[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.

[yummyfajitas]

And what happens when the criminal class discovers that the $18k/year greeter near the store entrance will do nothing? Why will this be a remotely useful deterrent in that case?

Consider the possibility that if the greeters actually prevented a significant amount of shrinkage, walmart would have kept them. The cases being referred to the cops are only a tiny percentage of the shrinkage that occurs.

[jbooth]

"Consider the possibility that if the greeters actually prevented a significant amount of shrinkage, walmart would have kept them."

It's a possibility, I guess. But I've seen enough MBAs cut costs with poorly understood consequences to be a little skeptical of that assertion. How would they even know? Did they run a controlled experiment? Or did they just say a prayer to Jack Welch and cut anything they could?

[jessaustin]

It seems they've been running the experiment over the last decade? An executive will never get fired for cutting costs. Even if the cut costs destroy the company, she'll be off to greener pastures before that happens.