They put them in cases because they were all getting stolen.
I work at a WM in a small military town. All stolen items are deducted from our “MyShare” which is a bonus paid quarterly to employees, which is supposed to keep losses down to a minimum if they are watched/caught. There are other reasons our “MyShare” is lower such as broken items, Accidents, etc. We, the employees are unable to do anything about this. When it is brought to Managements attention, nothing is done. We, the employees are on the first line of losing money due to this practice. BTW, All afro-centric items in my store are not even locked up. They are right out there with all the other beauty items. Thank God, being in a small military town there is very little shrink and most of that is actually done by white people. “Regulars” as we call them. They steal stuff and come back and return it to get their returns put on a gift card or if they have a receipt back onto their credit cards. These people are usually also not allowed back into the store. The are “Trespassed”. Loss Prevention knows who they are and are on top of them. We usually have the cops at our store for shoplifting 1-2 every week. Another way of stealing is changing UPC code from $5-10 items and put on $30-60 items. If the cashier catches it, they are brought up to customer service to rescan everything in their carts and Loss Prevention is right there to catch irregularities. A throw rug which sells for for 30-60 dollars but that has it’s UPS Code label changed to $1.50 will usually check out at Self Check out with little chance of being seen unless they are know as “Regulars”. I know my store is not the Norm, but it just puts a little clarity on what actually goes on as far as theft.