[protomyth]

I remember when my brother worked for Best Buy (electronics retailer) in the late 90's. Best Buy gave a large bonus if the shoplifting numbers were low (cannot remember the term they used). The Minneapolis store he worked at never got that bonus, as it had all kinds of thievery going on. They even hired cops as security (nice part time gig with the discount they had). The Fargo ND store always got its bonus ($700 per part timer, I think).

Walmart is Best Buy times 100. Blaming Walmart is just plain dumb as its a sign of something wrong with society. I wish we'd get over blaming things and get to being honest and admit the problem is people. People can have all manner of things fixed, and yes, its harder than demanding the victim of the crime pay for it. Charging Walmart more is going to up the prices and hurt a lot more people who really cannot afford another tax.

[dec0dedab0de]

I also worked at Best Buy in the late 90s. Every store had a "shrink budget" that was the total number of money they expected to lose do to theft, and errors. If a store came in under it's shrink budget, a percentage of the difference was evenly distributed among the employees. I think the most I got was $400, my 19 year old self was very happy with that.

[nickpsecurity]

"Walmart is Best Buy times 100. Blaming Walmart is just plain dumb as its a sign of something wrong with society. I wish we'd get over blaming things and get to being honest and admit the problem is people."

How is it just plain dumb to call Walmart greedy and apathetic when it's greedy and apathetic? The measures cited in the article always reduce crime wherever they're implemented. Best Buy, Target, Kroger, etc use them over here in high-crime areas. Even our Walmart does. The Walmart in article that started them back up had a big decline in calls. We can't blame them for the rest but it was clear they weren't doing their part before. All for some extra $$$.

Note: All these retailers have a risk management team that knows about effects of above practices. You can bet they voiced opposition to the changes since their headaches would go up. They were then ignored to see those numbers go up on the balance sheet.

[overcast]

What you're saying is that because of Walmart's business practices, that they somehow deserve to be robbed on a consistent basis. That's not how things work, this isn't an eye for an eye civilization.

[nickpsecurity]

No, that's the strawman point you're making then knocking down. What I said is that Walmart was facing high amounts of crime against it and its customers. It had two ways to respond to that:

1. A set of practices that cost some money but reduce amount of damagd to it and its customers. This is the baseline response it originally had plus what many competitors are currently doing.

2. Get rid of all of those, let crime increase dramatically, pocket the money, and foot the expenses to taxpayers.

I think eliminating 1 for 2 is unethical and damaging to locals, including customers victims of resulting crime. I support allowing them to do it but encourage police departments to make it cost them as in the article. That they did a 180 after that shows this is entirely motivated by profit.

[protomyth]

Who is the victim of the crime? You are blaming the victim for behavior of other people. If it wasn't obvious from my two city examples, quite a lot of Walmarts don't have this problem.

[emp_zealoth]

The victim is the public because they bear the cost of constant police engagement in Walmart, costs that Wallmart is trying to offload to balloon their bottom line even more

[nickpsecurity]

Exactly what Im saying. Plus robberies, rapes, and/or murders if violent thugs see Walmart as a free for all with low risk of conviction due to corporate apathy. Article indicated it was already happening. Does in worst parts of our larger city when security investments are weak.

[nickpsecurity]

The "victim" increased the crime intentionally to make more money. The cost of dealing with the increase was shouldered to taxpayers. They also were put at increased risk of physical harm. I think that means there's two victims: Walmart and taxpayers. That's why the one city declared Walmart a nuisance. They weren't allowed to externalize their problem onto others for free anymore. Once economics changed, suddenly Walmart decided it knew how to reduce crime. Which it did.

[wpietri]

> I wish we'd get over blaming things and get to being honest and admit the problem is people.

The problem has always been people. That's why we have civilization in the first place: to create a structure where people are reasonably safe from the predations of other people.

People were still people 10 or 20 years ago, but Walmart didn't have the same crime problem. Asking them to return to previous staffing levels so that their stores are safer for customers and the community doesn't sound like a shocking burden to me.

[douche]

There's a lot less crime in general in the rural/suburban areas that Walmart was primarily serving 10-20 years ago. And a lot of even those areas have more poverty and petty crime than they did 10-20 years ago, with the local industries and economy taking a huge punch in the face, and meth and opiate abuse spiraling.

You could blame Walmart for some of the economic woes, but they aren't the ones shuttering the auto plant, or the steel mill, or the shoe shop, or automating the old labor-intensive, natural-resource sectors so they require vastly fewer, more highly skilled people.

[mhurron]

> People were still people 10 or 20 years ago, but Walmart didn't have the same crime problem

But is that actually a problem of Walmart's creation, or is it that the pressures that encourage shoplifting became higher among those that Walmart attracts and in the areas Walmart builds in the past 10-20 years.

Increasing staffing would probably benefit the people shopping there more than it would prevent shoplifting. And the greeters? They hired 60+ year olds for that, no one was dissuaded from shoplifting because of them.

[davidf18]

The crime at Wal-Mart is a manifestation of a systems problem that was not of Wal-Mart's making but rather the export of jobs to China and Mexico and the substantial increase in immigrants from 9 million in 1970 to 43 million today (not counting the 11 million illegal immigrants). The immigrants generally are uneducated and complete for jobs and drive down income for America's poorest citizens.

Diagnose and solve the problem, don't treat the symptom of the problem.

[citrin_ru]

Exporting jobs to China allows poor to buy cheap goods. Without moving production to countries with cheap labor American poor will earn more, but able to buy less.

[davidf18]

I'm glad you mentioned this. Some people have lost their jobs to workers overseas. People can't always be "retrained" and so for these people, since they are now unemployed they are not able to buy more.

In addition, lack of employment correlates (and presumably causes) and increase in crime, in drug use, in depression. These are all externalities that are borne not only by the former worker and their families but by taxpayers and society at large. Someone has to pay for the increased crime and protection, someone has to pay for the additional health care costs, and so on.

These negative externalities of exporting jobs to China, to Mexico, and soon possibly to other Asian nations through TPP are never part of the economic equation.

In order to address a problem, it must be fully analyzed. In this case, there is much finger pointing at the victims of a broken system.

So, when a company exports a worker's job overseas, who is supposed to pay the additional healthcare costs cost by the unemployment? Should us the taxpayers or should those that caused the problem in the first place? Someone has to pay and we shouldn't just let events decide but rather make a conscious choice.

[menlo75]

Trump 2016: Blame the immigrants

[davidf18]

Blame economics. An increased supply of uneducated labor drives creates more competition for jobs performed by the poor, uneducated and also drives down wage rates. Illegal immigrants, since they can't complain, will work in illegal conditions and even lower wage rates.

H1-B visa abuse is used by firms (see Disney World in Florida and Abbott Pharmacueticals in Illinois for example) to drive down IT and STEM labor rates.

You might dislike Trump, but he is against H1-B Visa Abuse and H2-A and H2-B (blue collar) Visa abuse. Meanwhile Hilary has used H1-B Visas in the Clinton Foundation (I love patriotism :-) ).

So, instead of being emotional about an issue, be analytical. I assume that most of the people reading HN are analytical and just don't emotionally lash out.

[hjck]

You mean the 2 visas/year filed by CGI? http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Clinton-Global-Initia... Or the 685 by Trump's WPB hotel, including almost 100 last month for which he rejected US workers http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election... ?

Since most Trump voters are uneducated, this is my tip: Go to Stanford/MIT/Columbia, get a CS degree and then you won't have to compete with illegals for a job. And always remember:

"Of course foreigners steal your job, but maybe, if someone without contacts, money, or speaking the language steals your job, you're shit." ~ Louis C. K.

[mason240]

Walmart didn't have large presence in urban areas 20 years ago.