S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on retail theft

Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by nradov on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:09AM (#34039012)

The data on shoplifting is highly unreliable. Most victims don't file official police reports because it's largely a waste of time. The large nationwide chain retailers do have accurate data on loss rates internally but they don't release it.

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by johndhi on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:30AM (#34039280)

The fact that a number of Walgreens in SF literally closed their doors because of shoplifting in recent years suggests the numbers ain't great.

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by 1253 on Sunday December 18, 2022 @11:44AM (#34039438)

https://48hills.org/2021/10/no-walgreens-isnt-closing-stores...

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by kjksf on Sunday December 18, 2022 @01:05PM (#34040406)

That blog post doesn't show that retail thefts were not a reason to close SF Walmart.

The guy found out that in 2017 Walmart decided to close some stores and concluded "aha! closing SF store has nothing to do with rampant and obvious theft but it was part of that program to close stores".

Except the program ended in 2020 and SF store closing was in 2121. It's right there in text supposedly "proving" it's not because theft.

Plus Walgreen explicitly said it's because theft.

There's willful ignorance involved in parsing this information to conclude that it's not theft.

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by 1253 on Sunday December 18, 2022 @01:23PM (#34040717)

You should re-read what you wrote here and edit it.

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by BryantD on Sunday December 18, 2022 @02:28PM (#34041824)

This is 100% valid, but unless you can explain why there'd be a change in the rate of reports it's hard to explain the consistent decline in shoplifting police reports over the course of the last decade.

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Re:S.F. police announce dozens of arrests in crackdown on re... by nradov on Monday December 19, 2022 @11:53AM (#34054336)

I can explain why. Prosecutors increasingly decline to act on shoplifting cases. Thus victims have less incentive to file police reports.

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