Most of you have probably heard and many have seen the videos of people just walking into a CVS or Walgreens and walking out with a bag full of goods. The security guards or managers won't try to stop them. Why? Because California made it illegal to arrest or prosecute anyone who has taken less than $1000 of goods. What a bunch of colossal idiots. All over the country criminals and thieves are feeling that they have gotten the upper hand over the police and that they can take anything they want with impunity.
"I was born a thief and I identify as a thief so stealing things is what I do! You're intolerant if you don't accept me and you're thiephobic if you don't celebrate HOW I was born."
Brazen shoplifters, some of them operating in violent, organized gangs, are hurting retailers already reeling from COVID, supply and labor shortages, and inflation.
Just after the LA Rams won the Super Bowl on Sunday, shoplifters looted several shops in Downtown Los Angeles. The incident is not a one-off, as shoplifting incidents across the country have been steadily increasing for months.
Some drug-store chains, including Rite Aid, are closing hard-hit stores, sending terrified employees home in cabs, and locking up aisles of everyday staples items like shampoo and toothpaste, Axios reports.
Even worse, in the San Francisco Bay Area, one retail theft ring made off with more than $8 million in goods from CVS, Target and Walgreens. A mob of 80 people executed a smash-and-grab at a Nordstrom store in the Bay Area in November, according to NBC News.
At another high-end mall, multiple thieves dodged right past security guards in the White Plains suburb of New York, to steal from a Louis Vuitton store.
‘Out of Control’
Lisa LaBruno, SVP of operations at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, tells Axios the shoplifting scourge in the U.S. “is just out of control.”
A Rite Aid employee in midtown Manhattan tells The New York Post: “They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just load up on stuff. They take whatever they want, and we can’t do anything about it. It’s why the store is closing. They can’t afford to keep it open.”
More than $200,000 was stolen from the recently closed Rite-Aid in midtown Manhattan, in December and January.
Pharmacies have been particularly hard hit by shoplifting, with Walgreens announcing in October that it would be closing five stores in San Francisco due to organized gangs shoplifting said stores. Alongside New York and San Francisco, high profile shoplifting incidents have taken place at pharmacies in Atlanta, Austin, and Chicago.
Shoplifting in Chicago has gotten so bad that CVS has installed time-delay safes at all of its pharmacies to deter potential theft, per CBS2 News.
In Seattle, shoplifting happens every 10 minutes in Target’s downtown store, with employees expressing exhaustion at how frequent the thefts occurs.
Retailers are pushing Congress for solutions. The CEOs of leading retail chains in the U.S. sent a letter to Congress to pass the INFORM Consumers Act, according to Axios. Furthermore, attorney generals in California and Arizona, as well as New York’s new District Attorney, are considering tougher measures to curb retail theft.
Here; Shoplifting Making Inflation, Lawlessness Worse | Newsmax.com
Notice that most of the hardest hit areas are Liberal controlled cities. Liberals tend to believe that "humans are basically good". I'm guessing your aren't going to read about lawlessness breaking out in Texas or Florida or Tennessee. Why? Because the store owners would shoot the thieves and because those states wouldn't be so stupid to say that "shoplifting less than $1000 isn't a crime".
Conservatives tend to lean more towards what the Bible has warned us about mankind from the beginning, "None are good! All have fallen short". They understand that laws, police and prisons are a necessary part of any civilized society.
None of this should surprise Bible readers who know that Paul clearly warned that lawlessness would be one of the signs that would accompany the soon return of Christ.