> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there.

Making the dollar store a "safe space" for customers would mean having lots of armed guards around and bulletproof glass everywhere. Also every item behind the counter, like in a general store of old. You just know that the New Yorker would find ways to complain about that, too.

But that can't be an acceptable solution, can it?

If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country. You might as well not pay taxes then.

I'm not clear on why any responsibility falls on dollar store here either way. Dollar store didn't place unsafe individuals in the community and dollar store didn't have a say in structuring the police force. Is the idea that if you're going to do business in a crap neighborhood then you become responsible for fixing it?

None of those points follow or make sense.

> If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country

Welp might as well just move the dollar general to mexico! Those poor people will have to travel there to buy things.

> You might as well not pay taxes then

That makes sense if you're a charity, but dollar general is a for-profit org -- and does make a profit.

> The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies.

Anyway, if they did more they would be criticized for treating all their customers as criminals and creating a self-perpetuating threatening environment or whatever.

What a load of rubbish. Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door, and nobody is claiming they are treating all customers as criminals. Everyone understands they are there to stop the few malicious people from stealing or causing trouble.

"Is receipt checking a practice that violates civil rights while treating customers as criminals until proven otherwise, or are retailers simply trying to cut shrink and avoid passing on the related costs to the same people who are loudly complaining?"

https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-a...

> Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door

Not anywhere I've ever shopped.

The closest I've ever seen is the Walmart greeters, on the rare occasions when I can't avoid going to Walmart.

But then, I live in a rural area, and almost exclusively shop in suburban and small-city stores (the largest city I regularly shop in is Syracuse, NY).

I have noticed loss prevention being fairly pervasive, but I have rarely noticed actual security guards. The difference being loss prevention is there to stop shoplifting, and are generally instructed to never use any physical force. They'll take a description and let the shoplifter get away if the situation becomes violent.

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen someone who looks like they were placed to discourage armed robberies. Although I have frequented a few grocery stores that had police hanging out.

> Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door

I have only ever seen this at Best Buy. Perhaps it varies from on area to another, though.

Even then that guard isn't going to try to stop people, even obvious offenders. They're there to get a good look at you on the way out, and spook the low-effort thieves who may chicken out.

Workers comp for 3-5 stitches and a day or two off of work would cost way more than just letting someone walk out with a couple Nintendo games or some headphones.

> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there.

One thing I'm curious about is the liability for having armed security guards. I'm operating under the assumption that unarmed security guards are unlikely to have a real impact on the armed robbery rate, so I'm assuming that armed guards are what we're discussing here.

Quick Googling says Dollar General generates $2.3 billion in profit per year, across "over 16000 stores" from their site. So the average yearly profit per store is roughly $143k (which is surprisingly low to me). A security guard per store is going to eat a lot of that, but it's probably feasible to do. I think the bigger question is whether Dollar General could potentially bear any liability in the event one of their security guards shot someone, and I would be stunned if they didn't bear any liability. Even the legal costs associated with winning a wrongful death suit could eat an entire year's profits.

I strongly suspect that is the reason why they fire any employee who is carrying a handgun. As an agent of Dollar General, Dollar General probably assumes some liability for shootings that happen while on the job.

I also suspect the violent crime is part of the reason other groceries moved away. Being undercut certainly doesn't help, but other groceries were faced with the same economic decision regarding customer safety, as well as damage to their brand from being associated with violent crime.

One solution would be to place police officers at or very near these stores. I lived in a college neighborhood at one point, and there was a convenience store that was well known for being robbed almost weekly. The police set up a substation there, and it basically vanished. On the other hand, that was one store, not an entire chain, and it was the campuses PD that set it up. And campus PD had precious little else to do at night other than rounding up underage drinkers.

It's also unclear whether the police substation discouraged the crimes or pushed them down the street.

> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there.

Have you seen some of the very glassed-in sorts of "safe" stores that exist in high crime areas? Tons of bulletproof glass, nothing directly accessible without asking the cashier. It doesn't scale to any kind of a store where sales are made by people walking around and seeing items and being inspired to buy them. It only works for gas stations and restaurants, for the most part, and even then it's a hassle for the staff.

> whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe

Never mind economics, it might just be logistically impossible unless you invest heavily in security personnel, who really won't do very much in the event of any kind of more serious criminal action.

Food deserts, etc. form in high crime areas because the crime drives them away. The current anti-police attitude is going to make this worse in the short term; I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll.

> "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities.

What does that last bit actually mean? How do stolen items "externalize as violence"? It sounds like GPT-3 regurgitated a sociology textbook.

>I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll.

Start by getting everyone into stable housing that they won't be thrown out of at gunpoint for suffering economic hardship, addiction, or mental illness of any variety. Get the same people enough food to feed everyone in their household no questions asked. Build up transportation so people don't need to walk three miles, take four buses, two trains, and a subway over three hours to get to their four hour long minimum wage shift. Provide all necessary health and dental for all citizens at $0 cost at the order of a doctor by nationalizing the healthcare industry as is and excising the profit motives.

Pursue white collar criminals with funding and ferocity equal to the damages.

Create new laws that treat financial criminals the same way the justice system has treated black people: Mandatory minimums, ankle monitors for years, random probation officer visits at 3am, and urinalysis, barred from all positions of authority, security clearance, and working with the vulnerable, and importantly, three strike laws leading to life without parole in supermax.

I'm not talking about the guy committing mail fraud with stolen $100 checks. But rather the people stealing millions and billions. They don't deserve to live outside a prison. These criminals create vicious cycles in the communities the victimize which compound the damages, stunting growth, and ruining countless lives.

Retask the bulk of the atf and dea with being the ops arm of the irs financial crimes unit.

By focusing the small details like victimized staff at dollar stores we're ignoring the bigger picture and doing a disservice to the people trapped in these situation through little or no fault of their own.

I think you misread my last sentence. Stolen goods are internalized costs since they register directly as a write down of value. An employee getting murdered in the store does not seem to be appropriately internalized as a cost though, since they aren’t appropriately funding store safety and security. Instead, the communities are bearing those costs by losing their people and living among higher violence. There is an assumption baked into this (noted in the article) that robbery isn’t fungible. Instead, the suggestion is that stores heavy in cash and low in security foster robbery, which sounds logical to me.

The article touched on the discrepancy between internalized and externalized costs: The stores invested in securing their buildings’ air conditioners, but not in security systems that would improve the physical safety of their customers or employees.

Externalities are costs of doing business that you the business don't directly pay. Their point seems pretty straight forward to me. What part of it is confusing?

Could you maybe just restate it? How are stolen items costs that businesses "don't directly pay"?

OP said:

> "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities.

So they're saying that the business does pay the cost of stolen items ("shrink") but not the cost of the violence, which is borne by its victims.

The stolen items are costs. The violence to staff and customers are externalities.

Retail has terrible margins. It's financials are public, see the single digit margins:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/...

It obviously is economically infeasible to make the stores safe. Any store in the neighborhoods where the dollar stores are would find it economically infeasible.

Still way better margins than a grocery store (1-3% IIRC). Do you have any idea how turnover might compare?

Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? Perhaps they just need more policing. How does a shop prevent a person from shooting somebody else in its carpark? Even then, won't they just shoot each other in the street outside the carpark instead? Without the shop, won't they shoot each other at home? It's hard to see that it's causing crime rather than just being the place where inevitable crime happens more often.

| Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime?

There have been several Supreme Court cases that have answered that question with a hard “No”

> There have been several Supreme Court cases that have answered that question with a hard “No”

No, they cannot be sued for failing to prevent crime. You are not guaranteed a crime free life by the presence of or even reports to the police force.

While it may not be job of the police, it is definitely in the mandate of the local government. How they achieve it is their own problem. You are owed security in the streets not by the PD, but by the mayor.

Through what means?

Community outreach, mental health care and drug rehabilitation programs have all been proven effective at reducing violent crime.

However, education is even more effective on a per-dollar and quality of life basis.

Ohio used to have one of the best public school systems in the region.

Now, there’s a saying in Ohio: “We cut our schools so much, our neighbors are making fun of us, and out neighbors include Kentucky and West Virginia!”

The saying popped up when both those states started beating Ohio on standardized tests, if I remember right. It was partly because those states improved their schools, but largely because Ohio slashed funding.

> prevent violent crime?

well, i don't think that's ever the mandate of the police - they are there to punish after the fact, not prevent before the event.

This is an overly simplistic view. If law enforcement isn't a deterrent, even in principle, why do it?

The fact that the view leads you to ask “why do it?” does not mean that it is an overly simplistic view.

This is like saying the health authorities have no interest in what you eat, they just treat you after you show up with a heart attack.

What a nonsensical belief.

A belief upheld by the supreme court:

Warren v. District of Columbia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...

Nope. Just that police are not liable for failing to prevent crime.

If you are not liable for failing to do some thing then by definition you are not responsible for doing that thing.

No. I cannot be reasonably sued for blowing up my company's software systems for a failure on my part as an employee. It doesn't mean I am not responsible for keeping them up and running.

You can fire me. You cannot successfully sue me for the costs of my failure.

The fact that a police department technically has the option to fire a police officer for not acting to prevent crime (but the public has no recourse if the department does not do this) is hardly what I would consider to be genuine responsibility on the part of police to prevent crime.

How are those different in practice?

(Genuine question, no snark intended)

If I blow up a production system through an error, my employer can fire me. They generally cannot sue me for the costs of their losses.

There can still be consequences, just not compensation for losses.

You realize that the court case in question was about the police refusing to deal with a crime in progress, correct? If the police cannot be held accountable for their job, then what exactly is their role?

They can be held accountable through the democratic process and fired. They cannot be sued.

Exactly what democratic process are you talking about? We don't elect our cops, they're usually part of a strong union that prevents them from being fired and as you mentioned they cannot be sued.

So...how exactly do you expect them to be held accountable? These court cases were examples of the 'democratic process' and the court ruled that the cops have no duty to help you.

> Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime?

It seems that Walmart is of the opinion that all crime, no matter how lowly, should be handled by Police[1]

[1] https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-safety/wa...