Comment by conductr
20 hours ago
Calling card doesn’t actually mean anything without enforcement. My city police didn’t have time to investigate when someone kicked in my back door and fled once the alarm sounded. I really doubt they give a crap about looking me up and coming to cite me for misdemeanor charges.
Anything that risks an employee might confront you in the store is a greater risk IMO. And, usually they light on the register is green (or a similar indicator) so they do know right then if you don’t pay.
Police may not care about stealing fifty dollars worth of steaks one time by entering a PLU of 4011 and declaring them to be bananas. It's hard to prove, and even if everyone takes the time to prove it: Then what? A misdemeanor?
But at some point, they do start to care.
Stealing fifty dollars worth of steaks on 20 different occasions (every couple of weeks, say), with video and transaction evidence of the acts happening over and over again? That's a lot easier to prove, and in many states adds up to a nice juicy felony.
There will be video either way though. They'll either have security footage of you walking out the door without paying or they'll have security footage of you "paying". The only important variables here (AFAICT) are the likelihood of getting noticed coupled with the frequency of the act.
They're different risk profiles.
When a thief takes a steak from the cooler and walks out the door, they don't know who that person is. And while they may have video of parts of this, they don't necessarily see enough to prosecute. (Acting like you're stealing a steak but not actually doing it isn't a crime. Shoplifting can be hard to prove; part of that proof means demonstrating that they didn't change their mind and just drop off the steak somewhere else in the store.)
When a thief takes a steak from the cooler and walks it up to self-checkout and pays for it as if it is a bunch of bananas with their credit card, they have identified that person. They have them on video at the self-checkout committing this crime.
It actually doesn't matter much if they leave the store with their bounty or not in this second case. The crime is already done by converting the steak into bananas.
6 replies →
Police know which side their bread is buttered on. Target is famous for being to get local cops to do exactly what they need post-facto (now prosecutor is another story).
I.E. just because police don’t “waste” time investigating a crime with $1000 of damage to your personal property does not mean they won’t dedicate the time to pursue $200 in losses for the local mega mart.
What Target is famous for is doing their own investigations rather than expecting the police to do the grunt work. They operate such a sophisticated forensics lab that they actually do contract work for LE agencies across the country.
If you funded your own private investigation which unambiguously identified the culprit and demonstrated damages sufficient for a felony I imagine the local police would readily act on your behalf as well.
Breaking and entering into a home is more serious of a crime than $1000 of property damage. But regardless of that, it’s a point just to highlight how little policing resources exists and tells a broader story. At least in my city, cops don’t do anything for minor crimes. On my local Reddit, I see people mentioning that you have to mention that you have a gun in your hand if you ever want them to actually show up. I think our police force has half the personnel they’re supposed to have given our city size. I think this is becoming more common in the US.
There’s plenty of documented cases where local police are the basically henchmen for large corporations, but I’ve seen no evidence of this and believe it’s kind of a fear mongering meme to think they have enough power over them to dictate them to do roundups after the fact. They may however give all the evidence they collect on you to the police with a bow on it and the cops may decide to take it seriously. Where I am, I do not see this happening. The police will have expected the retailer to have protected their inventory. Off duty police officers make a lot of money working private security and they don’t want to disturb that dynamic.