![]() Whether any of these offenses-simple shoplifting, organized theft, or violent smash-and-grabs-are actually happening more frequently overall is, at best, ambiguous. Misdemeanors don’t attract law-enforcement attention, the theory goes, so criminals are able to strike again and again and flip their hauls to fences, who consolidate millions of dollars of stolen goods into inventory for online storefronts, where Amazon and Etsy and eBay shield them from detection and punishment. This is identified as repetitive, mostly nonconfrontational theft for profit, whose perpetrators strive to evade detection and keep each theft strategically below local dollar thresholds for felony larceny. They pair broad statistics about the commonness of shoplifting or larceny of any kind with lurid descriptions of brazen armed robberies (which aren’t included in any shoplifting stats, because they are a different crime entirely) to illustrate a narrowly defined problem: organized retail crime. The first indicator that the theft-wave narrative may not hold water is that stories about it tend to garble terms and numbers. To determine what, if anything, is up with shoplifting in America, we have to answer two questions: Is theft really more common than it was in the recent past, and is current theft really more severe or harmful? You would think that answers to both of these questions would be readily available, if only because the topic has been discussed so much, but the reality of the situation is not quite so clear-cut. The deeper you search for real, objective evidence of an accelerating retail crime wave, the more difficult it is to be sure that you know anything at all. Nevertheless, a handful of viral videos and some troubling statistics from retailers and industry groups have set Americans on edge during the year’s most economically essential shopping season, wondering if the mall where they buy their Christmas presents might be next. Smash-and-grabs are awful, but they’re pretty rare (and already very much felonies). Recent news stories describe a shoplifting surge, but this narrative conflates an array of very different offenses into a single crime wave said to be cresting right now, all over the country, in a frenzy of naked avarice and shocking violence. Before dawn on a November day in New York City, thieves used a hammer to smash their way into a closed Givenchy boutique and left with $80,000 in designer duds.īut wait. At a Louis Vuitton boutique in an Illinois mall, more than a dozen robbers overwhelmed sales clerks and made off with $120,000 in loot. At another Nordstrom, this one in Southern California, thieves were caught on video assaulting workers with bear spray. The incidents these stories use to illustrate the problem are genuine mayhem: At a Bay Area Nordstrom, police say, as many as 80 thieves executed a coordinated attack on the store. To stabilize their businesses and make their communities safe, these executives, advocates, and officers say, they need different changes in both local and federal law. Employees don’t feel safe in stores, and understaffing makes theft even easier. Internet platforms where criminals profit are indifferent to pleas to shut down illegal storefronts. ![]() Bail reform means that thieves are roaming the streets before they stand trial. The stores are losing the war.Īccording to the retail executives, industry advocacy groups, and law-enforcement officers who have described their failing battles against these attacks, the problem has been building for years, but a spate of recent changes in laws and attitudes has threatened to tip American shopping into chaos: Felony-theft laws, they say, are now too permissive. In the process, they’re endangering people’s lives and sapping corporate profits. Thieves smash windows at luxury clothing stores, go full-on Supermarket Sweep in the aisles of drugstores, and sell their wares undetected on Amazon or eBay or Facebook Marketplace. The attacks are common, and they’re escalating in severity. ![]() ![]() On local news and in national publications, they paint a shocking picture: Across the United States, retail stores are fighting a war against large, violent, highly organized criminal gangs. You’ve probably seen the shoplifting stories, if only because there are a lot of them.
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