Careful old timer, don’t get your slacks bunched up on account of some Nikes.
Nike can go !@#$ themselves for how they treated retailers when they went direct to consumer (or big retailers).
They let everyone place a "back to school" booking knowing that they will be cancelling them come ship date. This didn't allow smaller retailers to pivot to replace product from a different brand. Taking away the brand from the people that helped you build your brand was annoying enough, but doing it this way was even more scummy.
The death penalty isn’t an effective deterrent because typically murders aren’t committed with reasoned thoughts.
In this case, a higher level of violence against the perpetrators likely would have a deterrent effect, because these are well thought out crimes of laziness, in that it’s easier to steal stuff that work to pay for it.
It’s true that if there was a high likelihood of undesirable consequences (pain, jail, embarrassment), that many of the people that do this wouldn’t want to.
There is a ton of evidence of this if we are being 100% honest. The brazen theft that we witness in today's society in places like Canada and the US is shocking, and we have normalized it.
In the one video when questioned about why the bozo was stealing, it was "bro, it's San Francisco" It's just became a thing because we are letting it fester.
Cities like Tokyo, Singapore and others have shockingly low levels of theft for cities their size, like shocking. Theft is also defined as flat out stealing but that can also be done quietly without physical harm or damage to a business.
Here we are accustomed to flat out smash, grab and go, packs and teams of thieves going after high end merchandise and narcotics.
You think people are storming pharmacies for theft in Singapore to the same degree as here? Plenty of scum who think it's perfectly fine to storm your business and assault you/rob you without any impunity cause they get away with it.
Does Louie Vuitton have a smash and grab problem for their flagship stores in Paris? Teams of people pulling up on the Champs D'elysee , considered one of the most beautiful blvd's in the world, and have people run off with a 200k in merchandise?
I am too lazy to look up the statistics and do comparisons but what we experience here with regards to what was being discussed above in the matter it's being done, is fairly unique. We have allowed this to get to this point for a variety of reasons.
People have been steeling since the beginning of time. People being able to pull off robberies amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars without fear of police arrest and government prosecution is a new thing.
I am too lazy to look up the statistics and do comparisons but what we experience here with regards to what was being discussed above in the matter it's being done, is fairly unique. We have allowed this to get to this point for a variety of reasons.
Maybe you should look them up. Then you'd see that the apparent shoplifting epidemic is largely media driven. Here's a chart showing shoplifting rates since the start of 2018 based on 24 large US cities that release comprehensive shoplifting data:
So it's actually still lower than pre-pandemic on average. Some cities like New York, LA, and Dallas have seen increases, but most of the usual suspects people talk about regarding this issue (San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, etc.) have lower rates than they did in 2018 and 2019.
But of course, because retail was largely shut down in 2020, shoplifting rates dropped significantly. So people who want to mislead others can use 2020 as a baseline and say something like "shoplifting is up 33% in the last 3 years" and be telling the truth.
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Yup, there have been shoplifting manias in the media before. I put them up there with the video games make people violent scares. I linked it earlier in this thread but the retail lobby in the US basically admitted to making up their theft numbers.
Curves needs to touch some grass
The death penalty isn’t an effective deterrent because typically murders aren’t committed with reasoned thoughts.
In this case, a higher level of violence against the perpetrators likely would have a deterrent effect, because these are well thought out crimes of laziness, in that it’s easier to steal stuff that work to pay for it.
It’s true that if there was a high likelihood of undesirable consequences (pain, jail, embarrassment), that many of the people that do this wouldn’t want to.
That might be true if murder was the only thing that could incur the death penalty, and worldwide that isn’t the case. Some of the countries where the death penalty extends the furthest still have the highest rates of crime.
You can’t just say something is true when the actual evidence points solely in the opposite direction. It’s not just the death penalty, either. Stronger punishments correlate with a higher likelihood that someone will re-offend, and unintended, far-reaching negative societal consequences (ever hear of the war on drugs?). Basically, it does the exact opposite pro-violence corporal punishment people want to believe.
And, even if you still wanted to live in the land of make believe, which of you want to start volunteering people to add “breaking legs and hands” or “member of the firing squad” to someone’s job description? If we’re being honest, you don’t have the guts to do it yourself, it’s just easy to say “oh yeah, that guy stole stuff, someone should break his legs… not me, of course, but someone equally tough who isn’t me!”
It’s dumb macho nonsense supported by nothing and I’m not sure that attitude adds any more value to the world than theft does.
Might as well close or change the name of the the thread then if "Growing retail theft" isn't actually happening. We don't want to mislead the CP fanbase with the ever decreasing retail theft that is taking place.
I guess the fact that in San Francisco, nearly 50% of stores in the downtown core have closed in the last few years. Some of it partly Covid of course but theft being a significant factor.
Corporate executives are sounding the alarm on investor conference calls about a problem that doesn't exist or isn't a concern, according to some. Meanwhile industry figures are showing an increase of 19% year over year. https://www.investors.com/news/retai...ganized-crime/
Meanwhile in Calgary, CPS has received so many requests from retailers and mall's for security, they are officially saying no to the issue as they are not in the business of providing individual security to stores.
Perhaps my methods are offensive to some and I understand that. My point still stands, this level of theft and an in your face level of lawlessness does not happen in a lot of countries like it does here. There are no reports of significant retailers, businesses and shopping districts being overrun and closing down with theft from flash mobs in China, Japan, Singapore and other countries where incidences of theft are extremely low.
Might as well close or change the name of the the thread then if "Growing retail theft" isn't actually happening. We don't want to mislead the CP fanbase with the ever decreasing retail theft that is taking place.
I guess the fact that in San Francisco, nearly 50% of stores in the downtown core have closed in the last few years. Some of it partly Covid of course but theft being a significant factor.
Corporate executives are sounding the alarm on investor conference calls about a problem that doesn't exist or isn't a concern, according to some. Meanwhile industry figures are showing an increase of 19% year over year. https://www.investors.com/news/retai...ganized-crime/
Meanwhile in Calgary, CPS has received so many requests from retailers and mall's for security, they are officially saying no to the issue as they are not in the business of providing individual security to stores.
Perhaps my methods are offensive to some and I understand that. My point still stands, this level of theft and an in your face level of lawlessness does not happen in a lot of countries like it does here. There are no reports of significant retailers, businesses and shopping districts being overrun and closing down with theft from flash mobs in China, Japan, Singapore and other countries where incidences of theft are extremely low.
We have normalized this behavior.
Interest rates and a shift to online shopping are killing retail. It pretty much says as much in your San Fran article.
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Corporate executives are sounding the alarm on investor conference calls about a problem that doesn't exist or isn't a concern, according to some. Meanwhile industry figures are showing an increase of 19% year over year. https://www.investors.com/news/retai...ganized-crime/
Like I said above, using 2020 or 2021 as some kind of baseline to reference from is pretty dishonest. All activity dropped significantly in those years, so a 19% increase in losses from 2021 to 2022 isn't particularly notable. Especially when you consider that that nearly half of that increase in dollars is just inflation. If you look at the shrink rate (losses as a % of sales) 2022 was no different than most prior years.
And yeah, real big surprise that executives at retailers are going to blame external factors for their poor performance rather than their own efforts.
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Like I said above, using 2020 or 2021 as some kind of baseline to reference from is pretty dishonest. All activity dropped significantly in those years, so a 19% increase in losses from 2021 to 2022 isn't particularly notable. Especially when you consider that that nearly half of that increase in dollars is just inflation. If you look at the shrink rate (losses as a % of sales) 2022 was no different than most prior years.
And yeah, real big surprise that executives at retailers are going to blame external factors for their poor performance rather than their own efforts.
I think posters who are dishonest in what they represent to the board should have their tongues cut out. It would probably go a long way to improving the level of discourse here.
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"Teach a man to reason, and he'll think for a lifetime"
Under $950 theft - misdemeanor and release. Why don't more jurisdictions make the penalties tougher on shoplifting? We shouldn't overly punish kids for making mistakes but a lot of the perception is that it's a slap on the wrist and they can get away with theft. The net result is store closures all over the US, reduced shopping hours in Canada, and greater costs for consumers.
