Posted on 07/25/2013 11:00:50 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Plastic bag ban leads to nationwide increase in shoplifting rates
Posted By Richard Thompson On 9:47 PM 07/24/2013 In US |
On Friday, New Jersey Democratic operative James Devine was arrested for attempting to snatch $22 worth of merchandise from a local ShopRite pharmacy. Devine tried to smuggle lettuce, shampoo and protein powder out of the store, perhaps trying to hide the fact that he was about to make the world’s most disgusting salad. To avoid detection, he stashed the goods in a reusable grocery bag.
What seems to be just another edition of Democrats doing dumb deeds actually represents a nationwide problem. Thanks to laws in several major cities banning the use of plastic carryout bags in retail stores, there has been a spike in shoplifting incidents over the past couple years, a trend that business owners, law enforcement officials and customers have duly noted.
In 2011, Washington D.C. enforced a reusable bag tax and officials became steadily more suspicious of shoppers’ activities.
“Since the fee was established last year, we have noticed customers using traditional bags, along with less traditional pieces such as backpacks, to not only transport items from the store, but to carry items throughout the store,” spokesman of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission of Washington D.C. Craig Muckle said in an interview with Washington City Paper.
This suspicion solidified into disturbing data a year later on the other side of the country. When a Seattle ordinance banning plastic bags took effect on July 2012, 21.1 percent of surveyed Seattle business owners said that the plastic bag ban led to an increase in shoplifting problems. Seattle’s Lake City Grocery Outlet, for instance, had thousands of dollars worth of goods stolen that year.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The merchants can make the municipalities notice, by deducting shoplifting losses from their charitable community contributions.
Pardon, but in our area it’s the merchants that failed to stop the City Council from enacting the stupid bag ban, I believe because they didn’t want to offend the greenies and they smelled higher profits.
After buying some clothes at a mall store I was asked if I wanted to buy a bag. I thought about it for a second, politely said “no” and walked out the store and through the mall 3 circuits with an armful of clothes ‘with tags’ and no bag, wondering how much of a nightmare it must be for security folks and prepared for the eventuality that I might be challenged (I was hoping for it, but to no avail).
Merchants did it to themselves by not standing up to the idiots (at least here).
Yeah, but the bag ban accomplished its true goal*, so no examination of the unintended consequences will be allowed.
*making a few libs think they are “good people”
Austin, the blue blight in the middle of Texas.
Are the bags the real.reason for an increase in shop lifting, or is the real reason inflation? I know I am making more in my yearly gross than 5 years ago, but my disposable income has decreased almost by half if not more in the same time period and I have now become a serious penny pincher lately. Thirdly, is this just a non story distraction piece so the ball under the cup can be shifted while no one is looking.
So a few poor downtrodden people take some goods from a rich evil supermarket that oppresses its people. At this point what difference does it make?
< / s>
bump
Reusable Grocery Bag Can Spread Disease
yep
You are correct for all the major retailers, everywhere, however many of the small business proprietors don't have the juice to oppose the local leftist city council.
Locally, we have lost local program after program and the local businesses that supported them, while the chains donate to the big name national charities, all left leaning of course.
Ok, the protein and shampoo I can see. Good resale potential on those items but lettuce? Good green goddess, why? The stuff is cheap and perishable. No resale there.
Liberal newspapers push this crap, but they are always exempted from plastic bagging of their papers when it rains.
The government says there is no inflation, so that can't possibly be the reason. All those price increases you're seeing are just Republican distractions.
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