
Walmart’s Crime Problem - jeo1234
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-walmart-crime/
======
Someone1234
I cannot believe I am going to defend Walmart right now, but that's how poor
this article is.

They say "There’s nothing inevitable about the level of crime at Walmart." and
justify that statement by saying that if Walmart: added more greeters, scrap
self-checkout, made stores smaller, it would reduce crime. That's a
nonsensical and isn't explained in the article, we're just meant to accept
that.

The reality is that Walmart is a victim of their own success in some ways.
They have a core demographic (the employed and unemployed poor) which they've
been extremely successful in attracting, so much so that the demographics even
at a store like Target are markedly different (middle class-ish).

Walmart seems to have actually extended their reach into the poorest of
society, it used to be that stores like Kmart were cheaper than Walmart and
the really poor shopped there, now Walmart has been nabbing a lot of their
business, it comes with a lot of the problems associated.

What's a solution? Walmart's shoplifting is a symptom of social issues
elsewhere: Drug usage, poverty, lacking social safety nets, criminal justice
reform, and so on. If you want to decrease shoplifting you have to give people
something to lose and that's a bigger challenge than hitting Walmart over the
head for having to call the cops too much.

It is very easy to make Walmart a scapegoat, but ultimately you'd just shift
the problem to a different location if Walmart stopped serving the customer
base they serve.

~~~
ssharp
It's almost absurd not to shop at Walmart or other stores that are "extremely
successful in attracting" the poor.

If I buy groceries at Walmart or another discount grocer, my bill is nearly
half of what it would be if I shopped at a "nicer" supermarket and well over
half of what it would be if I shopped at a place like Whole Foods. And I
actually find the experience of shopping at Walmart to be better than the
experience of shopping somewhere like Trader Joe's because Walmart's large
size makes things far less congested than Trader Joe's, where it seems like
everyone is constantly in the way of each other.

And this is all for essentially the same produce and meats. In many cases, the
discount grocer's produce is actually better quality than the supermarket's.

~~~
ruffrey
I get what you're saying, but will also note that this is probably subjective
based on where you live. In my city, most of the walmarts are crowded, loud,
and dirty. A lot of merchandise somehow ends up on the floor. The lines are
long. The produce quality varies greatly but is not very good.

I once saw a Walmart in another state with a live lobster aquarium. My local
friends almost didn't believe me. (I live in California)

~~~
ssharp
I've certainly seen stores that are in just terrible shape. They all tend to
be understaffed. They have 30 checkouts available and most times it seems like
5 are open. I never understood the idea behind that, though I went in one time
around Christmas and they had a ton of lines available.

I think the best mix between prices and not being over-congested and dirty are
the warehouse stores like Sam's Club and Costco. Those places require larger
volumes, so they aren't really great options if you aren't buying for an
entire household.

~~~
ams6110
Sams (and I assume also Costco) also require a membership, the cost of which
keeps the really poor folks out.

------
yummyfajitas
I think that we should crack down on walmart and other large companies who
service poor people, blacks, and other population groups that
disproportionately commit crime. We should force walmart to behave more like
target, catering towards higher income people, with higher prices and better
service. And if poor people need to pay higher prices at a non-centralized
location, that's the breaks.

Similarly, walmart should be prevented from doing things like allowing the
homeless to camp in the parking lots. Target is the pioneer here - they force
the homeless to illegally park on the streets where the cops can harass them
until they leave town.

In short, rather than having all the crime in one spot, we can spread it
around the community! This won't help things, but at least we won't have a
single unsympathetic scapegoat to blame.

(Also blame walmart when it does try and stop crime and the inevitable results
occur, namely criminals being hurt/killed as part of the law enforcement
process.)

I can't think of a better illustration of the Copenhagen Interpretation of
Ethics than this article. Poor people steal and hurt people but we can't blame
them. Walmart is nearby so blame Walmart!

[https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

~~~
maxerickson
Yes, it's obviously a binary issue and there is no possibility whatsoever that
Walmart could do things to prevent crime that have a lower net cost for
society than calling the police.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What exactly should walmart do?

Run a private police force that inevitably harms criminals during the law
enforcement process? (The article criticizes them for doing this.)

Maybe walmart can run it's own on-site jail that way the cops only need to
come once/day? I'm sure a private walmart run jail won't attract the same
criticism, particularly when the inevitable bad things happen in it.

Or maybe they can hire more security guards to follow around suspicious people
in the store. I'm sure that will help stop the criticism, even if the
demographics of suspicious people don't correspond to population demographics.

From what I can tell, the problem isn't walmart but the people who shop there.
But this is obviously a politically unacceptable conclusion, so walmart makes
a convenient scapegoat. And they'll remain one no matter what they do.

~~~
maxerickson
Yes, the criminality is the problem.

But say having someone present at an entrance for much of the day clearly cuts
the number of shoplifting incidents. It's pretty reasonable for the police and
town to push for that staffing if it is less costly than handling the
displaced incidents.

------
0xbadf00d
It seems as though this is following a familiar pattern (as in the UK) of:

"Privatise the profit, push the risk/cost to the local community"

~~~
tomp
Isn't the point of the police to have a monopoly on violence?! I mean, I'm
sure Walmart could create its own _army_ if they had to, but ... do we, as a
society, really want that?

~~~
0xbadf00d
Not sure about an army, but I think the point is that they are actively
consuming a public service more often because they have cut their own costs,
instead of paying for a deterrent themselves.

~~~
tantalor
Surely the stores pay property taxes that go to local PD?

~~~
randomgyatwork
Walmart at times at least gets tax discounts for "all the jobs they create"

------
davidf18
While blaming Walmart for the crime problems may be emotionally satisfying,
the crime is a manifestation of a systems problem which ultimately cannot be
solved by Walmart, but must be solved by the government. Adding more staff
will simply result in an increase in prices for customers who can not afford
increased prices and it doesn't solve the crime problems, simply move it
somewhere else.

The state needs to spend money understanding the structural issues of crime in
their state and implement interventions with tax money.

Here is a plan: In NY City where I live there is a state cigarette tax of
$4.35 and a city tax of an additional $1.50 for a total of $5.85 per pack of
cigarettes.

Oklahoma, the state first mentioned in the article, just rejected a cigarette
tax increase to $1.50 [http://kfor.com/2016/05/19/democrats-republicans-clash-
over-...](http://kfor.com/2016/05/19/democrats-republicans-clash-over-
cigarette-tax-in-oklahoma/)

Raise the cigarette taxes to $3 or $4 per pack, the smoking rate declines and
healthcare costs from tobacco declines.

The cigarette tax revenues can be put into plans that help to solve the
structural problems of crime (unemployment, law enforcement, whatever). The
State of Oklahoma should study the crime problem and use the additional
revenues from an increased cigarette tax to help solve the problem.

------
werber
The article didn't touch on this, but Walmart is held in such low regard that
there is, for many people, zero stigma attached to shoplifting from an "evil
empire", even compared to "friendlier" competitors like Target.

------
tantalor
Article only uses the word "tax" once, in a quote from a police officer:
"[Walmart] offloads the job to the police at taxpayers’ expense".

But isn't the taxpayer in this case the store itself? If the store isn't
paying enough taxes to support the PD, how is that the store's fault?

------
ewood
I live close to a UK Premier League football stadium. Every match day requires
a police riot squad being deployed for crowd control. Given that these teams
are privately owned I do wonder about who should ultimately pay the bill for
what are public events held for profit.

London Met police costs -
[http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/august_201...](http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/august_2014/2013030002515.pdf)

~~~
geodel
Best it would be paid by public who would not even be watching or interested
in that event. I think it is just a variant of 'You may not be interested in
politics but it does not mean politics is not interested in you.

------
kauffj
One should never blame the victim for sexual assault; victims should be able
to dress/act how they please without fear.

vs.

One should blame the victim for theft; victims bear responsibility for
securing their possessions.

~~~
fixermark
They are two different categories of crime, yes. That's why we don't throw
people in prison for a decade for petty theft, or put petty thieves on the
Petty Theft Offender national registry and require them to notify their
neighbors when they move into town.

~~~
saint_fiasco
I get that more severe crimes get more punishment, but why would the severity
of the crime change where the blame is placed?

~~~
fixermark
Hard to say, but it is. When a person leaves their door unlocked and people
walk in and rob the place, the thieves are responsible and guilty but the
neighbors will cluck their tongues and wonder why someone with perfectly-
functioning locks doesn't use them.

That's why a person leaving their house unlocked and getting robbed is used as
an (unacceptable) analogy to a person getting sexually assaulted when they
walk down the street at night in skimpy clothing. The "Victim could easily
have done something more and chose not to" aspect is already taken as a given
in the unlocked-door scenario.

~~~
saint_fiasco
I think I see what is going on. Could you be seeing both wearing skimpy
clothing and leaving your door unlocked as very minor crimes?

From that point of view, getting robbed would be a minor punishment fit for
such a minor crime, while getting raped would be a major punishment,
disproportionate for such a minor crime.

~~~
fixermark
Neither is a crime. But responsibility and crime are divorced concepts---you
can be partially responsible for being in a situation (getting in a car and
driving on the road during rush-hour with a friend in the car) without being
culpable for the consequences (drunk driver hits you and your passenger is
severely injured). Drivers still feel responsible in situations like that,
even if they're not guilty of committing a crime.

And if you're talking about my personal opinions: I think the two states
(leaving your door unlocked and wearing skimply clothing) are completely
separate, and the arguments that unify them are flawed because they move the
responsibility to not get raped from the rapist to the victim.

But the sharing of responsibility for petty theft between the thief and the
person who fails to take basic measures to secure property (like locking
doors) is already culturally-accepted for reasons I don't know, which is why
the argument that "wearing skimpy clothing is the same thing" is even made. I
think it's possible to argue that people who leave doors unlocked shouldn't be
considered to have done something wrong, but I hear almost nobody making that
argument.

~~~
saint_fiasco
>I think it's possible to argue that people who leave doors unlocked shouldn't
be considered to have done something wrong, but I hear almost nobody making
that argument.

I hear this every once in a while. My country used to be a police state and
people often say "back then we could leave our windows open without fear" to
argue that we should go back to authoritarianism to reduce crime.

------
rlpb
I said this the last time this came up, and I feel the same journalistic
failure is present in this article:

Could the troublemakers simply be attracted to Walmart and would go elsewhere
if things were different? Walmart might even be doing the police a favor by
concentrating them all in one place.

~~~
randcraw
Walmart has created a retail model that does not work -- unless a
disproportionate number of police implement their security for them. Their
stores are unmanageably big. They're understaffed and undermonitored, and they
even do stupid things like not routing people with merchandise returns to
approach the return counter strictly from outside the store, so the trivial
hack mentioned in the article can't occur.

Walmart has a 30 year history of offloading the healthcare and social costs of
its employees onto local hospitals and county agencies. Of course they offload
their security. In perhaps 50% of their market (geographically) they're a
retail monopoly. They rig the game because they can.

~~~
davidf18
The high healthcare costs are systems issues and the reasons they are so high
are because of politics which can be fixed at the state and sometimes city
level.

The high health care costs are externalities created by state and city policy
(and sometimes federal policy) that create an additional burden for employers
such as Walmart which creates an additional burden for customers and
employees. The higher health care costs result in lower wages for employees
while resulting in higher prices for customers than in Wal-Marts case, many
can ill-afford.

For example, most of health care costs are from those with serious chronic
disease (the highest category is the 9 million "dual eligibles" \-- people
with disability that are on both Medicaid and Medicare).

These chronic diseases are from smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, air
pollution for starters.

The fixes are raising the cost of tobacco through taxes, banning smoking in
public places, hard hitting anti-smoking TV ads, ....), taxing sugar added
beverages as Philadelphia has just done, lowering air pollution by getting the
highest polluting coal-powered electric plants shut down, and in the Northeast
and Midwest, converting buildings burning #6 and #4 fuel oils to less
polluting #2 or natural gas.

The more of the healthcare cost externalities that are borne by private firms
that are a result of government policy that government must pay for, the
better for all of us. Only when the costs to government are high enough, will
they implement policies that will reduce the high costs of health care.

------
blackrose
Heh, one of the few times I shoplifted as a teenager was from a Walmart. It
was from one of the more run-down ones, and it _did_ seem easy.

Not many stores I would've dreamed of doing that in ('twas only teenage
hijinks anyway), but it's true when you have a big crappy commercial space
where crap is just laying around (Walmart, kmart, Ross, etc.), it really gives
the impression that the purveyor doesn't give a crap about their crap.

------
toast0
Isn't it more efficient for more crime to be in one place? They can send a van
to take arrestees to jail instead of individual trips; the Walmart employees
are likely more effective at implementing proper procedure than a store that
has one or two incidents a year, etc.

------
PaulHoule
I worked in retail when I was a teenager and something I was taught was that
keeping your store in good condition (i.e. fronting and facing the shelves)
inhibits shoplifting and other crimes. If you see that the people who work
there take pride in their store you might think they are watching and will
catch you if you try to shoplift.

On a good day, the Wal*Mart in my area looks OK but on a bad day it looks like
the aftermath of a frat party. On a day like that it looks like a ghetto store
and just doesn't feel like a safe place. The local Target on the other hand
could use more people at the checkout lines, but has a lot of staff on the
floor to keep the store looking good and help out if you need to find
something.

------
modiho
Semi recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11676928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11676928)

------
jessaustin
_In July, three Walmart employees in Florida were charged with manslaughter
after a shoplifter they chased and pinned down died of asphyxia._

No wonder they call the police when they want shoplifters choked out: police
don't get prosecuted for that.

This is much ado about nothing. All big companies run periodic "let's take a
shit on society to save some money" programs. They find something that costs a
little money (e.g. a modicum of private security), the absence of which won't
cause them to go out of business immediately, and they stop doing it. Even if
they eventually have to restart in most locations, they still save money over
the interim. If society really wanted to end this practice, society would stop
bending over backwards to coddle large corporations, or even to allow them to
exist in the first place.

TFA describes problems in lower-income urban and suburban settings. Maybe
these are the Wal-Mart stereotype, but Wal-Mart has stores in many other
communities that don't fit that mold, and which may not have seen the crime
wave described here. The mayor in TFA had the right idea: declare problem
stores a public nuisance to force Wal-Mart to do something. What Wal-Mart will
do, was also identified in TFA: hire a bunch of off-duty cops. It kills three
birds: security will actually improve with cops on the premises, police chiefs
won't publicly criticize a business that's paying their subordinates lots of
money, and the cops they hire will use the resources of the whole department
anyway. Again, however, this expenditure will only be required in those
special communities that have lots of potential criminals.

------
post_break
The walmart in kemah had the police called 364 days out of the year last year.
Sometimes twice a day. They are costing the PD a fortune for it. They even had
a bomb threat made there.

 _edit_ my comment was poorly worded. The seabrook PD is constantly at this
walmart instead of doing other things and the revenue isn't offset to hire
more officers.

~~~
mason240
Are you suggesting we start charging people for police protection?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Corporations are people, my friend.

~~~
mason240
Corporations are taxpayers, my friend.

------
egocodedinsol
I'm curious: does a new Walmart increase crime, or merely concentrate and
redistribute it?

Kind of a tough question, because to define concentration you need some notion
of area, and you might just redistribute it across the boundaries you draw.
Still, this is probably possible at least for smaller towns.

------
mcguire
" _[Walmart] said it would skip calling the cops for first-time offenders
shoplifting merchandise valued below $50 if the shoplifter completes the
company’s theft-prevention program._ "

The response to having too many petty crimes is to not call the police? This
whole situation is bizarre.

~~~
maxerickson
Presumably the data shows that petty shop lifting is a fact of business for
big box stores and that the level of petty shop lifting goes up and down with
staffing levels on the store floor.

The shoplifters are still the ones to blame for the shoplifting, but it's not
entirely unreasonable for the town to demand some level of performance from
the store rather than happily providing expensive police to deal with a
problem the store could handle with cheap employees.

------
VLM
"Nor do they allow people to camp overnight in their parking lots"

They're refusing to look at the demographics. The criminals have nothing to do
with my Dad in his fancy RV. The article is close to understanding the problem
is socioeconomic class but for political reasons can't say the real problem,
so, um, it must be the campers, yeah they must be the problem.

Another peculiar logical and demographic problem is the article implies
corporate spending on employees will magically reduce crime, much as hospitals
hiring more ER nurses will reduce shootings.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Not only that, but WalMart allows overnight camping specifically because their
studies have shown that the ongoing presence of trucks and RVs lowers crime in
their parking lots.

------
lakeborn
Even up in Northern Michigan, this has been a MAJOR issue. Our local law
refuses to admit it, however if you pay attention to the news and radio one
can see a trend.

~~~
fixermark
I would _definitely_ refrain from drawing conclusions on trends gained from
news and radio. The positive feedback loops in that ecosystem are _large_.

------
TheBeardKing
Here's a similar article in the Tampa Bay Times published earlier this year.
The graphics department had a fun time with it.
[http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-
safety/walmart-...](http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/public-
safety/walmart-police/)

------
anonbanker
If the economy wasn't in a massive slump, this article wouldn't have been
written. It acts as an apology for predatory business practices, and the
exploitation of a working class.

~~~
gozur88
Employing people at market rates isn't "exploitation".

~~~
anonbanker
It isn't hard to google examples of Walmart encouraging their employees onto
social assistance programs in order to ensure they get a living wage. This has
been happening for over a decade now.

Also, I could direct you towards the average market rate in Nepal or Shenzhen
Province in China, and we could have a fun conversation about Walmart's
exploitation of the third world, but we'll stick to the goalposts we have.

------
jrs235
Many keep pointing out the Walmart theft numbers and his they correlate to the
local crime stats. I wonder if there is a correlation to theft numbers and
distance to nearest bus stop.

------
wpietri
To me this is a great example of why Lean focuses on cutting waste, not
cutting costs.

I don't expect execs to learn a lesson, though. Cost-cutting fits in much
better with our managerialist culture. Decreasing waste mostly has to happen
when employees doing or very close to the work spot opportunities for
improvement. But any fool can look at a corporate budget, pick out the biggest
expense, and say, "Well, let's cut that by a lot."

------
digitalsushi
What are some other ways we can reduce human workforce that obligate
extraneous events into the municipal sector? Daycares could stop watching the
children - EMTs could definitely pick up the slack if there is a random health
event. Restaurants could stop employing wait staff - eventually the UN would
be deployed to feed the starving people.

------
meira
It is not recent anymore, but I don't think that this flood of "mainstream
media" links in hackernews suits well with past demographics. Maybe this forum
is changing, but I think it is toward a bad direction.

EDIT: And the downvotes proves that the demographics changed a lot. Why come
here if I can browse CNN, Bloomberg and WSJ by myself? There is a lot of
comments there too.

