No, Theft Did Not Close the Pick N Save
“Don’t read the comments.”
This is sagely advice for anyone who makes something for the internet to read, and I try to follow it. Against my better judgment I did read the replies to Reddit discourse around our Food Desert article and… sheesh some of you have some bad ideas. A lot of people in the community seem to instantly assume that shoplifting ate into Krogers profits so greatly in these five particular stores that the company was forced to close them. That’s really weird.
First of all there is no sense in ignoring the racism of it all. A store is closing in a predominately black neighborhood - must be shoplifting! However this reaction isn’t exclusively racism, or maybe it is but with extra steps. This sentiment doesn’t only exist online either, even some residents in Metcalfe Park seem to believe it. It is the natural result of the moral panic around shoplifting that we just went through on a national level. I think it may be a good time to learn a lesson for once.
Origin of the Myth
Theft has existed as long as things have been around to steal, obviously. Since the War on Crime began in the 1960’s and the rise of modern policing we have seen narratives trend towards the idea that shoplifting and other petty crimes represent harrowing dangers to our communities. But this recent fixation is yet another harmful byproduct of the Covid-19 pandemic.
More pointedly one has to look at the lobbying firm the National Federation of Retailers. They perjured themselves before Congress stating that they had lost “billions” to shoplifting in 2022 alone. The NFR teamed up with Senator Chuck Grassley (a monster) and gave press conferences about all of the money that they had lost. Powerful Democrats got on board as well with the governors of both New York and California pushing through legislation to crack down on retail theft.
None of this fear was based on reality. The actual number of profit lost to retail crime was exaggerated by a factor of 10 (they claimed 50% but it was closer to 5%.) Major companies like Target and Walgreens retracted their original estimates, but not until after using them as an excuse to close stores.
In summary: this was a moral panic from some lying liars who wanted to scapegoat culpability for ruining their own stores with lock boxes for baby formula, and for closing stores that they never should have opened in the first place. Police played into the stories because it helps them take an even larger portion of whatever municipality budget they are in. Politicians ran tough on crime campaigns (Donald Trump even suggested that it was okay to shoot shoplifters.) All of this was fueled by news outlets' perverse incentive to stoke fear with stories of petty crime.
But Here is the Thing
I like to think that everyone is capable of taking in new information and adjusting previously held beliefs. I guess I am naive that way. If people blaming store closures on crime are engaging with this information at all, they always have some excuse to reject data. If this person is you then I am sorry that you are a simp, though in your defense all the cool kids on twitter are simps too. Maybe instead of falling over yourself to defend a corporation that doesn’t know that you exist, you could send Amazon gift cards to some e-girl instead… she's totally into you.
Kroger has not even stated that shoplifting is the primary purpose for the closure of this store. They have gone as far as to deny it in some places. This idea was just something that the community came to, possibly because we are so primed to allow corporations to blame the consumer rather than accept culpability. Our society constantly frames social issues around crime, and its relationship to policing in our communities. Any time something bad happens the only solution these people accept is more law enforcement. They start with the solution of increasing police budgets and work backwards to find a problem.
To the extent that people do steal from grocery stores we can mostly blame poverty. Curbing crime involves addressing economic concerns, something that excessive police funding blocks.
Maybe there is something deeply human in this? Maybe there is a reason that we assume bad actors are always responsible for the worsening outcomes. This isn’t completely crazy, but the problem isn’t some kid who puts a bag of chips in his hoodie. Companies will serve a population as long as it is sufficiently profitable, and they will extract all of the wealth from a community that they can. These same companies have no obligation to a community and will leave as they please.
This pattern of behavior, and the pursuit of profit above all else is the real cause of a great deal of suffering. We need to break with the propagandized collective belief that causes us to blame poor people for the world's problems. There are only two options, as David Lynch said, “Fix your heart, or die.”
