This hardly a story about Amazon. It's a story of how Northern California's choice not to prosecute theft has resulted in a massive increase in criminal activity.
That CVS has to privately hire security in the face of $10 million/year of goods being brazenly looted out of its stores has little to do with any Amazon policy and more to do with the policies adopted by local district attorneys.
CA has 1,180 CVS pharmacies. [0] Northern CA has 40% of CA pop. [1] Assuming regular distribution of CVSes in CA, there are 472 in Northern CA. 10M is 21k/store. Is that a lot? Not certain.
Cops don’t always arrest based on the law, but what they feel like doing. See Oregon where they decided not to police proud boy protests and tend to arrest anti-white supremacist type protestors much more.
How much is it the cops found they can prove their own point? If I make a bet that I’ll get last in a race, I’ll run slower. If one claims some policy will slow them down and They don’t actually have an incentive to win, Then there’s a chance they’ll slow down to be right so people will do what They say in the future.
What incentive do cops have to arrest or charge theft when cops keep saying it’s CA laws that are causing thefts to rise? They can make themselves seem right by not arresting people.
Given the article is about the effects of not prosecuting shoplifting, time to wake up?
This country is in no danger of prosecutors around the country failing to prosecute shoplifting. But the country is in danger of these quasi-police forces extending their reach. There are people posting here working on automated checkout systems which will absolutely be used to perform more general intelligence... either for the company's or The Company's purposes.
Also... are we to believe that organized crime rings are a problem that the courts are unable to deal with because of some meddling prosecutor? Loss from retail shipping was one of the mafia's prime rackets! Jimmy Hoffa was the IBT president!
edit: I'd seen this mentioned recently, but hadn't realised it was a long running culture war thing so it had already been discredited by research years ago:
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
Never once would I even consider saying anything to a suspected thief. In fact, I walked away from at least 2 times where I knew people were destroying the spider-alarms on electronics in the pets aisle. It is not worth my personal safety in saying anything, especially for someone making $9/hr.
Maybe that's the wrong approach. But it's not my stuff, its not my role I was hired in as, and not worth any personal injury I might receive. I will intentionally give a blind eye to petty or professional retail theft. Let security deal with it.
In other news, the Sacklers got away with making Billions from creatimg addicts.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
"The judicial branch of California explains on its page about Prop 47 that the new law “reclassifies certain theft and drug possession offenses from felonies to misdemeanors.” Thanks to Prop 47, shoplifting offenses involving property valued at less than $950 are prosecuted as misdemeanors, not felonies, but they are still prosecuted. Such offenses are punishable by up to six months in county jail."
Get your facts straight before spreading disinformation.
"The numbers show the prosecution rate for shoplifting cases involving a misdemeanor petty theft charge for a loss of $950 or less fell under [San Francisco DA Chesa] Boudin, from 70 percent under former District Attorney George Gascon in 2019 to 44 percent in 2020 and 50 percent as of mid-June 2021.
Prosecutors filed charges in 116 of 266 cases presented by police involving petty theft in 2020, compared to 450 of 647 cases in 2019, according to the data provided by the District Attorney’s Office."
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/data-shows-chesa-boudin-pros...
1. Considered the prosecution rate in other cities?
2. Controlled for other independent variables that might affect the prosecution rate?
3. Performed a statistical test to determine whether the decrease in prosecution rate is within normal historical variance?
If the answer to any of those questions are no (which, from the article, they all are no) your claim is not intellectually honest.
> "In an interview with The Examiner, Boudin said the decline in prosecution rates for shoplifting cases is a reflection of the “difficult choices” his office had to make during the pandemic, when the Hall of Justice closed most of its courtrooms and city officials decided to largely empty the jails, in part to prevent an outbreak."
The problem is crime is skyrocketing and people who think they can fix it just by busting heads with more cops really haven't a clue. The increase of crime is a symptom of wicked inequality that is perpetuated and even cherished by the upper class. This is just a side-effect of greed. More cops won't solve it.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2020/06/10/felony-threshol...