When I showed up the chainsaw was nowhere to be found, and after looking high and low and triple checking their inventories, the rep said he figured they must have walked. He mentioned a similar figure saying that over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle (yard equipment) in the last year.
I think it’s real. After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.
I ended up going to a third store before finding one that actually had the tool in stock. That one had installed a makeshift rig of steel bars in front of their stock, and a rep had to physically follow me to the register and watch me pay for it.
There are videos in the Seattle reddits of brazen thieves going into stores and walking off with whatever they like.
It’s bad enough for the big box stores, imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!
I was just at McLendon's yesterday outside Seattle, and while I was waiting to ask an employee a question, over the PA a came a message like, "need help up front. A couple just left the store with a bunch of stolen merchandise." So the dude bolted for the entrance.
It surprised me that the announcement wasn't coded in some way (eg, "code 9 at checkout").
It made me feel quite sad, as McLendon's is pretty awesome, and I'd hate for them to disappear.
Everyone of these talks stressed that employee internal theft is bigger than customer theft on the whole.
So managment steals the most, followed by the rest of the employees.
This was in the 90's so things might have changed.
Different entities gave the talks.
I don't doubt that 800k number, but I wouldn't rule out the reoresenative of Milwaukee, or the closing managers, or security guards themselfs.
Everytme I was told about employees theft, they said it's retail security's big secret.
Personally, if they treated employees better, internal theft might come down!
When I go into HD, and am being filmed at least 10-15 times before leaving the store; their us a part of me that feels like not paying for that M8 bolt.
Recorded in 1976 as domestic steel & car manufacturing tanked in the United States taking Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburg and much of the Great Lakes with it.
The count is always wrong.
It's continually updated, but it's still always wrong. Because the amount of labor cost to ensure it's accurate at all times would be a silly use of scarce resources.
Sometimes it's as simple as a customer picking up an item, wandering around, and dropping it somewhere else. Sometimes it's theft. Sometimes it's an incorrect count in receiving.
All of this is an average day at a warehouse store. Walmart deals with the same thing.
I'm no MBA, but if a single store is losing $800,000 of merchandise a year from a single aisle, you could have it guarded 24/7 by guys on $50 an hour and you'd still come out $300k ahead.
Far more likely IMHO is that when the rep said "over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle" that was actually the loss from all the yard equipment aisles in all stores nationwide.
If they are having $2400 worth of a single model walk in a year, over 350 different items, they'd get to over $800k in the one store in a heartbeat. My money would be on this was in fact just the one store, if not just the one aisle.
So ~15 minutes / 60 x ~360 days x ~2000 stores (US) x ~$30/hr ($20+benefits) = $5.4 M in labor costs
... and that's just to check chainsaws.
$800'000 in thefts from that aisle * 51% for a (slim) majority * 2000 stores = $816M in shrinkage.
If your store is seeing six figure losses due to theft you hire out some Loomis guys or rent-a-cops and park them at both entrances.
That 800k number does seem to get quoted alot in the comments here, I wonder if it's an actual figure or just some part of a training video that sticks with people
We're down to 2 million.. let's select the 10% worst stores.. we are down to $200,000.
They can check other inventory items and check out customers.
Cheaper than a one second ad during the superbowl
So, you're encouraging a business to hire minimum wage labor and schedule so as to avoid paying benefits? And these people (you've just screwed) are the ones you're proposing be granted the responsibility to detect theft?
> let's select the 10% worst stores
Infeasible, as most theft by dollar is organized, which targets a somewhat random scattering of stores, intermittently. Highest shrink retail stores already have additional theft mitigation tech deployed.
> They can check other inventory items and check out customers
Not if they can't be in two places at once. 15 minutes is a fairly middle of the road estimate for: walking to the area, checking the on-shelf number, checking above the rack, and possibly checking the back. If anything, it's already under-estimating the time required.
When your losses are so bad, it's time to invest more in security.
Accounting together with video evidence can more timely detect thieves, and might be worth it.
1. Unless store security catches the thief at the door, many police departments don’t have the resources to track them down. So finding out that you were burgled within a couple days isn’t much better than finding out at a quarterly or even annual inventory.
2. It’s not that big of a problem. From the article: “Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales”. Putting that in a more accessible scale, that’s 72¢ per $1,000 of sales.
They then head to their car and leave. You try to take their license plate number. Oh wait it says "tag applied for".
Criminals regularly take the plates off when they do their work, if a cop pulls them over, they can say some story about how they needed to get it reattached, and no cop pulls over a car just because of a "tag applied for" sign because they know it will likely be just that 9 times out of 10, so if they did pull over that car its some other ticket-able offense, but no registration wont be likely part of that ticket.
Maybe you got a picture of their face? Except everyone wears masks now....
All the ambiguity involving that means you can basically just take off your license plate whenever you want and police dont look at as a particularly unusual or noteworthy thing to run across. Even if you dont put "tag applied for" at all most cops just assume thats the situation and wont pull you over for just that unless you are having some other violation going on.
I had a coworker who was robbed earlier this year and the person left in a car with a you guessed it "tag applied for" paper on the license plate section of their car.
Which is one reason online prices can be cheaper.
How would such a policy even work, how would you price and underwrite it, and evaluate risk? How would claims be processed? Is there any evidence anywhere that this is actually a thing?
I've always chalked this up to poor inventory management practices. I've gone to Home Depot for first aid kits, counter tops, smoke alarms, pipe fittings, etc and had the same experience. They show X in stock but none can be found.
We had similar issues when I worked at Office Max in high school, it was usually someone putting overhead stock in the wrong location because they just couldn't be bothered.
For example the spike in theft on Wallgrees in SF did start when they changed their policy about a year ago. Before they changed it I saw the store manager in the Wallgreens on 23rd and Mission literally kick the shit out of people that were trying to walk out with merchandise without paying.
Had a similar experience recently in a Home Depot when buying a power drill. The rep took the drill and handed it to the cashier and I didn't physically touch it until it was paid for.
I'd guess that small businesses aren't as targeted by organized thieves as "big box" stores are:
1) They're smaller in size which means the likelihood of getting spotted by a staff member during a theft is higher
2) The amount (and diversity) of available goods to steal is lower
3) "Big box" stores don't have people carrying guns, their staff has a "don't intervene, we're insured anyway" policy drilled into them, and this is known. A small shopkeeper however? A thief can't reasonably know if the shop owner has a firearm under their desk or will get confrontational if stopped.
> After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.
The really interesting thing is: why does the police not "follow the money" and take out those advertising likely-stolen tools for sale in the open?
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tonight-at-5-pm-on-kiro-7-o...
2) doesn't matter as long as what they have is valuable and can be sold on easily. The thieves are not opening a store on their own.
Too costly to prosecute. How can you prove that this specific chainsaw has been stolen? "Yes, I am selling my chainsaw. No, I won't talk to you, officer, unless I am under arrest and I have my lawyer present."
Then you arrest them and what? You need something to show the jury.
Recently I bought a pressure washer. When I got home I realized the hose was missing. When I got to home depot to return it I realized that it wasn't even the right pressure washer in the box. Clearly someone had bought a new one and then put their old on in the box and returned it as new. Home Depot took care of me no questions and it made me feel like they must see kind of thing a lot.
And it's difficult to solve, for the same reasons listed in this article: any solution (e.g. checking items fully) results in a worse customer experience (longer lines and delays).
So, you try and pick a sweet spot along the curve, where you prevent the worst excesses but are still able to keep your (non-thieving) customers happy.
Between online sales and this, I sympathize with anyone in brick and mortar retail sales.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Prop-47-which-reduc...
https://news.yahoo.com/looters-ransack-san-francisco-neiman-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/bogus-bac...
Edit: The media seems to be in a real crime frenzy right now. Exhibit A is this bullshit graph that swaps the x axis to make it look like crime is rising: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/24/cnn-chart-crime
I call bullshit on people saying there's widespread crime not being reported. If your car window got smashed if you are either:
- A Lyft or Uber driver
- Your car was a rental
- You have a lease on your car
- Have "premium" or expensive home or car insurance
you get actual money from filing a police report from your insurance provider.
If your gadgets get stolen in the street a lot of credit cards or stuff like Apple care, and also some home insurance, will cover part of getting a replacement. But you also have to file a police report.
I really doubt most people are "learning to not report crime" when they literally can get payed for it.
Most rationales were people don't have insurance coverage damage or don't have proof of property loss (receipts, ect).
Would not be surprised if actual numbers were 10-50x the reported
This is the "broken windows" theory- if you let minor crimes like shoplifting go unpunished in a city, more people will do it.
... But the hours restriction is interesting. I've noticed weird hours at the Taco Bell near my place, and this is probably purely anecdotal, but it does make me sort of wonder if there's something unique to Taco Bell making it hard for them to flesh out their hours.
Canadian law also has subtle differences such as hybrid offenses whereby prosecutors can decide whether to charge as a felony or misdemeanor, for exactly the same crime/facts. Such a concept would be entirely unconstitutional under US law. So direct comparisons between the countries re possible punishments are complicated.
You're stealing something.
What makes "stealing less than $1k" more acceptable?
The purpose of grading is to provide an appropriate punishment. I'm my state, the grading for retail theft starts low, but depends on the value of the item. After a few times it becomes a felony for anything, such as a man who was in the news as getting a felony for stealing a candy bar. If it's always going to be a felony with potential prison time, then people might think "why not steal that riding lawn mower if the punishment is the same as a candy bar". Same risk, might as well increase the reward.
I don't see how "light theft" is something we should tolerate.
If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft. But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools.
(And, this isn't just me expressing personal moral preferences. Theft is a tax on everyone who does pay for goods, via price increases)
That's not exactly true. There can be items that are confusing, such as whether or not a bin or bucket comes with a lid. With the advent of self checkouts, it's also possible that someone rings up an item incorrectly just by accident, especially with non bar codes items. People could be prosecuted for this depending on the state's requirements. The burden of proof can be quiet low.
"But nobody is stealing a $500 drill because they're starving for power tools."
Here you are using $500 as an example. Do you feel the same if someone takes an extra 10 cent washer?
"If we want to talk about humane solutions, carve out an exception for food theft."
I don't think food theft should be an exception - just the same as the current grading tier. There are many programs and food banks that people can use to get food.
What are your thoughts on other crimes with different gradings? Should assault always be a felony? Should speeding always be considered reckless endangerment?
Again, the grading is supposed to provide an appropriate punishment based on the severity of the crime.
My personal opinion is that the severity of consequence should be relative to the people the crime affects.
Theft (retail, insurance, etc) exists in this weird limbo where the primary victim (the business) isn't the customer. However, it's ultimately the customer who pays.
So light-touching theft prosecution is effectively not caring about taxing customers. Most of whom don't even know they're being taxed.
Maybe your state is different, but I wouldn't call it light touching in my state. First offense, is a summary offense if the merchandise was under $150. That's a fine, restitution, and up to 90 days in jail. So possibly a light touch if there's no jail time, but generally going to jail means losing your job and such for lack of attendance. Higher amounts or subsequent offenses constitute misdemeanors (up to 3 years in prison), or felonies (up to 5 years in prison. Even without prison terms, people can lose their job, be denied jobs, lose their rights, etc from these higher level penalties. Which I think is fine when there's this step grading for value and repeat offenses (still some outliers like a man getting a felony for a candy bar, although it seemed like he probably had a mental issue that was causing these low dollar thefts, so probably needs to have some exception to get these people treatment). I believe this serves the purpose of preventing and rehabilitating low level offenders so that they don't become larger offenders in the future, and if they do then they get higher penalties.
I don't think you've thought this one out.
Edit: Not sure people recognized your sarcasm.
I bet then somebody will invent a microchipped, DRMed food just for the sake of it.
https://splinternews.com/if-youre-confused-about-what-race-b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_incarceration_in_the_Uni...
>In 1995, African American youths made up 12% of the population, but were arrested at rates double those for Caucasian youths. The trend towards adult adjudication has had implications for the racial make-up of the juvenile prison population as well. Minority youth tried in adult courts are much more likely to be sentenced to serve prison time than white youth offenders arrested for similar crimes.
https://thecrimereport.org/2021/06/17/racial-disparities-per...
>According to the Equal Justice Initiative, Black children are more than twice as likely as white kids to be arrested, even though they’re not committing more crimes, but because Black Kids are burdened by a “presumption of guilt and dangerousness,” which leads youth of color to have higher rates of stops, searches, violence, suspension, and disproportionate contact with the juvenile justice system.
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/racial-dispar...
>As of 2013, black juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed as white juveniles, Americans Indian juveniles were more than three times as likely, and Hispanic juveniles were 61 percent more likely.
http://jaapl.org/content/early/2019/02/13/JAAPL.003828-19
>However, research has documented the existence of racial disparity in the treatment of youth involved in the juvenile justice system for several decades. Studies from the 1980s and 1990s demonstrated that black juveniles were detained and confined at higher rates compared with white youth, and that black youth were more likely to be sent to correctional facilities compared with white youth, who were more likely to be sent to psychiatric hospitals. Additionally, recent studies have documented the continued trend of overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system
Did they commit more crimes?
Additionally if the whole racial bias theory is true (i don't agree that it is) then why should be incarcerating blacks less? I think the appropriate response would be to incarcerate white people more often.
As I quoted earlier:
>Black children are more than twice as likely as white kids to be arrested, even though they’re not committing more crimes
You need data showing white kids are stopped for crime and released to prove this, not just some random left leaning organizations that says it's true.
The cost to the victim. Someone grabs a few unsecured tie downs off a truck at a truck stop that's a hundred bucks. Someone scraps some spools of copper stolen from a job site and it could be thousands.
I think having a step function where you define all theft below a dollar amount as one type and then above as a different type is just legacy code from back in the day when it wasn't reasonable for the legislature to just say "the fine will be X-times the replacement cost of the goods or an equivalent jail time as determined by table Y in appendix Z" and expect the courts to be able to enforce it in an efficient enough manner.
The fact that we we have basically two classes of crime that include both violent and nonviolent crime results in a lot of overlap where you can have some pretty bad misdemeanors and some pretty mild felonies all depending on legal technicalities.
Should we lock up everyone who downloaded an MP3 from Napster or Kazaa?
I go in there to buy something small once in a while and 1 out of 4 times I see some guy just grabbing and walking out while the security watches him steal right before their eyes.
I don't know who's in the wrong here, but if the comment you're replying to was correct and DA wouldn't persecute these cases, wouldn't it also mean that they wouldn't appear in statistics you're quoting as well?
I'd say. We just elected one of the architects as president.
*if the value of what is stolen is not more than $5,000, is guilty
(i) of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years*
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-334.ht...
>repeated by people pushing particular agendas
The irony.... The agenda seems to be it's ok to steal, commit crime if you're a specific skin color.
You're right there is an agenda being pushed. I can't believe people can be so brainwashed that they'll defend crime. I guess you reap what you sow though, just don't push your moronic "acceptance" on the rest of the country. And please for the love of god stay where you are and don't infest other parts of the US with your ridiculousness.
If you want to live in a place that supports this by all means do it but don't make the rest of us do it.
It shouldn't, nor should it lead to long custodial sentences.
> The agenda seems to be it's ok to steal, commit crime if you're a specific skin color.
Wow. Wasn't even going to go there, but if you are going to let your racist flag fly I guess we can just let you run with it. The rest of us will continue to explore radical ideas like attacking the causes of criminal behavior rather than just criminalizing poverty and when necessary treating offenders with rehabilitation rather than the sort of simple-minded retribution that you seem to favour.
Why don't you tell us how allowing more criminal activity and giving people less harsh sentences is going to fix minority communities? Does it work along the same lines as throwing them free money?
>Wasn't even going to go there, but if you are going to let your racist
But you did and you did so because you have a lame rebuttal no good logical argument to defend your bs. When you label everyone who upsets you racist it starts to make the word meaningless so good job on that front. "Look another racist! See... no one cares"
Why? What does Canada have to do with the US?
>and retailers seem to be doing ok.
I'm sure they big box stores are just fine, they just pass the cost on to the consumer. It doesn't end so well for the small businesses.
What is the support for your statement?
Also “the DA” is a ton of different people throughout the Bay Area, and the DA that everybody complains about has exactly 0 HDs in his jurisdiction.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...
Misdemeanor shoplifting can still earn up to 180 days in county jail and a fine of up to $1000, but only if a DA prosecutes.
What is preventing that? Is it human good nature or is there some understanding that blatant/planned cases will indeed be pursued?
> The San Francisco Police Department is actually seeing a dip in crime in 2021, part of a larger overall downward trend. Property crimes are down nearly 8 percent so far in 2021, and larceny theft — the category of crime that includes shoplifting — is down 14.4 percent.
Just because crime is increasing doesn’t mean it’s a new problem. We have no benchmark to compare 2019, 2020 and 2021 against and it may be dipping but 2020 likely saw a spike in crime so going down from there isn’t saying much.
Seems pretty reasonable right?
> *no one said crime is not a problem*, they're saying it's not *a new problem ramping up*
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/A-violent-year-Bay...
Hence why their quote is about downward trends in 2021
> The San Francisco Police Department is actually seeing a dip in crime in 2021, part of a larger overall downward trend. Property crimes are down nearly 8 percent so far in 2021, and larceny theft — the category of crime that includes shoplifting — is down 14.4 percent.
It's too early to start screaming doom and gloom about crime taking over
Your stats are reported crime. Not actual crime.
This is why I always doubt people that claim that property crime isn't getting reported. Of course some of it will not get reported, but on the very very very unlikely event that you are a victim of property crime in SF if you like, have a credit card or Apple Care or car insurance, you probably can get free money by filing a police report.
I don't think I've ever seen a big city PD investigate "petty" property crime unless there was something unique about the case, like a gun being involved.
So the stats being compared to have the same limitation
Police dont investigate property crimes unless its someone important enough or has sway gets involved or the media gets involved.
Murders they do investigate, because they have incentives to get a clearance rate down. This does mean they dont actually care if you committed the crime, just that it gets "cleared". God help you if you dont have a alibi and your husband/wife end up dead. Expect ALOT of police attention.
Rapes will get classified as he said / she said not rapes because that way their clearance/conviction rates stay good.
I also find it somewhat odd that people trust what police have to say about crime rates, where they have incentives to make themselves look good, but dont trust police about well anything else these days.
The entire point of the thread is that they have incentive to fan the flames of fear to increase the budgeting.
After all, the police aren't nearly as exposed to the effects of angry constituents as elected politicians are.
So police love to pitch any sort of crime increase as a failing of budgeting or something
Generally speaking police leadership likes to justify their jobs with "crime numbers are going down" its an easy "objective" way to show they are effective and its the primary metric they try to game. Then its ask for more budget because we can make numbers go even more down with more resources.
When crime numbers go up its "we need more resources!". Which is the traditional refrain of well every government agency that is not succeeding in their mission. And succeeding in their mission. Every agency is gonna ask for more money. Always and forever.
Line officers dont care as much about overall metrics but have different incentives put on them. Their immediate leadership want numbers to look good too.
No matter what way the number goes up or down there is a ready narrative that involves we need more budget. If number goes down, its my leadership caused this. If numbers go up then its external things fault.
Typically speaking police chiefs like numbers to go down because it reflects well on them. Detectives like persuing cases that result in convictions because it makes them look good and promotable. Zone leadership likes numbers to go down because it makes them look good and promotable. If you are the Captain of the highest crime rate precinct you are less likely to get promoted than the one with a better rate. This trickles all the way down.
If that's what happening, sure, they use that to support “we're doing good and therefore should be given more resources to do more good.”
If crime stats are flat or going down, they use that to argue “we are stretched to thin to effectively reduce crime, and therefore need more resources.”
The input is irrelevant, the output is constant.
The internal process inside the engine cares though. Police Chief's certainly care about the crime rate going down because they answer to whoever put them in their position depending on the city and that person or group cares about the number going down.
The police captain cares because they want to be picked as the police chief one day and a "crime went down in my precinct" narrative helps that.
The Sheriff cares because in the US that is an elected position, and "crime rate keeps going up with this Sheriff" is easy ammo for them to lose their position in an election.
The police engine will produce the same output either way. (which is a great sign of necessary reform) But the people driving the engine would prefer it to be because of the rate going down that they ask for more money. And the people who put them in that position would prefer thats the reason they are asking for more money as well.
Interestingly enough public education works the same way. Schools failing? Not enough resources! School succeeding? We need more to do more or to keep the status quo of doing well! Pretty much every government body has this feedback mechanism. Every organization for that matters. No large scale org ever says "we have enough resources right now thanks".
My car has been broken into twice in the last few months in front of my house. The last thing I want to do is wait for an officer to come by 4 hours later to tell me there isn't anything he can do.
Why should one go through the trouble of filing police reports if they aren't/can't do anything about it?
Ironically this makes your dip in crime statistics as cooked up a narrative with rhetorical purposes as what you just suggested.
Always take data with a grain of salt, and avoid mixing up the map with the territory.
Incidentally, the Walgreens shoplifter was arrested and is facing 16 charges: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/22/us/shoplifting-san-francisco-...
Arresting a person takes an officer off the streets for several hours, which is a waste of scarce resources if the department knows for a fact that there will be no prosecution and the arrested person will be back on the street with no consequences.
Also, any theft under $950 is a mere misdemeanor - it’s a ticketable offense, with no arrest allowed.
as a politician said recently: > we know we locked down not only the general population, but also criminals.
Weird. Makes me wonder why the guards exist.
Of course there are times hands-on action was taken but the vast majority was no touch communication and de-escalation followed by a whole lot of documentation coordinated with video surveillance.
If the military, with their training, has trouble calibrating force when interacting with civilians.
And if police, with their less but still substantial training, have trouble.
... Then we probably don't want security guards, with even less training, commonly using force.
That some of them are ex-military or ex-police is immaterial, because there sure as hell isn't time made in their schedule to keep up to date.
That all assumes that UPS drivers are honest and that Amazon 'fulfillment' employees get their daily cavity search of course.
Nieman Marcus and Home Depot are still making plenty of profit despite this law changing 7 years ago. Is putting someone in prison for 8 years and giving them a permanent black mark that prevents them from voting and harms employment prospects over $200 really worth improving Home Depot's bottom line? That's the real question here.
Lowes has most of their power tools in cages. But, they don't hire people to actually man the area. Last time I needed an impact, I had to search to find someone. That person told me they can't open it, but would find someone. Five minutes later I left empty-handed, and returned the rest of the tools and batteries I'd bought recently that week.
Point being: Their 'security' is driving away paying customers.
The "good parts" of town - no cages in sight and you can grab what you need.
It's sad.
The added bonus is that all stores treat everyone as a criminal, apparently :).
Retailers are allergic to price increases and manufacturers tend to shy away from anything that increases the cost without being a marketable benefit or cost savings, so no doubt Home Depot recognizing the size of the problem and initiating a solution made it happen.
They sell a huge volume through a limited number of retailers (Home Depot & Lowes), and there are a limited number of manufacturers [0].
So if retail says there's a problem, it becomes a problem for them.
The other side of this is professional customers, who will probably use the same technology. A tool that doesn't work if it's stolen off a job site is a big value add to professional contractors.
When you have more and more people keenly aware of the unfair distance between their economic station and that of others, they're going to realize the system isn't working. And once that realization kicks in, there is little moral incentive to follow the rules. If you can get away with stealing from a giant corporation, why not? They are arguably stealing even more from you in terms of manipulating the larger economic systems of the country.
A couple of staff to power this has got to be cheaper than $700kpa in high value theft.
But I also would have thought it'd be comically easy to surveil the power tool area and see who comes in lots but never seems to buy a power tool.
But then, I get the impression that supermarkets are saving on staff by using self-checkout, at the risk of increased casual theft.
Would be nice to see more jobs rather than more insurance pay-outs though.
I don't usually pay much attention to self-checkout (call me a luddite, but I find regular checkout to go faster and with less hassle), but the other day when standing in a queue, I looked at the ceiling and saw a ton of cameras - one camera per self-checkout station, + some extra in the general area. Additionally, each checkout station used a big tablet as its main display, and each of those tablets had the usual built-in selfie camera - I'd be surprised if these cameras didn't take photos of customers using the stations.
Quite a few, but I don't know that they're gonna help if I scan the small steak but put the giant one in my bag. Again, the scanning isn't happening at the self-checkout. They just get used for payment.
I can also void out an expensive item mid-shop. Unless someone's getting a real-time ping with my exact current location in the store in the security office when I do that, no one's gonna be checking.
For (a), if a customer comes in with an odd return scenario / complaint, a fair number boil down to "what actually happened when they were originally here?" Camera provides documentation of that, and asset protection can review, and the make things right. E.g. the "bought thing, but didn't make it into my bag" scenario.
For (b), it's post-hoc identification & ad-hoc warning. Organized theft rings typically hit multiple stores in an area. Retail has gotten very good at sharing snapshots of individuals very quickly in those scenarios. And it's worth it, because a single organized theft incident will be a couple orders of magnitude larger than all your common theft for a month. E.g. $10,000 worth of product vs $100.
In that regard, it seems more risky to try any funny business with it. With the traditional self scans, cameras aside, it's quite easy to fool them, and they are reliable and predictable machines. I'm sure it would be easy to slip something at the bottom of your bag, but if you get caught on an audit, I'm sure it sets a flag to audit you more often.
The scan-at-end checkouts can be used without identity, where as the scan-as-you go, at least for my supermarket, you have to log into an account linked to your identity before it's used. This may deter a lot of casual theft.
I mean, consider a classic old-school store (talking pre-supermarkets and pre-big-box stores) where a clerk would fetch what you wanted. Much harder to steal there. Save money by not paying enough clerks to handle that and making customers pick out their own stuff, and now customers can/do steal more.
Same with stuff like self-checkout, I'd expect. Might also increase the rate of honest mistakes resulting in accidental theft, though I've seen so damn many of those errors from paid clerks that I wouldn't bet on it.
Makes sense that they do it if shop lifting is as big of a problem as this article suggests.
I bet I'm being downvoted by the kind of people who wait in line to exit a store.