“The criminals, often driven by drug addiction, are stealing merchandise off store shelves and literally walking out the front door with little or no fear of being arrested or prosecuted, KGW’s reporting found.”
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I wonder why they have no fear of being arrested or prosecuted?
Drug addiction is certainly part of it, the lack of fear of punishment is big, personally I think another big part of the motivation is organized crime, in this case they are stealing high end purses and other high end merchandise, to resell on Ebay or other forums and selling to higher level gangsters who probably give out orders on what they are looking for and the street thieves go out and steal the specific merchandise and get paid for results.