As America’s shoplifting crime wave continues, retail workers continue to bear the brunt.
The latest?
Walmart has implemented anti-theft tech to stop sticky-fingered customers in self-checkout lines — relying on employees, unarmed and often untrained, to handle the would-be thieves.
The predictable result: a rise in potentially violent confrontations.
And, per a beleaguered worker, “Those who are trying to scam the register are the ones who get upset the most.”
Look no further than the past few months to see where this will lead.
CVS worker Scotty Enoe was forced to kill a violent shoplifter in self-defense in New York this summer. (He’s facing murder charges, thanks to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s policy of going after crime victims instead of criminals.)
A California Home Depot employee was murdered after confronting a shoplifter in late spring.
Mega-retailer Target cited a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats over the first five months of 2023 — a grim trend clearly set to continue.
And despite the denials from progs around the country, Walmart’s own CEO Doug McMillon sees rising retail crime as a key reason the company is shuttering stores nationwide: “In some jurisdictions here in the US, there needs to be action taken to help protect people from crime, including theft,” he said in August.
Walmart’s last two stores in Portland, Ore., are now gone: The crooks won.
That’s happening from New York to Chicago to San Francisco: Walmart, Target and other huge companies are getting chased out.
Lawsuit-plagued Rite Aid is declaring bankruptcy, with retail theft surely another factor pushing the once-big-name chain over the edge.
Look, this isn’t hard.
Criminal justice “reforms” (like laws abolishing bail) set up revolving doors so shoplifters escape any punishment for their actions — creating conditions in which people will be killed.
They do economic damage, too: Stores close, workers lose their jobs, neighborhoods lose a vital source of goods.
And the social fabric unravels more and more.
The carnage and decay will accelerate until the officials who wrecked public safety reverse course — or get booted from office.