Some Leeway for the Small Shoplifter

The New York Times ^ | 7/13/2006 | Michael Barbaro

[Ptaz]

Wal-Mart refuses to carry smutty magazines. It will not sell compact discs with obscene lyrics. And when it catches customers shoplifting — even a pair of socks or a pack of cigarettes — it prosecutes them.

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Paul Sakuma/Associated Press Customers outside a Wal-Mart store in Mountain View, Calif. But now, in a rare display of limited permissiveness, Wal-Mart is letting thieves off the hook — at least in cases involving $25 or less.

[Graybeard58]

I've been trying to find the story from another source, I won't give the NYT a hit. From the excerpt I know they got that part wrong. It may be worse than the NYT reported. You may be sure that the NYT is doing it's best to damage W-M any way it can.

In the first place it is not a new policy and it's not restricted to W-M, most major stores around here do not prosecute minor shop lifting as a first offense, regardless of how many signs they have posted that they "prosecute all shop lifters".

I worked for W-M for about 6 months after I retired from my regular job in 1999 and I worked in store security - catching shop lifters. We had to observe first hand someone shop lifting and never take our eyes off off them until they left the store, then we could detain them and take them to the office and if it was under $25 we would take their picture (A purely intimidating tactic) tell them they were banned from all W-Ms everywhere and let them go. If it was a second offense then we called the police.

If an employee, customer, even a member of management, told us that they saw a certain person stealing something, we could do nothing, we had to observe it first hand, it was all about liability and false arrest, they just couldn't take the chance that the thief put the item back while no one was watching.

I once caught three 13 year old girls shop lifting early home pregnancy kits. I took them to the back office and called their parents to come get them, the whole time they were begging me not to. I believe that was a good punishment for them.


I am a pretty big guy but my fellow security man was even bigger than I am and once we caught a woman after chasing her down and she put up a struggle. The only ones who got hurt were us. We each had one of her wrists and were restraining her and the whole time she was kicking our shins. We weren't allowed to retaliate with any kind of violent act to stop her, like the police can and do when they are attacked, we just had to take it until one of us let go of her arms and grabbed her feet.

W-Ms policy even then was to not prosecute anyone under 14 or over 65.

Every retailer around here(In Illinois) that I knew about had the same policies as Wal-Mart. I can't prove that and I can't cite anything, these policies are kept as secret as possible by all retailers for obvious reasons but you won't see that in the NYT.

[Gabz]

There is another thread that just got posted - the source is Yahoo and it is an article ABOUT the Times story, not from the Times

[Mark was here]

Until now, they said, Wal-Mart was the exception. “They would arrest somebody for stealing a pair of socks,” said Chief Zofchak in South Strabane Township. “I felt we were spending an inordinate amount of time just dealing with Wal-Mart.”

I would call Chief Zofchak a real jeak. They are not dealing with the store, they are dealing with the thieves. If they don't like dealing with law breakers, why in the hell are they in law enforcement, (except for their pension)?

[muawiyah]

$3.00 pair of socks.

[muawiyah]

Look, they are, in fact, dealing with the store.

Wal-Mart has the option of operating like one of those banks in the innercity ~ everything behind a counter, plexiglass screen in front of the clerks, etc.

Instead, they lay stuff out for the "convenience of the customers" and in so doing they take a risk.

Question here is whether or not the taxpayers are getting their tax dollars' worth out of having the sheriff tidy up behind Wal-Mart's preferences.

Now if Wal-Mart would directly finance the cost of an extra deputy to take care of "just them" then they can do anything they want.

BTW, you want to buy something from me, at my house, you come to the front door, show me your money, I get it for you. Very old fashioned, but there's no shop-lifting, no sheriff, and no ill-will.

[Mark was here]

Question here is whether or not the taxpayers are getting their tax dollars' worth out of having the sheriff tidy up behind Wal-Mart's preferences.

So if someone does a lawn job on your front yard and wipes out your mail box you should pay for the cops to investigate because it was your preference not to surround your property with barriers?

People are guests on the store property and it is the guest who chose to break the law. Thus it is the responsibility of law enforcement. If you want the law to protect only those who can afford to pay for police services why don't you come out and say so? Sure sounds like what you are asking for. If people were not thieves the law enforcement can go hang out in the donut shop, other wise they should not be bitching about booking thieves.

[discostu]

Of course most shoplifting charges get pled down to criminal tresspass fines and all that fine money goes to the government. So for half an hour of the sheriff filing out paperwork on a shoplifter caught by WalMart the government gets probably around $150. Hard to see where the taxpayer is getting wounded here, unless sheriffs are making over $300 an hour.

[muawiyah]

There are the "support costs" behind that sheriff. He's probbly costing $500 an hour just to have around ~ the only question is what do you want to use him for ~ to clean Wal-Mart's nickers, or protect the community from violent criminals.

[discostu]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA $500 bucks an hour with "support costs", that's the stupidest damn thing I ever heard. With that kind of math TPD would cost 4 times as much as the entire city of Tucson budget.

Shoplifters are no less criminals than any other type of theif. Busting shoplifters isn't just cleaning a compnay's nickers, it's a source of revenue, and it reminds the most common type of criminal that it is actually against the law and they can actually get in trouble for it. Theft is theft and should be prosecuted when possible (ie they get caught). It's not like the cops have to mount some kind of investigation or anything, the store did everything except fill out the official paperwork.

[muawiyah]

Let's get realistic here ~ Wal-Mart wants customers to come into its stores and buy stuff. You will notice they don't set their stuff outside in their parking lot. That's because they know there are people who steal all over the place.

All I suggested is that it is Wal-Mart's choice in the method of retailing they will use. At the moment they are using open shelf marketing, followed-up by workstation collection of payment.

They could as easily shift to the method used in many autoparts stores where you go to a counter, place your order, and the clerk brings the goods to you.

Hey, if you notice, they do, in fact, do that in their autoparts and firearms areas~!

That means they know exactly what they have to do to minimize shrinkage and maximize profits.

If they've decided prosecuting people for stealing less than $25 is in line with their business plan, that's their decision too.

However, the open-shelf system carries with it much more risk than the closed-counter system, and it's Wal-Mart that should bear that risk, not you and I through the misuse of the sheriff.

[muawiyah]

"support costs" include the sheriff's car, his parking, his office, his HVAC, his retirement, his clerk, his vacation relief, his second and third shift relief, the attorney who handles all those plea bargains, the county court-house, and so on and so forth.

Bet you thought the county attorney was free eh?!

Billable hours ~ call your lawyer and ask him what he includes.

[discostu]

So now you're counting 3 other cops and most of the judicial system as part of the "support costs" for one cop? Very crafty math, also silly, and contrary to every single rule of accounting.

I garauntee you my lawyer wouldn't be counting the hours of another attorney not working on the case as part of his billable hours, that would be fraud.

[discostu]

Well what else are they supposed to do when they catch a criminal? Let them go? The person is a criminal, calling the sheriff to put the criminal through the appropriate section of the legal system for their crime is a 100% valid use of the sheriff.

[muawiyah]

I didn't ask you how your lawyer counts "billable hours", merely how he comes up with the costs behind those "billable hours".

Might give him a call anyway to ask what his hourly rate is these days.

For you to have an hour of the time of a sheriff, at your residence, while you report a crime, you are generating all the costs I've already identfied, as well as the "dead time" necessary just to have a sheriff around, and the liability insurance carried by the county, and the sheriff's office. Then, too, there's the time spent in court "witnessing" as well as the foensic tests, lab tests, and all that.

Your shriff, if he charged "billable hours" like an attorney, would be very, very expensive.

[discostu]

No you're not. If I have a sheriff at my house to process a crime situation it isn't generation ANY cost for the sheriffs that cover other shifts or when he's on vacation. Those are regular cops that are either on the clock (thus generating their own cost per hour) or not (thus not generating any cost per hour). For petty crimes like shoplifting most jurisdiction run bulk court with mass plea bargaining done on preset rules, I've personally seen bulk court clear 150 cases in under two hours, so while there is some cost for the county attorney's office and court system generated it's negligible on a per case basis. There are no witnesses testifying, forensic test or "lab tests" (which are the same thing as forensic test BTW) for a shoplifting case.

No they wouldn't. Not to the tune of $500 an hour, that's simply laughable. If you tallied billable hours for a sheriff like a lawyer it would at most be about twice their paid salary.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

will no longer prosecute first-time thieves unless they are between 18 and 65 and steal merchandise worth at least $25

Shoplifters between the ages of 18 and 65 will still be prosecuted. But the very young and the very old will get a free pass. Hmm.

[muawiyah]

You are looking only at directly attribable costs. There are many other ways of accounting for costs when working up an hourly rate. Since a sheriff's office is not like the post office, but more like a lawyer's office, you should count up all the costs, divide them by the number of hours actually worked by a sheriff, to arrive at the rate billable hours.

If you fail to account for office rent, his car, the garage, the mechanics in the garabe, the gasoline, and so forth, you'll end up not having enough income to pay to have one.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

I guess I have a reading comprehension problem. Either that or the statement is very poorly written.

[muawiyah]

BTW, unless your lawyer charges you separately for process servers he employs to deliver all your blueback papers that cost is going into his costs that get turned into the fee for billable hours.

It's the same with the sheriff. The county attorney SUPPORTS the sheriff. 100% of the county attorney's cost has to be cranked into the cost of having a sheriff. After all, if the sheriff wasn't arresting those people why would you need an attorney?

In many places the sheriff also operates the jail and provides food, clothing, HVAC and other materials to the prisoners out of a fixed budget. He gets to take any surplus. You will occasionally hear about a sheriff earning in excess of half a mil a year as a consequence of running the jail alone. That, right there, gives us about $360 per hour (on an annualized basis). Add in his salary and the other supporting costs and $500 is probably a low estimate applicable in only the most remote, crime free parts of the country.

[discostu]

One should only ever look at directly attributable costs, because those are the costs, those are ALL the costs.

I didn't throw out office rent (though most cops on the beat don't have an office per se, they get a desk in a bullpen), the car, the garage, the mechanic or the gas. I threw out the 3 other cops you tried to add and any major cost in the legal system because a petty theft charge isn't going to draw major costs in the legal system. Shoplifting cases fly through the legal system fast, less than a minute a piece for the 99% of them that don't get contested, the largest sink of man hours is from the cop himself who has to fill out the initial paperwork which takes a while, unless it's contested everybody else rubberstamps it.

And remember most police departments like these kinds of crimes, because they're fast money for the department. Individual cops tend to hate them because they don't consider it real police work, but the department loves them because they bring in more revenue than they cost. If they didn't bring in more revenue than they cost then they'd up the fines. That's why so many cops get assigned to traffic detail, handing out tickets for $150 or so that rarely get contested is a revenue generator.