a realistic amount of effort for the amount he gets paid!

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Possibly, but local small stores are routinely shoplifted. Just because a store is locally owned doesn’t mean that the shoplifters respect the owners, or anybody.

Walgreens are targeted by shoplifting rings, at least in part, because they have big shelves filled with high value, resalable goods. Something your local corner store does not.

And in the case of organized shoplifting rings, they aren’t locals doing an occasional crime of opportunity at a nearby store. They are people travel the bay area, or wider, doing shoplifting. So local ownership means absolutely nothing to them, but the uniformity of the corporate stores means they know what to expect from the stores in terms of robbing them.

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Pretty safe bet they aren’t given insurance that would cover injuries and lost wages for trying to stop thieves, especially since getting injured stopping thieves will likely get them fired, causing them to lose their health insurance, if any.

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He would get worker’s compensation from his employer (which is the private security company, not Walgreens).

Would he, though, if he acted outside of his job duties, the ones saying he’s not allowed to intercept shoplifters?

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Why does Walgreens have stolen stuff on their shelves?!

Some day the Pedant Pendant will be mine!

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I agree, and I also think it’s one thing to steal items from a Walgreens vs stealing software from a big conglomerate, or downloading a bootleg movie. One does directly affect the people who rely on those stores as sometimes their only local place to get food, drugs, and other essentials, while the other is stealing something intangible and will not directly affect anyone around them or the company as a whole.

if the security guard had been a little more emphatic in grabbing the merchandise and/or the perp and gotten himself fired for violating policy, I bet he’d have been able to make it up and then some with a gofundme-type campaign

I got news for you buddy, Police generally do not investigate rapes, and routinely lie under oath, steal, and even rape without any consequence aside from getting a desk job or moving to another city’s department. The former president attempted a coup, and so far the only repercussion he faced is he can’t post on social media.

You want to talk about a breakdown of social norms, go ahead, but let’s not kid ourselves that a crime ring stealing razor blades and laundry detergent from multibillion dollar corporations is the most pressing issue, or even of much consequence. Wage theft happens at a much larger scale than product theft, and certainly no billionaire CEO I know of has been handcuffed for that crime.

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There might be a coverage dispute, but the question is whether the activity that led to the injury was for the employer’s benefit or the employee’s. California’s workers’ compensation is pretty broad, so the WCAB would probably find that the injury is covered. The policy could be intended not to protect the employee from getting workers’ comp benefits, but rather to protect the company from being sued by the suspect if the security guard injures him. As with most legal questions, the answer is “it depends,” so I wouldn’t say he’d be foreclosed from workers’ comp benefits.

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Not so, just try it at one of the larger grocery chains in town, they will bounce you. I see it on an almost weekly basis. Hell, even security at Ross on Market use physical force daily. These Walgreens and CVS’s security guards are akin to fake security cameras, just for show.

Uh, watch the whataboutism. Yes those are all pressing problems. Has nothing to do with what I posted.

Makes me wonder if you’ve ever lived in a high crime city or country. Life for even the poor is better when the tools you need for life and plying your trade are there when you need them.

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I haven’t seen that yet, but my local Safeway has upgraded from minimum wage “random person who is on their cell phone all day” “guards” to physically imposing bouncer level armed guards in bullet resistant vests. Still probably not paid enough, though.

Yeah, since the pandemic Safeways seem to have police officers stationed at the doors (some locations like Geary had them for a few years now.) But regular security also get physical, even the security dude at the Trader Joe’s on Nob Hill will reclaim stolen merchandise and force the shoplifter out.

It doesn’t really work that way. Shoplifters gonna shoplift.

On one hand, a local owner might be more invested and thus more likely to DO something if they catch a shop lifter, which might be a deterrent.

On the other hand, a semi-local, privately owned toy store (1313 Mockingbird Lane), who has one of the nicest guys you will meet running it, has to post video or pics of shoplifters every 2 or 3 weeks because some people care more about free stuff vs supporting local shops or a passionate store owner for a niche product. I can’t imagine some small convenience store encouraging any loyalty that would dissuade shoplifters.

It is a college town, so you do have a lot of younger, adults with poor impulse control and often not a lot of extra funds

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They aren’t stealing drugs. If they were running into the pharmacist’s section, that would probably motivate the PD. But the word is out, apparently, that everything is fair game.

Yeah, but this wasn’t that. Real rings are just that: more than one person, with lookouts and plans for creating distractions and blocking lines-of-sight. This act was that of “an independent contractor.”

Sure, I mean, I’ve no doubt he has criminal associates. A fence, or some “friends.” But now we’re outside the store. When you see surveillance camera footage of organized shoplifting rings, they are, uh, organized. It’s a magic show, with each conspirator playing his part in the disappearance act. No ring will ever use brute force. No (good) ring is ever seen committing theft. They want to be able to return to this store and rob it again.

Possibly, but the individual could well be selling to a shoplifting ring. The stolen items are worthless without a way to trade them or sell them.

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Since AB5 passed, he’s now classified as “an employee”.

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Nah, that probably falls under the uber/door dash exception. He’s on a bike, after all.

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