[euroclydon]

The article also said that Wal-Mart needs more employees and private security present and visible in the stores. They said Target and grocery stores have this. They also said that Target uses computer vision analysis to identity shoppers who linger too long in one area, and other theft patterns.

Walmart can do more. Are the legally obligated to do so? Not unless laws are written in a jurisdiction that says stores of that size need to have some minimum security and anti-theft measures.

[fixermark]

From the article:

> He can’t believe, he says, that a multibillion-dollar corporation isn’t doing more to stop crime. Instead, he says, it offloads the job to the police at taxpayers’ expense.

I think citizens should be very concerned about the notion that instead of their taxpayer-supported police doing the policing, an expectation of corporations policing their own territory should exist. That's a little bit Snow Crash, isn't it?

[adrianparsons]

From the article:

According to laws in every state in the U.S., Walmart has a duty to protect its customers from violent crime while they’re on store property. Under an area of the law known as premise liability, victims and their lawyers have argued in hundreds of lawsuits that Walmart failed to provide enough security.

[wpietri]

Is it? I think there's a long-standing expectation that you take care of your own space, that emergency services are there for emergencies. In any case, the asked-for remedy is basically to return to their staffing levels of a decade ago, which doesn't sound like a corporate dystopia to me.

[yummyfajitas]

So you are perfectly happy with walmart branded cops roaming their property, using force against people and putting them in a walmart branded jail until the real cops come to pick them up?

Note that in reality this option inevitably includes walmart cops accidentally beating up an innocent black person, a sympathetic sick mother dying in walmart jail of some pre-existing medical issues, and similar things. (All I'm assuming here is that walmart cops/jails are identical to US Govt cops/jails.)

You'll have no problem with walmart when these things occur? You're sure that the media won't criticize them for this as well?

[douche]

College campuses across the country are setup exactly this way already. Similarly with large shopping malls and their rent-a-cops.

[yummyfajitas]

Clearly you think that if a model works well in a high trust community full of high intelligence high conscientiousness people who've spent $20k/year to be there, it'll work for Walmart.

I know of a hippy commune (upper middle class, mid 50's, entirely white/asian, yoga/meditation/etc types) that lets you operate the store cash register yourself. Admittedly the store is not as extensive at walmart, it mostly just sells organic vegan flax seed cookies. If you don't have enough cash you can just pay them tomorrow. So why can't walmart just adopt that model?

(I know, I'm hinting at the naughty and unspeakable idea that walmart shoppers are bad people who steal and commit other crimes.)

[justinlardinois]

> College campuses across the country are setup exactly this way already.

Really? I suppose that depends on where you are and whether it's a public or private college. Public universities in California have their own police departments, but they're run by the state government.

[jbooth]

The premise here is that Wal-mart spends much less on security than other shopping centers like malls and Target.

I haven't seen a lot of news stories about civil rights violations by Target's security guards. Maybe they're under the radar?

[yummyfajitas]

Most likely Target simply has fewer criminals in their customer base.

The simple fact is that any law enforcement will result in some civil rights violations. It's just a statistical inevitability. This is one of the reasons I'm extremely cautious about new regulations; part of the price of a new law is one or two more Eric Garners.

[jbooth]

Having somebody visible near the store entrance so that you're not a complete magnet for crime that creates taxpayer expense.. not exactly Eric Garner.

[wpietri]

If you'd read all the way to my third sentence, you'd know that I am not suggesting anything like that.

[antisthenes]

The problem here isn't the expectation of Walmart having a corporate police force, it's the expectation of some Walmart stores to be prioritized in the case of an understaffed police district without paying their fair share for a public service.

[pc86]

> without paying their fair share

I see this argument a lot and there are never numbers to back it up.

If Walmart isn't paying the taxes it legally owes, then they should be fined and there should be charges brought. If they are, then they are already paying their fair share as determined by the law and implying otherwise is at best extremely disingenuous.

Let he who voluntarily donates additional money to the US Treasury cast the first snarky HN comment, or something.

[wpietri]

I'd be super hesitant to see laws written like that; it would be very easy to get them wrong. I'd much rather see some sort of cost recovery system for businesses with excessive crime. That would avoid penalizing the stores doing fine, and wouldn't fix possibly-inappropriate solutions in law.

[gozur88]

But do you really want to penalize companies for opening stores in bad neighborhoods? Fewer companies competing for business means higher prices for (presumably poor) people in those neighborhoods.

[wpietri]

I'd be happy with a definition of "excessive" that's sensitive to that.

A couple of times I've lived near corner/liquor stores that were obviously more problematic than their competitors, for example. If those stores exerted downward pricing pressure then it might be to a level that was problematic. I don't want all stores to become poorly run crime magnets because they can't afford to stay in business.