Chains are using theft to mask other issues, report says

This article is frustratingly mealy-mouthed.<p>You may as well read the published analysis here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;williamblair.bluematrix.com&#x2F;links2&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;0e2c10da-0c19-4b46-8c19-20122726dc1e" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;williamblair.bluematrix.com&#x2F;links2&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;0e2c10da-0c19...</a><p>&gt; To be sure, 2023 estimated shrink does look elevated, coinciding with growing organized retail crime. We believe there is a disconnect, however, between the expected increase in shrink and the attention it has drawn

Well clearly here you have a bunch of elites that just don&#x27;t care about the average employee at one of these places. This article is full of so much garbage and hand waving it&#x27;s incredible. This is the exactly the kind of elitist attitude that the average person is fed up with because it shows that they do not live in the same reality that most people do.<p>Their claim that overall theft rates are the same, fine those are statistics that are easy to validate. Then they tell us that the type of theft has changed from a passive non-confrontational form to an overt confrontational form. According to them these two forms of theft are entirely equal because the total amount hasn&#x27;t changed. Therefore the stores who complain about theft are exaggerating their problems. I wonder what they would think about the difference between someone robbing their house when they&#x27;re on vacation and someone robbing their house while they&#x27;re in the middle of eating dinner. Yes they&#x27;re both robberies but one is infinitely more traumatic than the other. To tell store owners and the employees that work there that must deal with this kind of smash and grab trauma that they&#x27;re overblowing the situation by calling for better policing is ridiculous.<p>Who reads this article and buys into this nonsense of equating violent crime with non-violent crime because the goal of the crime was the same and the overall level has remained the same. I really wish that I was able to live in such opulence then I was totally insulated from this such as these writers and the people they interviewed must be. This is the literal talking out of both sides of their mouth because they complain when businesses want better policing or when they close their stores and the businesses are citing the safety concerns of their employees, but if these stores remained open and these actions resulted in the injury or deaths of an employee they would be the first to blame the business for not doing enough to protect the employees. They&#x27;re also the first to reach into that company&#x27;s pockets and demand that they provide benefits for the trauma that these employees have to endure instead of just solving the root problem.<p>When stores can be robbed with smash and grab impunity while the store is open and customers and employees are there that shows that criminals feel that they can act without repercussions. That is an extremely scary state that society has gotten to. Having the levels of robbery be the same is simply telling us that it&#x27;s the same percentage of people who are resorting to this kind of crime. When the activity has changed from being sneaky and attempting to avoid being seen or caught to not caring and just grabbing what you want and leaving we have a very big societal issue that needs addressed. This article proposes that we do absolutely nothing about it because if greater policing isn&#x27;t the answer and stiffer sentences isn&#x27;t the answer there needs to be an answer that works and nothing in this article proposes anything of value. Only that companies are just lying to us and over blowing a problem to cover up lower profits.