Comment by valdiorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by valdiorn | Hacker News Reader

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but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner to be armed, and actually confront you? No way that would happen in California.

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.

...what? The average Texan, as it turns out, isn't literally Wyatt Earp. It would be shocking if a random Best Buy manager stopped a shoplifter with a firearm—not to mention probably in violation of Best Buy's policies for handling shoplifting.

The average cashier's ability to administer lethal force is probably not a major influence on the prevalence of shoplifting in Texas.

In Texas if you aren't otherwise in the commission of a crime, you may use a weapon to prevent a crime. And yet the news was not filled with concealed carry permit owners drawing on people to do exactly that. I never bothered to get a permit but a friend who did told me the instructor heavily emphasized if you did use your weapon it would be minimum $25k in legal fees even if exonerated.

Now that permitless carry is legal it remains to be seen if there's an uptick in vigilantism, but I have my doubts.

>> but in Texas, how likely is the staff or the store owner to be armed, and actually confront you?

At a CVS? Not likely at all.

In a fairly liberal area of PA I saw a manager of a Walgreens very aggressively (not physically) confront a shoplifter and yell out to never come to the store again. The punk tried to respond, but ultimately cowered to the anger of the manager.

In TX they'd be more intimidating, I'm sure. Unless corporate bans guns.

sorry, but in Texas, big box retailers do not use armed staff. Target, Wal Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I have never, ever seen a worker with a gun.

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.

> box retailers do not use armed staff. Target, Wal Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy - I have never, ever seen a worker with a gun

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.

That vast majority of retail chains would fire an employee who stopped a shoplifter with a firearm.

When I worked at Best Buy, loss prevention was very clearly instructed that using force to stop a shoplifter would get you fired.

Yeah in the areas I'm in where most stores have armed personnel they aren't worried about shoplifting.

You probably walk by people carrying guns every day and never notice

Even in the ultra-liberal Bay Area my Walgreens, Target and Best Buy employ armed security. I find it doubtful that Texas of all places doesn’t have armed security.

(Oddly I’ve only seen unarmed, tired looking security in CVS. Perhaps they’re too cheap to pay for armed gaurds.)

The only time I’ve seen an armed guard at a retail store in the southeast is when they have off duty cops late night at very high crime locations. It is extremely uncommon here for a Target or Best Buy to regularly employee armed security.

Most everywhere in Atlanta has armed security, CVS included.

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.

I don’t think it’s most everywhere in Atlanta because I lived there until 2 years ago (I still visit regularly), and it wasn’t the norm anywhere I regularly went. Atlanta is a big place, so I’m sure there’s room for variation.

Maybe there is somewhere in Texas where those stores employ armed security. I've never heard of it nor been to one. I think armed security is more a function of crime than of local sentiment towards guns.

Guards/security in Walgreens and Target carry firearms? Really? That boggles my mind (Canadian).

Texas is a big place, and as far as I'm aware, doesn't make it a policy to train individuals to be vigilantes.

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.

Why not? Plenty of folks from all walks of life down there get their CCW.

So given the opportunity, Texan bystanders with guns would shoot unarmed shoplifters?

Nah, a big section of the class you take to get your LTC (we don't have a CCW) covers just how screwed you would be if you did so.

...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.

"There's dumb people everywhere, so when you shoplift in Texas" reads a lot like like "Texan bystanders would shoot shoplifters."

Why on earth would you jump straight to that conclusion? Even if the firearm was drawn, which is a huge if assuming the carrier was attacked, almost all defensive gun uses end before a shot is fired.

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...

All of the downtown CVS locations in Dallas don't even have checkout employees. It's automated self-checkout. You can just walk out of the store if you want to. Nobody is going to shoot you. Whoever owns CVS doesn't live anywhere near the stores.

Friend of mine got in the local paper for retrieving his laptop from a grab-and-run, by being a regular competitive runner and dramatically outrunning the guy.

Can't imagine anyone doing that for Tesco, though. Especially unpaid.

Londoner here, true for big shops and supermarkets, off-licenses and corner shops will be equipped with a baseball bat behind the counter. Watched them dragging low-life thiefs to the back stores to be dealt with.

Convenience store, pawn shop, or other stores in low income areas? Maybe.

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.

Likely Tesco tossed them right in the bin, however. I think it's overstating the case to claim that people robbing shops (especially big chains) is an indication that "we've completely given up on the rule of law" - at least, I find it unlikely that your erstwhile (if gormless) thief, emboldened by his huge haul of free meat and cheese, would choose next time to relieve you of your wallet. Robbing people is a much riskier game, even in a civilised (read "non-firearm-carrying") place like the UK.

I love a good foot chase!

Given the sentiments of your last paragraph, why did you choose to send the criminal away and return Tesco’s stolen beef?

I don't understand putting your personal safety at risk (who knows if he had a knife or something) over £100 of goods belonging to a £20B company. It's not like he stole your meat and cheese as you were shopping. Nobody is going to miss that cheese. Nobody is going to get fired over it. It's really not that important.

You mention the meat and cheese, but the comment explicitly disavows that motive.

P: I chased this guy for law and justice, not meat and cheese.

Q: why did you chase for meat cheese?

He said he chased the guy out of principle, but if that were true, it follows that he'd do the same thing if the guy stole a pack of gum, which is even more insane. Even the police won't chase someone down for stealing such small amounts. He's not the police, he's not the owner of the store, he (presumably) don't even work there. He has no skin in that game whatsoever.

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.

It's pretty normal to be offered freshly stolen meat and other high value food in pubs, in poor neighborhoods. It's happened to me lots of times. There very much is a secondary food market.

> 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?

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.

Well, the principle of the matter for one and some have personal courage.

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.

Agree that OP doesn’t have a responsibility to defend Tesco from crime, however disagree that it doesn’t matter. It’s logical fallacy to say that crimes small enough don’t matter. By that definition a criminal that is robs billions of people for mere pennies wouldn’t matter. You have to look at the class of crimes. So if petty crimes are significant, then as a class of crimes it matters.

I totally believe you, but I don't think that's laudable.

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.

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