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.
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.
Given the sentiments of your last paragraph, why did you choose to send the criminal away and return Tesco’s stolen beef?
P: I chased this guy for law and justice, not meat and cheese.
Q: why did you chase for meat cheese?
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.
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.
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.
At a CVS? Not likely at all.
In TX they'd be more intimidating, I'm sure. Unless corporate bans guns.
As a life-long Texan, this sounds ridiculous to me. A Wal Mart employee is more intimidating, simply because they're Texan?
This is not the 1850's.
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.
When I worked at Best Buy, loss prevention was very clearly instructed that using force to stop a shoplifter would get you fired.
(Oddly I’ve only seen unarmed, tired looking security in CVS. Perhaps they’re too cheap to pay for armed gaurds.)
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.
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.
...but...theres dumb people everywhere, so when you decide to shop lift in Texas the risk profile is certainly different than it is in CA.
Someone carrying a firearm should be more willing to nonviolently confront a thief than someone that's unarmed.
https://reason.com/2018/04/20/cdc-provides-more-evidence-tha...
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.
Can't imagine anyone doing that for Tesco, though. Especially unpaid.
The average cashier's ability to administer lethal force is probably not a major influence on the prevalence of shoplifting in Texas.
Now that permitless carry is legal it remains to be seen if there's an uptick in vigilantism, but I have my doubts.
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.
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
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.
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'm going posit that it's perception more than any actual changes due to fleeing 'fornians.
This doesn't prove someone's opinion that criminals are being coddled and productive people are being driven away.
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.
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.
> 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
http://legas.legrandelaw.com/criminal-justice/in-tx-can-you-...
Can you point to where your scenario has happened?
Because I’m all for hypotheticals, so long as we admit the rarity and precedent before saying there is a problem.
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.
I read this book
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Mafia-Ethnic-Succession-Organiz...
which describes similar organized theft organizations working in the 1970s, how the goods were fenced, etc.
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.
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.