Chase Shoplifter...Get Fired

[MJS]

To keep honest people honest, and to prevent theft caused by easy opportunity. Sure, the shoplifter got away but he was made so he won't be coming back. the fact that he got away with a DVD is not really to the point.

True, but IMO, if you're an honest, upstanding citizen, you probably won't need to even worry about security, due to the fact that you won't steal. I've never been arrested in my life, came from a LE family, work in that field, indirectly, so for me, whether they're there or not, really doesn't phase me. If they want to watch me, watch away...I have nothing to hide.

Of course, I have to wonder how many times a person or people shoplift from a store and continue to go back, doing it over and over, because they know the store is an easy target, know that there is no security or know that if there is, that the security person may be limited as to what they can/can't do anyways.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

True, but IMO, if you're an honest, upstanding citizen, you probably won't need to even worry about security, due to the fact that you won't steal. I've never been arrested in my life, came from a LE family, work in that field, indirectly, so for me, whether they're there or not, really doesn't phase me. If they want to watch me, watch away...I have nothing to hide.

Of course, I have to wonder how many times a person or people shoplift from a store and continue to go back, doing it over and over, because they know the store is an easy target, know that there is no security or know that if there is, that the security person may be limited as to what they can/can't do anyways.

Most people are not that honest. Speed limit signs don't slow them down. Cop cars parked behind billboards do. Even when the cop cars are empty. It's been shown again and again.

Most people are also unaware of the limits of a security guard's authority or the store's employee policy regarding chasing shoplifters. The store depends upon this ignorance, and they do nothing to call attention to it. Sure, it's been in the paper. So was the Health Care Reform, and still people are being duped by scammers selling them 'ObamaCare Insurance' policies as if they were from the government. Sorry, most people are class-A booger-eatin' morons.

At many big-box stores, a security guard checks receipts as people leave the store. I see it all the time. People are so cowed, so trained to obey, that they stand in line to leave the store, receipts out, bags open, waiting to have some half-blind senile oldster peer myopically into their bag, run a yellow highlighter over their register receipt and tell them to have a nice day. I side-step the line and walk out. There's no law that says you have to show your receipt, and they can't make you do so. They'll tell you it's 'store policy'. Well, when I become an employee, then store policy will apply to me. Until then, I don't work for them, so their store policy is their problem and not mine.

So why the security guards at all, when most of it is Kabuki Theatre? Because people are morons, that's why. Same as that window-dressing airport security.

Professional bad guys are not fooled. Most of them know precisely how far the security guards are authorized to go and depend up on it when they make their plans. Some groups of professional shoplifters will hit a store en masse, strolling in and grabbing armloads of the most expensive items that they can easily fence, and walking out in full view of everyone. They know they won't be chased by store security, the car they depart in is generally stolen or has stolen plates, and the cops don't run code 3 to shoplifting calls.

The general public doesn't know all this. They see the security guard, they assume he has 'aw-thor-ahty' and they do what the nice security guard tells them to do.