Scare and Flee

Retailers Flee Cities as Urban Shoplifting and Theft Spin Out of Control

You've seen the news on uncontrolled shoplifting in major cities. That's bad enough. But there are a number of back stories that make the situation much worse than the headlines, and have major implications for the economy as a whole. The first reaction to the shoplifting stories is often, "Hey, just hire more security guards!" That doesn't work because the owners of the retail chains won't let the guards do their jobs. The guards mainly don't have guns and are really there to protect the workers (if they can), not to stop the shoplifters. In fact, they have strict training and instructions not to intervene with the actual shoplifting and not to apprehend the shoplifters themselves. The next reaction is "Well, call the police!" Good luck with that. Many of the cities where shoplifting is out of control are the same ones that have defunded the police. Even if the police make an arrest, the DA's and judges release the defendants the same day under new "no bail" rules that have been enacted. So, the police won't intervene in the first place because they know the end result. The thieves know all of this and just go right back to shoplifting, often the same day. The story gets worse from there. The crimes are not limited to shoplifting. Often guns are involved, and store employees are beaten or pistol-whipped during the heist. Even high-end stores work on small margins, so the theft of $1,000 of goods means wiping out the profits on, say, $10,000 of sales making it quite difficult to breakeven in that environment. Store chains do the next logical thing, which is to close the stores in crime-prone neighborhoods (including former prestige locations like the Miracle Mile in Chicago, Fifth Avenue in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills) and move on. This leaves rows of deserted store fronts and, more importantly, lost jobs for employees, lost venues for shoppers, and lost taxes for the local governments. The thieves don't care and just move to the next set of targets. Illegal immigrants are catching on to this scam and are now forming gangs to do some shoplifting of their own. They tend to be more violent and more reckless than the local gangs who started this. This won't change until communities support police, bail is reinstated, judges impose stiff sentences, and the criminals are swept off the streets. Don't expect any of that to happen soon.

Jim Richards