Retailers are bugging out of big blue cities. San Francisco’s flagship Whole Foods store lasted a whole year before closing down. So many supermarkets in Chicago have closed that the mayor has floated the idea of a city-owned grocery store. Employees are being told not to interfere if they see someone shoplifting and some have been disciplined for stepping in. Why not take some of the CEO’s money and hire more security guards said one wit, not understanding that the security guards also couldn’t do anything to stop a shoplifter. They don’t want to get sued.
We’ve seen laundry detergent chained together on the shelf. All of the CVS stores in D.C. are starting to look like this:
Due to the out of control crime, CVS in DC now doesn’t even keep merchandise on the shelves. Instead they just put photos of the items they have in stock. Dystopian pic.twitter.com/ppdanxhbr1
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 12, 2023
Nathaniel Meyersohn, consumer reporter for CNN Business, teased us with an explanation of what America’s “shoplifting panic” reveals.
“The concern over shoplifting taps into a larger narrative about how urban areas are out of control.”
What America’s shoplifting panic reveals https://t.co/irsvT5d1A8
— Nathaniel Meyersohn (@nmeyersohn) November 18, 2023
Meyersohn writes:
While shoplifting has seemingly never been a bigger problem than it is now, shoplifting has long captured the public’s attention. Anxiety over shoplifting is an enduring phenomenon and is often a stand-in for larger concerns of cultural, economic or political changes.
…
“The figure of a shoplifter may provide for a scapegoat for deeper problems that are more complex and intractable,” James Walsh, who directs the University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s graduate program on criminology and justice, told CNN. “It resonates with broader concerns about law and disorder.”
…
Shoplifting has also become a politically charged crime that many on the right and some Democrats have exploited to oppose criminal justice policy reforms.
Those reforms had gained bipartisan support in both red and blue states and were meant to roll back decades of mass incarceration policies, which hit Black and brown communities hardest. Many political leaders, retailers and law enforcement officials now want to mobilize a stronger response to crack down on theft and other crime.
“The concern over shoplifting taps into a larger narrative about how urban areas are out of control,” said Michael Flamm, a historian at Ohio Wesleyan University and the author of “Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s.”
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So instead of talking to a CVS manager, he managed to find a bunch of left-wing professors.
You live in a leftist ideological bubble.
— GayPatriot 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 🌈 (@GayPatriot) November 19, 2023
CNN is a national security threat.
— idrawrobots (@idrawrobots) November 18, 2023
Stealing is bad in all cultures except the weird planet you live on
— Razor (@hale_razor) November 18, 2023
It reveals there’s too much shop-lifting. Glad I could help.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 18, 2023
It reveals the vast majority of people think shoplifting is bad and they would like shoplifters to be caught and prosecuted and they’re frustrated because that’s not happening to the scale necessary.
— Sonny’s Mom Forever (@chrisanddale) November 18, 2023
You seem to have no problem shopping in a store that requires an adult to open a cabinet so you can get toothpaste, but I definitely have a problem with it.
I want to shop without someone having to hold my hand.
Don’t New York my Florida.
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) November 18, 2023
Our entire system of retail commerce is dependent on retailers believing that people will pay for the items that leave the store. If they no longer believe that the system will collapse.
— Colonel Joseph Hardin (@ColJosephHardin) November 18, 2023
Not sure what the shoplifting panic per se reveals, but this article certainly reveals that the political left is terrified of losing control of the narrative.
— Ken Smith (@smithkl42) November 18, 2023
We have an entire class of journalists that believes that nothing is real, and that everything is about words, and that the public’s obvious concern about the tangible problems that are in front of their eyes is invariably about something else. https://t.co/z1csFjTb1Z
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 18, 2023
What concern over crime is *really* about. What concern over inflation is *really* about. What concern over education is *really* about. It’s tiresome. Astonishingly enough, most people don’t abstract everything in their lives out into your narrow and peculiar framework.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 18, 2023
“I’m worried about inflation because it has led to higher prices that have stretched my budget, and, simultaneously, the interest rates we have used to fight it have made it more expensive to buy a house or car.”
“Interesting. I wonder what it is that you’re *really* upset by.”— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 18, 2023
“When I go into the local CVS, I see people openly shoplifting. This means many products are locked up, the store might close, and I feel unsafe when shopping there.”
“Hmm. Curious. I wonder what it is that you’re *actually* getting at with your panic.”— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 18, 2023
Yes, what are the underlying problems that have caused this “panic” — let’s address those. It’s probably capitalism and white supremacy.
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