I don't think its necessarily a narrative that's being pushed. It is actually happening. I only skimmed the first of the 2 articles linked but their claims are not that strong. They say that retailers are suffering from "shrink" and no one knows what's causing it. So if no one knows the cause, then that doesn't work as evidence that it's not shoplifting. It is very obvious that brazen shoplifting is happening of a kind that hasn't been seen before.

They also claim that theft as a percentage of sales has gone down. The only reason they would phrase it this way is because as an actual quantity of money, it has gone up.

It might seem reasonable to expect that losses due to shoplifting are roughly proportional to sales. But it's not clear that it should be that way. I would say that we should expect the amount of shoplifting to be capped by whatever amount can be stolen stealthily. It's natural and very reasonable imo to object to people waltzing around the shop taking whatever they want and brazenly walking out the door with a smile and a wave. We are not bound to accept that just because sales have increased.

The article hints that the real problem is that traditional retails are losing out to Amazon. But if that were true then sales would be down and shoplifting as a proportion of sales would surely be up, since no one can shoplift from Amazon.

It's been trotted out to justify more cops and the usual law-and-order narrative to counter things like defunding the police. The SF Chronicle suggested that it was used as cover to spin already planned mass closures at being a result of something other than just losing business. <https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...>

The Marshall Project article linked from your CNN piece suggests several forces at work <https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/02/27/shoplifting-re...>, one of which is that companies don't want to pay for private security any more and may want local law enforcement funding raised up to externalize the costs on taxpayers.