The CVS at 14th and Irving symbolizes extreme retail theft and the harms it can engender. Distressing and inconvenient to ordinary people, threatening to businesses and livelihoods, and repellent to tourists, unchecked shoplifting can corrode a community’s spirit.
It’s happening in the nation’s capital. The D.C. police department does not track shoplifting specifically but reports that theft in general is up 22 percent over last year. It is harder and harder to find a grocery or pharmacy in the District that doesn’t lock up laundry detergent, toilet paper and deodorant. A Giant in Southeast no longer even stocks certain name-brand health and beauty products that thieves target. A liquor store downtown is closing because of constant shoplifting. The H Street Walmart shuttered earlier this year. (The company said the store “hasn’t performed as well as we hoped.”)
The District ranks behind all but one state for retail theft, according to a new Forbes Advisor survey of small businesses. The situation in D.C. is emblematic of a national experience. The National Retail Federation recently reported a “dramatic jump” in stores’ financial losses between 2021 and 2022 — from $93.9 billion to $112.1 billion.
The best new impartial look at shoplifting trends is a recent report by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice. The CCJ’s innovative methodology analyzed police records in 24 cities that track retail theft closely and found a mixed but troubling picture. As of mid-June, New York and Los Angeles saw surges of more than 60 percent compared with 2019, while the phenomenon has ebbed elsewhere.
To be sure, some theft has always been a cost of doing business for retailers. Kids grab the occasional candy bar; desperate parents sneak out with some extra diapers; workers swipe items during delivery and stocking. This is why many places in the United States, including D.C., make stealing less than $1,000 worth of goods a misdemeanor, not a felony.
What appears different now is the prevalence of organized, flagrant shoplifting — thieves sweep goods off shelves and resell them online or on the street. A new federal law, the Inform Consumers Act, requires online marketplaces to better track where third-party sellers get their merchandise. (One such marketplace, Amazon, was founded by Post owner Jeff Bezos; interim Post CEO Patty Stonesifer is on Amazon’s board.) But the law took effect only in June so it’s too soon to gauge its impact.
D.C. lacked sufficient data to be included in the CCJ report. That need for more granular data is the first thing the city and others like it should address. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has proposed a new felony of “directing organized retail theft” with a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. It’s smart to target ringleaders. Ms. Bowser has also proposed that prosecutors be allowed to charge thieves with a felony if they steal 10 or more times in a 30-day period. It’s another wise deterrent.
A better legal framework won’t help much if it’s not aggressively enforced, though. We heard from a Columbia Heights shopper who witnessed a mass shoplifting and emailed CVS corporate headquarters about it. A regional manager responded that the problem was that police do not pursue cases when CVS reports them. (A CVS spokesperson declined to comment.) Meanwhile, D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith keeps telling stores they have to report the theft. Police data shows only five reports of theft in the past two months on the Columbia Heights block where CVS stands. Even if police do make an arrest, it often does not lead to prosecution. The District’s U.S. attorney, Matthew M. Graves, declined to prosecute 56 percent of cases in the past fiscal year, an unusually high number relative to other cities’.
Seattle, one of the cities where CCJ found that shoplifting is lower now than it was five years ago, offers a good model. The city identified more than 160 “high utilizers” responsible for the vast majority of recent misdemeanors such as shoplifting. Police were able to put these individuals in jail when they were caught. To deter others, Seattle police conduct surprise one-day crackdowns that lead to about 50 arrests each. “The strongest predictor to reduced criminal behavior is the belief they will get caught,” said Ernesto Lopez, lead author of the Council on Criminal Justice’s shoplifting report. Occasional, but unpredictable, bursts of strict enforcement can deter shoplifters at minimal cost to police.
The District and other cities need to get smarter about how they attack this crime. Otherwise, even more retail stores might find themselves going back to the U.S.S.R.
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