The felony theft limit for Texas is $2,500, but their retail establishments do not report massive shoplifting sprees. Clearly there is more than misdemeanor/felony classification at work here.
but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner to be armed, and actually confront you? No way that would happen in California.
I keep thinking of this event that happened to me in the UK, where laws are equally useless at preventing theft, and staff are just powerless to do anything about it. I chased down a shoplifter. I cornered him in an alley. He stopped, looked at me, and this brief conversation took place. (and nobody ever believes me, but I don't care; this really did happen)
Him: What are you doing?
Me: I'm chasing you
Him: why?
Me: Because you're a fucking thief!
Him: (confused)...nobody's ever done that before.
Me: (shocked) ... well, I AM, so fucking run!
He dropped the bag (which contained mostly expensive meat and cheese and some other expensive-ish items - apparently really common theft targets) - and ran off. I took the bag back to the store.
Now, I didn't give a shit about a 100 pound loss to Tesco, but if we've completely given up on the rule of law, I'm not sure that's a society I'm happy to live in.
...what? The average Texan, as it turns out, isn't literally Wyatt Earp. It would be shocking if a random Best Buy manager stopped a shoplifter with a firearm—not to mention probably in violation of Best Buy's policies for handling shoplifting.
The average cashier's ability to administer lethal force is probably not a major influence on the prevalence of shoplifting in Texas.
In Texas if you aren't otherwise in the commission of a crime, you may use a weapon to prevent a crime. And yet the news was not filled with concealed carry permit owners drawing on people to do exactly that. I never bothered to get a permit but a friend who did told me the instructor heavily emphasized if you did use your weapon it would be minimum $25k in legal fees even if exonerated.
Now that permitless carry is legal it remains to be seen if there's an uptick in vigilantism, but I have my doubts.
Why on earth would you jump straight to that conclusion? Even if the firearm was drawn, which is a huge if assuming the carrier was attacked, almost all defensive gun uses end before a shot is fired.
Someone carrying a firearm should be more willing to nonviolently confront a thief than someone that's unarmed.
In a fairly liberal area of PA I saw a manager of a Walgreens very aggressively (not physically) confront a shoplifter and yell out to never come to the store again. The punk tried to respond, but ultimately cowered to the anger of the manager.
In TX they'd be more intimidating, I'm sure. Unless corporate bans guns.
sorry, but in Texas, big box retailers do not use armed staff. Target, Wal Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I have never, ever seen a worker with a gun.
As a life-long Texan, this sounds ridiculous to me. A Wal Mart employee is more intimidating, simply because they're Texan?
Even in the ultra-liberal Bay Area my Walgreens, Target and Best Buy employ armed security. I find it doubtful that Texas of all places doesn’t have armed security.
(Oddly I’ve only seen unarmed, tired looking security in CVS. Perhaps they’re too cheap to pay for armed gaurds.)
The only time I’ve seen an armed guard at a retail store in the southeast is when they have off duty cops late night at very high crime locations. It is extremely uncommon here for a Target or Best Buy to regularly employee armed security.
Most everywhere in Atlanta has armed security, CVS included.
It's not ever really geared at shoplifters though, as a lot of people seem to forget that shoplifting isn't really the biggest crime you can do in a store.
I don’t think it’s most everywhere in Atlanta because I lived there until 2 years ago (I still visit regularly), and it wasn’t the norm anywhere I regularly went. Atlanta is a big place, so I’m sure there’s room for variation.
Maybe there is somewhere in Texas where those stores employ armed security. I've never heard of it nor been to one. I think armed security is more a function of crime than of local sentiment towards guns.
> box retailers do not use armed staff. Target, Wal Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I have never, ever seen a worker with a gun
It wouldn't be the corporation arming the staff, it would be the staff arming themselves via a CCW/CHL. The first letter states 'concealed', so by definition you shouldn't see it.
>A Wal Mart employee is more intimidating, simply because they're Texan
Its less about any individual employee, and more about the general culture and nature of crime in the two areas. If I were a criminal in Texas, I would undoubtedly prefer crimes with less chance of confrontation.
Texas is a big place, and as far as I'm aware, doesn't make it a policy to train individuals to be vigilantes.
If your anecdote proves anything, it is the relative safety of that liberal area of PA. The fact that a manager of a Walgreens was comfortable confronting a criminal without real consequences speaks to the level of danger they were in.
If you've spent time in any rougher areas of Texas (I have), you'd agree that physically confronting a criminal over petty theft, as a store manager, carries a huge risk of violent escalation—something you'd probably want to avoid in a city with a higher murder rate.
All of the downtown CVS locations in Dallas don't even have checkout employees. It's automated self-checkout. You can just walk out of the store if you want to. Nobody is going to shoot you. Whoever owns CVS doesn't live anywhere near the stores.
Friend of mine got in the local paper for retrieving his laptop from a grab-and-run, by being a regular competitive runner and dramatically outrunning the guy.
Can't imagine anyone doing that for Tesco, though. Especially unpaid.
Londoner here, true for big shops and supermarkets, off-licenses and corner shops will be equipped with a baseball bat behind the counter. Watched them dragging low-life thiefs to the back stores to be dealt with.
Convenience store, pawn shop, or other stores in low income areas? Maybe.
The ones these people are hitting? Not a snowball's chance in hell. An individual could walk out with 10 baskets full of medicine and still not be worth the trouble to pull a gun for all the legal headaches that will bring.
Likely Tesco tossed them right in the bin, however. I think it's overstating the case to claim that people robbing shops (especially big chains) is an indication that "we've completely given up on the rule of law" - at least, I find it unlikely that your erstwhile (if gormless) thief, emboldened by his huge haul of free meat and cheese, would choose next time to relieve you of your wallet. Robbing people is a much riskier game, even in a civilised (read "non-firearm-carrying") place like the UK.
I don't understand putting your personal safety at risk (who knows if he had a knife or something) over £100 of goods belonging to a £20B company. It's not like he stole your meat and cheese as you were shopping. Nobody is going to miss that cheese. Nobody is going to get fired over it. It's really not that important.
Well, the principle of the matter for one and some have personal courage.
Also, what you propose radically changes society for the worse. If Tesco can't assume a high trust environment to sell their goods, they will implement policies to protect themselves that are more expensive/less convenient for everyone. Thomas Sowell has written extensively about this.
He said he chased the guy out of principle, but if that were true, it follows that he'd do the same thing if the guy stole a pack of gum, which is even more insane. Even the police won't chase someone down for stealing such small amounts. He's not the police, he's not the owner of the store, he (presumably) don't even work there. He has no skin in that game whatsoever.
The store has already accounted for shoplifting and shrinkage in their budget, and any steps they might take to combat it will be systemic via policy and by working with law enforcement to bust major groups (the subject of the actual article) and not one-off foot-chases.
You might argue that a store will charge higher prices in an environment with shoplifting than without, but how much does that really boil down to in terms of the customer's final bill? Bread becomes £0.02 more expensive in a store that has accounted for shoplifting? Does anyone care?
Finally, there is almost no secondary market for food, so, in OP's case, the guy was likely stealing in order to eat, and not to just fence the goods for money.
> You might argue that a store will charge higher prices in an environment with shoplifting than without, but how much does that really boil down to in terms of the customer's final bill?
This is clearly not about meat and cheese. This is about stamping out the attitude that some people have that allow them to walk into a store and just ...take stuff. This time it was from a large company. Next time it's from your house or car.
What is the cost of living in a civil society where people don't routinely steal? Apparently, in a world where police are unwilling to respond it's acts like this. Thank you OP.
It's pretty normal to be offered freshly stolen meat and other high value food in pubs, in poor neighborhoods. It's happened to me lots of times. There very much is a secondary food market.
Agree that OP doesn’t have a responsibility to defend Tesco from crime, however disagree that it doesn’t matter. It’s logical fallacy to say that crimes small enough don’t matter. By that definition a criminal that is robs billions of people for mere pennies wouldn’t matter. You have to look at the class of crimes. So if petty crimes are significant, then as a class of crimes it matters.
I totally believe you, but I don't think that's laudable.
It's one thing to go after someone who steals from you or some other individual, but appointing yourself the vigilante protector of the grocer class is not about defending society, it's about your personal drives.
The food you returned almost certainly wound up in the trash (stores have no way of knowing you're not a weirdo who contaminates food for kicks), and the cost of administering 'rescued product' is more than that of just writing off the loss as a business expense, which you'd better believe they already budget around.
My guess is it's the same situation as Seattle; Prosecutors in California refuse to prosecute these cases, meaning the cops refuse to waste time trying to apprehend them.
Here's an excellent clip about a famous criminal living free in Seattle that happily expounds on his illegal activity: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw?t=868
wow, that article is actually a really interesting take on the whole situation, and how there are no easy answers (both in this case and, i suspect, in many others (in sf and beyond)). these sorts of tragedies really highlight the need for a society-wide rethink on how to balance freedom/liberty with the ticking time bomb of negative externalities that certain, highly-justice-system-involved (especially when serious drug abuse issues are in play) offenders represent. at what point is someone "broken" enough from the pov of the rest of society that the humane solution necessitates a more interventionist approach? (not that forcible commission is at all a panacea, or even necessarily a viable/effective approach, of course). i think everyone would agree that letting these sorts of problems fester until they get bad enough that we can justify locking them up and throwing away the key is not a good solution for anyone.
There are plenty of things about my state that get hated on all the time, and deservingly so, but I'll never get how the West Coast is happy driving productive people away and coddling those that have no intention other than to fuck over society.
> how the West Coast is happy driving productive people
The evidence for this happening in economically-meaningful numbers is scarce. What we do see happening is those productive people disengaging from that broken society—civically, physically and emotionally.
The evidence for this happening in economically-meaningful numbers is scarce.
It doesn't take numbers meaningful to California to have a meaningful effect on other states, where housing costs are massively skyrocketing due to an influx of new residents.
I grew up in Colorado, and complaints about housing costs and traffic increases due to the influx of Californians has been a constant since the 1970s. At least.
I'm going posit that it's perception more than any actual changes due to fleeing 'fornians.
Could be, but one hears of a multiplying effect: numbers of households moving from California times the absolute housing price differences, in terms of money flowing into local housing markets.
I grew up in Washington, where people were whining about Californians moving there and driving up property prices since at least the 80s, but I'm sure long before.
This doesn't prove someone's opinion that criminals are being coddled and productive people are being driven away.
I mean about a decade ago I would have loved to live on the West Coast. I'm sure I'm no great loss to you but there are a lot of people that you just will never get. Not to mention, compared to a decade ago, the cities in my home state are starting to adopt these policies.
I don't see how not prosecuting repeated offenders is not coddling, as pointed out, the guy ended up murdering. There's very much a cultural difference.
What does that have to do with crime? Could be people just getting priced out. Land in the western US is still more expensive and still getting more expensive than elsewhere, clearly it is in demand even more than it is not in demand.
In what world is 500,000 people moving into the greater Seattle area over the past decade and raising housing prices into the stratosphere called 'Driving productive people away'?
I'm pretty sure in CA it's that police do not respond to calls for anything less than felony theft.
So it creates a situation where you can walk in the store, grab what you want, and then walk out with out having the police called or anyone legally allowed to stop you.
> So it creates a situation where you can walk in the store, grab what you want, and then walk out with out having the police called or anyone legally allowed to stop you.
Walmart and Target, among others, reportedly monitor small thefts and let you get up to the felony threshold over multiple incidents before swooping in.
An option not available to small businesses, as the shoplifters have no doubt already learned. Another hidden tilting of the playing field against small business.
So will we see a startup: Uber for alternative policing to whom small retailers submit surveilance camera footage, and expect a series of crimes to be merged into a single case?
That’s actually a pretty compelling idea. Not necessarily the alternative policing part (private police?), but compiling hard evidence against offenders and handing that to the authorities.
That's a good point. I don't think the felony theft limit is the only consideration the deters organized theft. One obvious difference between Texas and Bay Area is Texas has a lot of guns.
> In TX can You Legally Shoot & Kill a Shoplifter? The short answer is…not unless they somehow injure you in the process of committing the theft, making it a robbery. “During the process of committing the theft” would include while trying to escape with the property... One thing that is UNIQUE to Texas is the ability to use deadly force to protect property, even if you are not in fear for your life.
Even though I doubt CVS security guards are trained the shoot shoplifters, the preception that this is a possibility would deter low level criminals tasked with shoplifting
My mom worked at Macy's and reported endless problems with organized shoplifting in the 1980's and 1990's. One time a whole family came into the Men's clothing department after her shift, the dad kept the clerk distracted, the mom and the kids took a few racks of suits and loaded them into their car.
She said that the security guards were loathe to use force on anyone because Macy's could get sued; that didn't stop shoplifters from running over a security guard in the parking lot.
I worked at a supermarket where the security was entirely undercover (probably because they were more afraid of us stealing than the customers) and I knew nothing about the security until the day I saw a massively overweight woman tackle a man who was leaving the store.
The 70s 80s and early 90s was the golden age of crime. Short sentences, much more lenient recidivism laws, poor security, a culture that really didn't care that much, no digitsliazation and no tech to easy track stolen goods or id suspects, no smartphones . Multiple types of crimes thrived in that era: bank robbery, drug dealing/distribution, shoplifting, auto theft, and so on. It was pretty bad, even worse than now. The noticeable decline of crime since the 90s according to steven pinker seems to confirm this.
These comments are ridiculous. Have any of you people saying these things ever actually lived in Texas? Minimum wage chain store employees are not carrying guns. I would discourage you from trying to rob someone's actual house, sure. My wife once called me home to say she thought someone was in the house, and I cleared every single room with an AR-15, and you can believe I would have shot an intruder without a second thought. But a convenience store? No one is taking it personally enough to shoot you for stealing corporate property. If anything, the employees are probably the people most likely to be doing the stealing.
I'm not so sure about that, like someone stealing a few things yeah, no one is going to care enough. But in SF it's common that people walk in and fill up a fucking roller suitcase and then just walk out.
In the south someone is likely going to call you out for that, at which point a confrontation may ensue and it has a much higher likelihood of a gun being involved.
I've been called out by presumably minimum wage employees before for opening food in the gas station while waiting on family members to finish shopping or use the restroom.
There are studies that show people from the south are more aggressive and take much more personal offense to perceived disrespectful behavior.
Difficulty: It would take maybe, shall we say, ten thousand of your "firearms stopping shoplifting" cases to offset even ONE "innocent person getting shot" case.
> Even though I doubt CVS security guards are trained the shoot shoplifters, the preception that this is a possibility would deter low level criminals tasked with shoplifting
I've never once seen a security guard in a Texas CVS. It actually sounds preposterous to me. Charging $3 for a 20oz soda is the real crime.
