Last spring, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson created an Organized Retail Crime Unit, and their tireless has begun to pay dividends, resulting its first criminal prosecution.
It does raise the philosophical question if a single person can be considered an organization, however.
And this after we find out the whole organized retail crime thing was all made up fantastical myth.
Is disorganized crime better?
The Captain
Better than blaming someone’s son in white suburbia? A fictitious war on the ghetto. Meanwhile Junior is stealing everyone blind. Dad must be a stockbroker.
You have mentioned this a number of times. Do you have a link to some data?
DB2
Absolutely no data. No way! And tell Moms and Dads white kids are thieves who have not been charged yet? There is not a press in this country that wants to go there.
Besides much easier to blame black folks as usual in America for someone else’s actions.
There is this old article from when you were a kid. The difference now there are more chain stores.
That’s kinda what I thought.
DB2
There is no data on African American ghetto or inner city shoplifters either. Turns out the bureaucracy that measures crime…forgot the acronym does not keep stats. Most academic studies won’t look at race. Many studies are anecdotal. In other words, you have little to no evidence any of this is more inner cities.
White Americans do not want the facts. For decades now no real recordkeeping.
All of this is irrelevant. The chain stores, because they take inventory periodically, know exactly which stores underperform with regards to shrinkage. And they don’t care who’s doing it, it makes no difference if it’s employees or customers, and it makes no difference what race they are, and it makes no difference if it’s organized or individual. Over time, the stores that underperform will be closed down, and the stores that perform adequately will remain open. That’s how the real world works.
So why go around making claims with no support one way or the other?
DB2
And in California they are also working on those Heisenberg crimes. From August:
DB2
Because the news cycle blames the inner city “organized crime” endlessly. That is racism that deserves a slap in the face. Most of the shoplifting is done by white people and the powers that be are not collecting the stats.
Because it is completely true.
Found a good source when I typed “White Shoplifting” into Google search.
It is our BS press blaming the inner city because box store retailers report it as such instead of saying to white Moms and Dads the whole lot of you are stealing far too much.
How can that be true? How can groups of people attack a given retailer in a raid without some system of communications? Does that imply organization? Or waiting for some signal?
This thread is about organized retail theft (ORT or ORC, organized retail crime). ORC is a “subcategory of shoplifting involving participation in a managed operation to convert stolen merchandise to cash. It is a “professional” activity, distinct from “petty” shoplifting motivated by impulse, thrill-seeking, economic necessity, or mental illness.”
Braun et al. looked at arrests for shoplifting and ORC in Texas. In thefts of between $500 and $1500, blacks represented 28% of arrests for the two categories while making up 12% of the Texas population.
Make of it what you will.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jels.12201
DB2
Heisenberg crimes is a pretty good way to put it because the harder you look, the less you see them. Of course there are criminal organizations that target retail. That’s nothing new. What is new are spate of wild claims about the extent of the problem which are being advanced by narrow political and business interests along with right-wing hate organizations.
From your ABC News article:
The National Retail Federation’s most recent survey of retailers across the country reported a 26% jump in organized retail crime between 2000 and 2021, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in losses.
However, that survey was shown to be fabricated. I say “fabricated” because it beggars belief their estimates could be so wildly, wildly incorrect on accident. No one would make such claims unless they were ordered to.
Similarly, Walgreen’s announced it was closing stores in San Francisco area due to organized retail crime. However, a San Francisco Chronicle report showed no evidence to support this. Walgreen’s execs were later forced to admit their claims were fabricated.
Target also appears to be telling some tall tales about organized retail theft.
In another thread, I noted that after months of tireless work, Washington’s State Organized Retail Crime Task Force has been able prosecute a single organization, which consisted of a single person.
In other news, shoplifting is actually down nationwide.
Which doesn’t quite square with the recent recommendation by a prominent presidential candidate that only solution is to start shooting shoplifters on sight. It is almost like special interest groups benefit by ginning up hate and fear. The only surprising part is the public keeps falling for it.