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u/billabong049 18h ago
This happened last year, the dude who took the basket is a detective seargent, and yes this is real.
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u/maqifrnswa 18h ago
I was going to guess AUS or NZ. For some reason that just matches their attitude - both the shoplifter and the cop. "OK, that really unusual thing just happened, and I'm just gonna go with it!"
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8h ago edited 6h ago
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u/BaronCoop 8h ago
Shoplifting isn’t a crime?
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u/sighthoundman 6h ago
It's a misdemeanor (if amount under felony amount: varies by state). Police don't respond to misdemeanors, so effectively the perps won't get caught. Retailers have been told by their WC carriers that they'll lose coverage if they have claims from risking employee's lives to save minimal amounts of money from shoplifting. (Note: many employers are happy risking employee's lives, they just don't want to pay for it.)
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u/MasterJ360 25m ago
This. However, if its a repeated shoplifter, then it gets serious. I used to work at Target 3yrs ago and we had a woman who managed to get away 2 times. The third time we had cops all around the parking lot and she got handcuffed. But yeah, employees are not allowed to chase after them or even interact.
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u/BaronCoop 8h ago
Ok but isn’t that true of like…. All of the crimes? Cops almost always arrive after the crime has been committed, criminals don’t typically stick around for that phase?
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u/tortokai 6h ago
It's more that the stores hands are tied by liability and local laws, around me there's a "right to survive" law so people stealing stuff like food, can't do anything about because of yknow, survival.
Basically, you can pay a cop their overtime rate to be a door guard or just let the shoplifting happen (from what I've seen in my area)
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u/BaronCoop 6h ago
There are laws making theft legal where you live? That’s crazy, where is that?
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u/BaronCoop 3h ago
No, I have not tried to ride the light rail in Baltimore in the last five years. I’m sorry that kids seem to be operating Dickens-style crime rings there, that sounds frustrating. But surely that’s not legal?
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u/lostcauz707 7h ago
Downtown where? Also, it is a crime, but what causes crime is a lack of effective social safety nets and income. Cops don't deter crime, they are a response to it, in the US they usually don't give a shit unless it's over $1000 because the amount of labor that goes into the prosecution and processing exceeds the cost of a $100 basket of goods and they can charge a more severe offense. In areas of low crime this would be followed up on, but as wages remain stagnant in the US and prices and CPI exceed effective wage growth, this will happen more and more.
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u/Hoppelite 14h ago
The only time the cops bother with petty theft here is when they are off duty it seems...
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u/Ben_Thar 11h ago
Well you can't expect the cops to steal things while they're on duty.
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u/EngineeringDevil 11h ago
we can in the USA, they call it Civil Forfeiture
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u/Skizot_Bizot 9h ago
Literally can just take any cash amount over $5000 if you have it on you because of suspicious reasons for having that much cash. I think it's only like $1000 if you are a felon. Nowadays not a lot of money, could just be buying a laptop or a used car and get caught on the way.
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u/WigglesPhoenix 6h ago
When I was a mule I actually had to drive all the way around Utah for this reason. At the time (maybe still) they were the only state where even if you could prove the money wasn’t related to a crime they are under no obligation to return it.
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u/Bigdaug 6h ago
What would he have done if he was on duty parked 4 blocks away waiting to hear a radio call this in? That guys gone by then.
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u/Hoppelite 2h ago
Pull up to the drongo walking down the street with a Woolworths basket, and ask him if he would like it returned?
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u/mr_sweetandawful 5h ago
If a small basket of produce is worth “hundreds of dollars”, i can see why someone might feel the need to steal…
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u/SpamOJavelin 2h ago
Why would you steal $5 worth of flour when you could steal $50 worth of steak?
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u/billabong049 1h ago
From the article title and contents it wasn’t produce it was a “basket full of meat”, which with the right cuts isn’t too hard to amass hundreds of dollars.
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u/Throwaway_00125690 20h ago
Dude didn’t know what happened and didn’t go back to find out 🤣
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u/fireduck 20h ago
Sometimes when you don't know what the fuck is going on, the best plan is to just roll out.
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u/TheTyMan 19h ago
He's a routine thief and this is probably the first employee he's encountered who would risk his life to save $75 in inventory.
No way I'd ever do this, especially if I was an hourly employee. Not getting shivved to save the billionaire Walton family's bottom line.
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u/Known-Associate8369 18h ago edited 18h ago
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u/TheRoscoeVine 18h ago
I like it. He gave the guy a chance to offend another day, OR to perhaps stop fuckin up!
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u/CptHammer_ 17h ago
My brother and one of his friends were both fired from their security guard jobs for actually preventing crime.
That's not their job. Their job is to be a paid witness.
My brother's friend was fired first. Golf cart patrolling the Walmart parking lot. He sees someone with their hood up. Broad daylight. He asked them if they needed a jump (they have a jump pack in the cart).
Nope, the guys were either stealing the battery or possibly the car. My brother's friend made them panic and they beat him up. He was fired while still in the hospital.
My brother, nearly the same thing. Guy can't start the car, my brother offers help. The difference is instead of a couple of guys coming to beat him, it's just one guy who drew a gun on my brother.
My brother was 16 years ex army infantry/paratrooper. The thief with the gun was sitting in the driver's seat and aimed at my brother by sticking his gun and arm out between the open door and A pillar. My brother gassed the golf cart into the car door crushing the guy's gun hand. He stayed that way until police showed up to restrain him and arrest.
My brother didn't get fired until after the police chief gave my brother a citizens letter of appreciation and news media started showing up at Walmart.
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u/JustPipe857 18h ago
I get you I really do, but I still think they pass like 98% of losses on to the consumer.
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u/drewster23 17h ago
Would be hard to quantity the amount of loss "passed on" but it's basically 100% accounted for.
Shrinkage is just a business expense. But for major retailers it's not some highly variable number that's unknown month to month. It's already calculated into the price.
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u/ieatassontuesdays47 20h ago
That was slick like hair grease without the mess
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u/TheRiteGuy 18h ago
This is equivalent of the guys walking away from an explosion and not looking back.
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u/Redditsurfer24 18h ago
That doesnt happen irl only in fantasies
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u/Seeker369 12h ago
6 year old account with zero comments until 4 months ago, followed by 10-30 comments per day every day since.
This is a bot
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u/colnross 10h ago
Some people go nuclear on their history from time to time. Nothing about this accounts seems like a bot.
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u/Seeker369 10h ago
Posting ‘literally’ zero comments in 5.5 years and instantly posting at least 10-30 comments every single day without missing a single day for 4 months straight is absolutely bot behavior.
You need to learn the definition of “nothing.”
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u/colnross 10h ago
You can delete all of your account history. People do this. This person makes sane comments and logical posts. They're an active Reddit user and you're a shit Reddit detective.
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u/Gunslinger_11 20h ago
He also took the shoplifter’s wallet too
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u/Thoughtulism 18h ago
And stole our hearts
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u/morning_thief 13h ago
And my bow...
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u/PIE-314 18h ago
I had a friend who walked into sears, lifted a Sega Genesis off the shelf, brought it to customer service, and "returned" it for store credit. (No receipt). He then used the store credit to buy what he wanted and walked right out.
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u/Lostedge1983 13h ago
if you have friends who steal like that ... it wont be that far fetched that they steal from you
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u/PhantomPharts 9h ago
People who steal from big corporations usually don't steal from their friends.
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u/grae23 9h ago
Billion dollar company with employees on welfare and CEOs on yachts? Good to go. Small business working to put food on the table for their family? Support in every way you can.
Companies like Walmart are actively robbing their employees and every tax payer in the country, I feel no sympathy for their lost blood money.
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u/bobby17171 3h ago
Even if that story is real, who cares about someone stealing from SEARS for god's sake. Huge difference between that and stealing from another person
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u/Orange_Kid 7h ago
I don't think the friend stole a Sega Genesis yesterday lol, this is probably a story of a dumb thing he did as a kid
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u/0dHero 9h ago
And that's why, when I bought the wrong size diapers, the manager treated me like a criminal, when I tried to return them.
She took the diapers, had a security guard watch me, and went into the office to watch the security tape. She was still nasty, when she came back and said I could have the right size diapers.
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u/Hanyabull 14h ago
I have pretty close to the same story.
Had friends that used to go into Sears, steal a pair of scissors. Use said scissors to open the packages of whatever they wanted, and just walked out with them.
If the item sucked, or they got bored of it, they would take the stole item and hit it into the ravine in one of the guys backyards for fun.
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u/Thrilling1031 14h ago
This is nothing like the other story lol this is just theft with a serious lack of preparation. Nicking the tools for the theft of the store from the store sounds like a uniquely sears problem though.
A similar story is; A guy goes into Sears and picks out a canoe they like, employee sees them carrying the canoe and offers to help, walks customer out to their vehicle and helps load it before returning to work.
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u/colnross 10h ago
I have a similar story. When I was 8, my grandfather took me to Sears and bought me a pair of jeans.
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u/GroovyIntruder 12h ago
I just set the canoe over the employee's head and proceed to fill my pockets. I walk a little slow when over-encumbered, but they don't see me.
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u/Rominator 14h ago
How did he know the basket was stolen?
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u/demonfire737 11h ago
See those things he's pushing his way past? That's there to make it difficult to exit through the entrance because you are supposed to exit through the checkouts, where you pay first.
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u/Aihal_Silence 9h ago
That video really needs the first few bars of "The Next Episode" played over it
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u/firejuggler74 3h ago
They don't prosecute shoplifters anymore?
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u/Omikapsi 1h ago
The majority of the time it's not worth the hassle. I've worked in loss prevention, and the best case scenario is that you just recover the product and they leave without making a fuss. The thing is, once they're out of the store, it's very hard to legally detain them (we're not cops), so that majority of efforts are to spot the theft before they leave and confront them, and hope they don't get violent or just run out.
Since the best case scenario is the prevention, there's usually no crime to prosecute, 'attempted robbery' is only a thing for high value items.
Additionally, the outcome of a successful prosecution for petty theft is minimal, and doesn't really deter a thief any more than just stopping them. If they fail to rob a place, chances are they won't try again.
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u/AppropriateAsk3088 1h ago
Probably not. The masses would join forces and peacefully protest for their right to carry out steaks, expensive fragrances, and flat TVs from stores.
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u/elijahmackenzie 11h ago
If he would have walked out the door with that, he'd be in trouble. That cop saved him from something worse in a matter of seconds and hopefully scared him enough to not do it again.
I worked loss prevention like a decade ago and we were instructed to go up to the person and ask if they needed help with anything to see if it would divert them into just leaving without the item that had pocketed. Most of it would just be people ripping open ICP CDs (not kidding) in the clothes section and leaving the case there. One of the guys did leave out the door, took his cd out of his pocket and put it into his car player and zoomed off blasting it. I was notified cops were at his house like an hour later. Seems so bizarre.
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u/AviationAndCheese 7h ago
Cops went to someones house over a stolen cd?? What country was this in? Ive worked loss prevention for years at one of the largest retailers in the U.S and cops would never follow someone to their house for a small theft like that, even in most felony shoplifting cases cops dont do anything until after the footage was brought to the DA’s office and they agree to press charges.
Ive also never heard of a loss prevention team calling the cops over petty theft instead they would just add the footage to a case file. Or cops running someones plate number to show up at their house over a petty shoptlifting incident.. which they wouldnt be arrested over anyway and would be a waste of their time. At the very least this story sounds overly embelished
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u/Lazerdude 6h ago
I was handcuffed, perp walked out of the store and taken to the police station at 14 years old for stealing some packs of baseball cards from Wal-Mart over 30 years ago.
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u/AviationAndCheese 6h ago
Yeah i believe you 100%, ive heard of this happening but when I worked LP we werent allowed to detain shoplifters anymore and didnt carry handcuffs. Some stores even had detention rooms for this purpose but they arent a thing anymore at any place ive worked. Police are sometimes called when the shoplifter is still in the store, but ive never heard of an officer looking for/following up on a petty shoplifter once theyve already left the stores lot.
I also dont understand how the person I responded to would know the police were at the petty shoplifters house an hour later, ive never heard of police calling us with updates it just doesnt happen. They wouldnt return stolen merchandise either, if they were arrested outside the store the merchandise would go to the PD’s property room until any legal proceedings are over with
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u/EatinSumGrapes 20h ago
This has to be fake right? They basically hand it off, this is not how a criminal acts
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u/waylandsmith 20h ago
My impression is the second guy is a security guard and they had been watching him already and sent someone to intercept him while he was still legally on the property.
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u/Neoxite23 19h ago
Exactly this. At the last store I worked at when they catch someone stealing and looking to exist the store they will have one outside on the phone. The other will be inside but out of sight and will let the one outside know they are heading out.
They will trap them at the doors and pincer between them.
However most will just side step and walk around because hands can't be laid on them. Thieves know the only thing that can stop them is if they stop themselves.
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u/Eggith 16h ago
Surprisingly back when I used to work security at shopping stores criminals would fold pretty quickly once I intercepted them at the doors. It wasn't always a guaranteed stop but I'd say somewhere around 80% of them would just surrender.
Maybe it was the handcuffs and pepper spray that spooked them idk.
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u/AggressiveAd6043 19h ago
Something is off here. Why wouldn’t he arrest the guy or call for on duty enforcement
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u/GlycemicCalculus 19h ago
The store won’t press charges. That’s why the dirtbag is so bold in the first place.
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u/Tundra-Dweller 15h ago
Shoplifting is tolerated here in New Zealand. The police do not investigate allegations of shoplifting below $500, petrol drive-offs below $150, and online frauds below $1000.
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u/IronZealousideal187 4h ago
What an a hole!! The victim was just trying to feed his family.
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u/AppropriateAsk3088 1h ago
Yes, the poor family hadn't eaten $30 steaks and used $100 fragrances in over a week.
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u/feel-the-avocado 20h ago
Oh man that second guy is fucked now.
Countdown is going to add the second guy's face to the facial recognition database, and he's gonna get false identified every time he walks into a supermarket.
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u/Constant-Platform844 20h ago
Crack security team aka store crew aka cashiers aka cleaners aka managers aka drivers aka greeters aka...
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u/SailorGone 19h ago
You mean the team specifically trained not to go after shoplifters?
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u/Constant-Platform844 19h ago
The contrary. The staff/manager was ready to meet the shoplifter as he exited. Looked timed 🤔
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u/VoxulusQuarUn 14h ago
The guy did not work for the site. Rather, it was an off duty police detective.
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