Some Target and Walmart stores now locking up underwear as part of shoplifting crackdown

Some Bay Area stores are now even securing socks and underwear to keep shoplifters from stealing them. Jodi Hernandez reports.

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#target #walmart #bayarea #retailtheft

[melvinatkins]

I was like 7 years old…. I stole some candy from a grocery store…. Momma seen what I had, and made me go back in and apologize to every single worker there!!!.. I was mortified, and never shoplifted again!…. I’m 50 years old now, and even now I remember that lesson like it was yesterday!…. 💯

[alfabdall]

Being soft on crime and a $950 minimum threshold is absolute stupidity. I don't know how absurd this is going to get before politicians admit they made a mistake and put things back the way they were.

[ashenwolf]

And this is why we can't have nice things. Others ruin it for everyone.

[MisterH]

As someone who used to work in electronic department at Walmart, I hate having to constantly unlock and lock for one merchandise. I like it better when customers can just grab and ask me to ring them up. Much easier for everyone that way. Low life thieves have to ruin it.

[lauralangham]

People are 'allowed' to steal $950 without being prosecuted. Does that apply to EVERY DAY ? If so that equals $346, 750 per year. Who even came up with this idea that $950 worth of merchandise is ok to steal ? If you owned a store would you be ok with that ?

[thehunterx]

Don't blame the store. Blame the shoplifters blame the people who buy from the shoplifters.

[Name-vez]

Everything is locked up now. I’m at the point where I order 99% of my stuff online instead of dealing with the current state of retail.

[j-remy]

If you doing a smash 'n' grab at a Walmart jewelry counter you need to take a step back & rethink your whole ass life. 😂😂😂

[imafan]

You know it is getting to the point where they should operate like an old fashioned general store. Put in your order, the store collects the items and you just pick it up at the counter and customers have limited access to items themselves.

[rebeccaoprea]

They’re penalizing the customers instead of the criminals.

[puffs]

We've been doing this for years at Walmart, Panorama City, Ca. Cracks me up when customers ask me why. People are so out of touch with reality sometimes. Crooks will steal ANYTHING they can. ANYTHING!!! It is also the only way we can keep whole products available for you, meaning your six pack of t-shirts will contain six t-shirts. People just LOVE tearing open those packages, holding the shirt up to see if that's their size, do the touchy, feelie, stretchy thing, then throw it anywhere "NO, that's not what I want". They don't READ, or just can't read English, and have ZERO clue what size they are. C'mon, you're a 40 year old man, what size are you wearing right now? It's a ridiculous waste of employee time!

[Whatnok]

Locking up stuff not locking up criminals!

[vistabadboi]

I was a regional manager with Dollar General and our biggest theft items were underwear and toilet tissue

[jemo]

As a former Walmart manager who worked in the Bay Area. I can tell you that we would see over a dozen empty packages of socks and underwear every day. Some days, we would catch shoplifters trying to take hundreds of dollars worth of these items. We were always short of certain items and would spot check throughout the day by scanning the sku's. We would scan an item, and it would show a certain number like ten and would only see 3 or 4 and would correct the inventory to reflect the actual qty. A few hours later, we would sometimes see 1 and none had been sold. This is one of the ways we verified that these items were being stolen. Once we narrowed down the times, it was easier to narrow down the actual incidents where we would see the people stealing on camera. It was the same people most of the time. Yeah, the losses are pretty big and add up. It gets to a point where the business hardly makes money after expenses. The options are to lock items up or stop carrying certain items. It doesn't make sense to carry items where 20-30% or more will be stolen. I didn't blame Walmart then and still don't. It's more important in my opinion to have the merchandise on hand for the paying customers.

[soulsurvivor]

I worked at Burlington and I quit I got tired of the theft customer switching tags I was a cashier and I worked all over the store so I knew everything from color tags to department numbers. Ppl walking out with coats big bags of clothes. It was just heartbreaking to see this is what our country is down too😢😢😢

[wab]

Merchants should use the "COSTCO" model. One way in, one way out with two employees checking your receipt and counting the items in your cart to match the receipt.

[desktopkitty]

When I was a kid, I saw a woman ripping open boxes of food to see what was in them. She wasn't taking it, but it pissed me off because it was just as bad as stealing. Even worse in a way. She was still making the business lose money by destroying the item so no one would buy it, but then not even taking it. Then she'd move on to ripping open another package. I came home and told my parents, who told me she probably couldn't read (or at least couldn't read in English) so she was tearing open the food package to see what was in it. The crazy thing was, I tried to tell an employee, but because I was a kid, no one believed me. They just looked at me like I was crazy or stupid.

[MeOutside]

Anyone remember “Service Merchandise”? Everything was displayed in cases. You tell an employee what you want, pay, once you’ve paid another employee brings it out.

[lil----lil]

*IT ALWAYS AMAZES ME THAT THEY TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING *EXCEPT the PERPS!* As if they're too scared to "offend" some people. That explains everything.

[Willowirl]

this is why 90% of my shopping is done on amazon now. I'm not waiting 10 minutes in a store to have someone unlock underwear.