Is petty crime getting out of hand? And what do you think is the cause of it?

Packerjohn said:
Yes, you can close all those stores but PLEASE keep "Victoria's Secret" open! Over the years it has always brought a nice wide smile to my face every time I pass this store by. It always made a trip to any mall worth while. I think any mall without "Victoria's Secret" is a mall that I would no longer wish to visit. Often, it's the little things in life that make it worth living.
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I’m probably going to be sorry I asked this, but what do you find so fascinating about Victoria’s Secret?
 

Seems like a way to get people to stay at home like we did during the pandemic. Making it less and less desirable to go out of our homes and more desirable to order all our needs from big conglomerates.
 
Frank from Cleveland said:
As an aside many stores are ALSO making customers bring their own bags to pack their stuff to take home so we save the planet. We're living in crazy times.
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Not so crazy! Our major grocery stores did away with the use of plastic bags.* You buy a couple of organic bags and use them over and over again! One small step for mankind!

*they still carry them but you pay for them now if you don't have your own bag.
 
Old Salt said:
Not so crazy! Our major grocery stores did away with the use of plastic bags.* You buy a couple of organic bags and use them over and over again! One small step for mankind!

*they still carry them but you pay for them now if you don't have your own bag.
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I order online groceries from a local supermarket. As of April 22, there will be no more plastic bags. If required, you can purchase cloth bags of various sorts, some insulated, as well as plastic bins. I am all for it. Plastic straws have been banned for some time.
 
I get suspicious about the chorus of the place is going to hell before an election. in 2024. I think the problem is the way stores offer their wares. Everything is on shelves, or open bins. All a customer has to do is grab it, and take it to the check out. I don't think you need to be poor, uneducated, or have inept parents, to figure out if you walk out the door with it, you eliminate the final check out step. If the way a store does business makes shoplifting easy, goods are going to walk out the door.
 
Sippican said:
Ahhh, yes, all the liberals go back to the same talking point, WalMart is a big mean company that only cares about stockholders.
Here's an idea, stop using inner cities as the new plantation to keep minorities at poverty levels? Sorry, the thieves are the problem. The democrat backed justice system does not want to punish criminals. They allow them to break the law in the name of reparations.
For the democrats, its divide and separate along the lines of class, economics, race, and education. Put people against people, and they won't see how the country is being taken from Americans. Classic socialism tactics. It starts with the indoctrination centers, at a very young age. More focused on teaching 5 year olds about sex than teaching them right from wrong.
Blame guns, not the person pulling the trigger. Blame companies, not the thieves, Blame police, not the criminals.....so easy to see.
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If someone here said something like that about the other political party, they'd be banned.
 
Murrmurr said:
I think the causes are poor parenting, poor education, a high unemployment rate, and low pay and 15 to 20-hr work-weeks for young people who are employed.
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Alligatorob said:
I am not sure it has. The trends I could find are mostly down. Property crime down 33% from 2010 to 2022. https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-state/#:~:text=On average, violent crime has,by 25 percent or more.

This is contrary to public perception, that crime is up. I think what is up is the media's sensational reporting of crime. The truth is today's generation is less violent and more law abiding than we were.

Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S. They’re Wrong.​

https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...nced-crime-is-rising-in-the-u-s-theyre-wrong/

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The crimes listed on the chart are not considered as major crimes and most police departments don’t spend a lot of time looking for a stolen car or someone that had their pocket picked for $20.

Major crimes like murder, rape, felony assault, sexual battery, child abuse and domestic violence are crimes that are most investigated. I have no idea where those numbers are on any chart, but the only true statistics at one time came from the FBI. However, in today’s woke world, even those numbers have been known to be rigged to make those in charge appear to be cleaning up the numbers. Assaults in NYC have risen by 30%, but if you look at a chart, I would be surprised if it showed anywhere near that.

Most of the large cities, for example. NYC, SF, LA, Philadelphia and Chicago’s numbers have increased dramatically over the last 5 years. It’s seldom that major crimes go down. I can’t remember at any time when that happened during my years in service.
 
I have never shoplfted in my life. But it has occurred to me many times that the stores are set up in a way that makes it much easier to just steal an item than to stand in line (sometimes forever) to pay for it. I wonder if sometimes that's the reason.
 
Sunny said:
it has occurred to me many times that the stores are set up in a way that makes it much easier to just steal an item than to stand in line (sometimes forever) to pay for it. I wonder if sometimes that's the reason.
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Maybe... it can get irritating.

I have on occasion just put cash on the counter as close to the cashier as I can get, and then left with the item. I always leave exact change or more. It's resulted in some complaining, but I just ignore and walk out the door. Yet to be reported for shoplifting...
 
At least the shoplifters are stealing from huge corporations. Healthcare corporations are stealing from individuals who often can't afford it.

I saw a story the other day about people who go into a hospital for some procedure. A doctor sticks his head in the room for 15 seconds and then the patient gets charged $700 for his visit. But that's legal the way our system is set up because the rich make our laws.
 
Sunny said:
I have never shoplfted in my life. But it has occurred to me many times that the stores are set up in a way that makes it much easier to just steal an item than to stand in line (sometimes forever) to pay for it. I wonder if sometimes that's the reason.
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One of the things criminals pretty much have in common is impulse control. If they can't resist the urge to steal because they have to wait in line for to pay for something they don't own they are a criminal not a customer.

This is an example of exactly why small crimes like shoplifting what ever need to be addressed. It's too easy for the weak willed to leap from stealing candy bars to more expensive and larger items. Catch and punish them early. People should also be reminded that stealing things like pens or paper clips from an office is technically stealing-it's not just a legal argument but ethical as well although workplace theft is frequently enabled by management
 
SeniorBen said:
At least the shoplifters are stealing from huge corporations.
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That's exactly how shoplifters see it; big corporation; who's it gonna hurt?

It hurts shoppers who shop at big corporate retailers like Walmart because they can't afford Nordstrom's or Macy's or The Gap.

And they'll shoplift at those places just to give 'em a big ol' Eff You!

Shoplifters are pissed-off opportunists who simply do not care about anyone or anything, like the economy and people's jobs and their paychecks. They do not care. 5 stolen pairs of Jordans is quick money, period.
 
Very likely because offences which are deemed "petty" will not be dealt with so an offender has nothing to lose.
 
SeniorBen said:
At least the shoplifters are stealing from huge corporations. Healthcare corporations are stealing from individuals who often can't afford it.

I saw a story the other day about people who go into a hospital for some procedure. A doctor sticks his head in the room for 15 seconds and then the patient gets charged $700 for his visit. But that's legal the way our system is set up because the rich make our laws.
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When I read a post like this I am so grateful for universal healthcare in Canada. It is ailing at the moment but given my departed wife's history as well as my recent bout with ill health I would have gone bankrupt ten times over during my life time. I am on 8 different medications and am being charged five dollars per refill! Over the fity-four years we were married: Uncountable doctor's appointments, specialist appointments, prolonged hospital stays, 6 different surgeries, including two kidney transplants: total cost to us: zilch!

So, thank God universal health care was introduced shortly after I landed back in 1956!

Before it took effect I remember sitting at a curb with my wife who was chronically ill, from her birth, with a kidney problem, both of us crying because we had received a bill from an anesthesiologist for eighty dollars. Money we couldn't afford because I was an Ordinary Seaman at the time! Thank God for Tommy Douglas and his party, now NDP! And people are scared of "socialists!"
 
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Alligatorob said:
I always assumed that if caught the shoplifter faced at least some kind of criminal charges. But know little about it.
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Increasingly little or no criminal charges because the value threshold for shoplifting has been widely raised to turn it from a felony into a misdemeanor -- a crime on a par with jay walking.

"California’s recent headline-making “flash mob” shoplifting sprees have brought widespread attention to Proposition 47 — a 2014 state ballot initiative, supported by a range of left-leaning and libertarian groups, which, among other things, boosted the felony threshold for shoplifting from $450 of merchandise to $950. Soon after it passed, retailers in California began reporting a sharp uptick in retail theft, often in plain view of helpless store personnel and distressed customers.
What has received far less attention, however, is the fact that California’s Prop. 47 was not an outlier among states. In the past 10 years, nearly half of all states have boosted their thresholds for retail felony theft. Thirty-eight states now don’t consider shoplifting a felony unless $1,000 or more of merchandise gets stolen. A 2020 National Retail Federation report on organized retail crime found that two-thirds of retailers in states that had raised their felony shoplifting minimums reported growing retail theft."

"Shoplifting no longer fits its traditional mold as a nonviolent crime perpetrated mostly by teens or substance-abusing adults. Nearly two-thirds of the retailers surveyed by the National Retail Federation said that violence associated with store thefts has risen, led by organized gangs that resell the goods they steal. Like retailers, top law-enforcement officials place some of the blame for the crime surge on a widespread lessening of penalties for shoplifting."
https://nypost.com/2022/01/22/why-shoplifting-is-soaring-in-the-us-and-will-get-worse/
 
911 said:
The crimes listed on the chart are not considered as major crimes and most police departments don’t spend a lot of time looking for a stolen car or someone that had their pocket picked for $20.

Major crimes like murder, rape, felony assault, ****** battery, child abuse and domestic violence are crimes that are most investigated. I have no idea where those numbers are on any chart, but the only true statistics at one time came from the FBI. However, in today’s woke world, even those numbers have been known to be rigged to make those in charge appear to be cleaning up the numbers. Assaults in NYC have risen by 30%, but if you look at a chart, I would be surprised if it showed anywhere near that.

Most of the large cities, for example. NYC, SF, LA, Philadelphia and Chicago’s numbers have increased dramatically over the last 5 years. It’s seldom that major crimes go down. I can’t remember at any time when that happened during my years in service.
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Thanks, as I recall you are a retired law enforcement person, is that right? If so I am sure you have insights into this the rest of us don't.

Are you saying that even the FBI statistics are skewed to show less crime than they used to? It sounds like it. Do you believe there are any reliable sources of statistics of this kind?

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https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/
 

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