LogFAQs > #978797161

Jackal4 posted...

I don't imagine there will be too many sales of tvs. When San Franciscans want a new tv, they just throw a rock through the store's glass and take it.

Sadly, you were tricked by the false reports and hysteria about shoplifting and theft in big cities.

While there was an uptick in crime around the pandemic, it's returning to normal levels, and the reports used by media to sensationalize the "ReTAiL sHOpLiFTing!!!! - - were found to be massively flawed.

Why retailers are walking back claims of organized theft
https://theweek.com/retail/organized-theft-shoplifting-false-report

Claims of coordinated retail theft plaguing stores across the United States have become commonplace news stories in recent years. This was seemingly corroborated by a report this April from the National Retail Foundation (NRF) that determined "nearly half" of the merchandise stolen in the U.S. in 2021 was the result of organized retail crime, or ORC. This is defined by the NRF's website as the "large-scale theft of retail merchandise with the intent to resell the items for financial gain."
However, the NRF ended up retracting its estimate this month after the trade outlet Retail Dive reported that this figure was incorrect and "used an old NRF estimate of total inventory loss, including loss unrelated to theft." But while the NRF pulled back its claim following Retail Dive's report, it maintained that ORC remained a significant problem. Despite this, there seems to be a continuing disparity in the media between the assumed reasons and true causes of retail theft.
What was the discrepancy in the report?

While the NRF originally estimated that almost 50% of theft in 2021 was from ORC, most experts agree that this number was incorrectly reported. Organized groups were likely responsible for just 5% of all theft, Trevor Wagener, the chief economist at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, told The New York Times. In reality, ORC "represents only a small fraction of total retail inventory shrink in the best publicly available data about $0.07 per $100 in total retail sales for the most recent years," Wagener said during a congressional hearing on retail crime.

Why reports of a surge in retail theft may be overblown
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-reports-of-a-surge-in-retail-theft-may-be-overblown

Most Americans think theres more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago, according to a recent Gallup poll. Thats despite clear data showing violent crime has actually dropped sharply in 2023. So why the misperception? Economics correspondent Paul Solman takes a deep dive into one type of crime that may be getting outsized attention.