ChapotraphouseOrganized crime groups are behind grocery store theft across Canada
The Retail Council of Canada is calling grocery store theft a national crisis, with losses now approaching $10 billion annually across the grocery sector and it’s only growing.
Honestly it sounds more like a crisis for the retail council of Canada rather than a national crisis.
“Eastern European organized crime has certainly been involved, and this isn’t just a big city problem, it’s happening straight across the country,” says CTV News crime specialist, Mark Mendelson.
It’s Canada so of course they’re going to be racist about it as well.
Watch out, Canadians. Eastern Europeans are causing a national crisis by taking advantage of our assault on labor.
“People are running away, going to a car right away and giving that product to whoever’s in the car, in exchange for something. Its either drugs or money,” according to Ottawa Police Chief, Eric Stubbs
Eastern European drug addicts.
This month, Guelph police arrested a man who they claim swapped out expensive products for cheaper ones at self-checkouts. Police claim that the individual in question, would scan items that cost less than one dollar, in exchange for baby formula priced at $97 dollars each.
BABY FORMULA COSTS $97 FUCKING DOLLARS????
They’re right, this is a national crisis.
Just last August, in Windsor, Ont. more than $220,000 worth of beef was stolen from a parked tractor trailer. The large-scale heist is another example of lucrative grocery crimes on the rise.
There are differing opinions on where items like black market beef are ending up. Mendelson and others who spoke to CTV News believe that some restaurants struggling to turn a profit are likely purchasing stolen goods. In some cases, smaller grocery stores and restaurants might not even realize they’re purchasing stolen food for their establishments.
Yeah sure they don’t realize this. They’re honest businessmen, buying misc meat off the back of a trailer in an alley. They wouldn’t be the “organized” part of this crime. Actually, they’re victims.
Cool now do wage theft
Life hack: if you enter code 4011 in a self-checkout you can get up to a 90% discount on the thing you're buying
Self-checkout exists because the savings on labor costs outweigh the losses from increased theft. If self-checkout were a worse business proposition than manned registers, rational market actors simply wouldn't offer it.
Since self-checkout remains widespread, it logically follows that the so-called "national crisis" of theft must be less severe than the normal operating costs shops faced before self-checkout existed.
My cartel is entitled to profits and if they aren't high enough it's your fault
It's just as likely (probably more so) that they didn't anticipate this much theft, or did and planned to attempt to offload the cost to the public via greater enforcement.
I've seen chains go back and forth on offering self checkout, in fact I have literally installed and uninstalled SCOs at the same location, so I can only assume that it's not a simple either/or and that there are many factors that go into the calculation that make it unclear
Anyone with an MBA, trained for middle management, is taught to look one quarter ahead at most.
Generic MBA 1: Let’s install self-checkout and cut labor costs
Generic MBA 2: Shrinkage is too high, let’s hire security
Generic MBA 3: Why are we paying for security? We could just get rid of self-checkout and get teenagers to do it instead. More cost effective.
Generic MBA 4: Let’s use AI to count how many items are in your cart
Inadvertently saw how much these types are making at my company the other day and been depressed ever since
I think about how, in the british empire like 1800s ruling india and shit, part of why it became more effective is that they ended the practice of being able to buy a position and replaced it with merit hiring.
And MBAs… that’s very very similar to buying a position. If you have $50-200k spare or the capacity to get that far into debt, you are buying yourself a rung in the corporate ladder.
Well-regarded MBAs openly advertise the fact their network is the bigger part of the value they offer. The seal of approval matters more than actual learning. And you can just buy it.
A couple weeks ago I got 50$ as a settlement for these same grocery stores fixing bread prices for years.
Then after the settlement, all the grocery stores doubled bread prices at the same time again. Justice served!
Fitting for Canada, it looks like they’re pulling a “the brothers Brent and Wayne Gretzky have a combined 2,861 NHL points” misrepresentation. The narrative is presenting self-checkout abuse as a major factor, with the one example being a $97 to $1 item swap. However, if we compare that to the beef heist example later, the individual exploited the self-checkout would have to successfully pull off that swap nearly 2,300 times in order to match the amount netted from the one beef heist.
Which says to me, they’re conflating small beans self-checkout abuse with larger scale heists to justify loss prevention targeting vulnerable Canadians instead of the organized crime that, as OP alluded to, are more likely to be politically and economically connected.
instead of the organized crime that, as OP alluded to, are more likely to be politically and economically connected
I bet it's less this, and more that it's way easier to arrest and prosecute individual shoplifters than chase organized crime. Only the former happens on camera and usually with at least one witness around.
$10 billion
Annually⁉️
BABY FORMULA COSTS $97 FUCKING DOLLARS????
They’re right, this is a national crisis.
Hard agree.
People are running away, going to a car right away and giving that product to whoever’s in the car, in exchange for something. Its either drugs or money,
Love to call up my dealer to tell him to meet me within running distance of the grocery store I'm about to steal from so we can do our drug deal there and then instead of like an hour later at a non linked location
I hate to tell you this, but crack/meth/heroin addicts are routinely sent into stores to steal in exchange for drugs or drug debt. Beef, baby formula, expensive detergent, diapers, power tools.
I know people steal to finance drugs, that still doesn't make for an explanation as to why the dealer would arrange or accept a drug deal in the video surveilled parking lot of the store that just got stolen from instead of like 2 blocks away and with plausible deniability of having ordered it.
Hell there's dumb dealers no doubt but they don't go to this length of organizing stuff
Grocery stores in Canada are monopolies turning the entire country into a food desert, the criminals are the Weston family and their pals not people trying to eat
As someone who works retail in these stores. It's overblown bullshit. They're still making record profits. This is a puff piece to try and get some sympathy for retail owners who are currently one of the most reviled entity in Canada.
They pushed self checkouts hard, cut hours for everything, and then they're shocked when thieves take advantage of that?
My store went from having two entrances that were mostly unguarded, to a fucking "1984" built perimeter fence with wheel locking shopping carts if you don't take the cart through a till properly. We are expected to spider wrap Lego sets and appliances and half of cosmetics and baby. They spend probably over hundreds of thousands of dollar to install security theatre bullshit instead of simply just having staff on the floor working who would mitigate most theft by having a presence there.
And I repeat, grocery stores continue to make excellent profit despite numbers that reveal people are buying noticeably less stuff (because they increased prices so damn much).
They are probably hoping to replace the remaining staff with cops the public pays for.
They spend probably over hundreds of thousands of dollar to install security theatre bullshit instead of simply just having staff on the floor working who would mitigate most theft by having a presence there.
And I repeat, grocery stores continue to make excellent profit despite numbers that reveal people are buying noticeably less stuff (because they increased prices so damn much).
This right here. Because a jobless or underpaid population is a compliant, willing to work longer, harder hours for less.
The grocery store closest to me has one way doors to the exit that faves the street now, an alarm goes off if you even go near them, and they lock em entirely after 7pm so you have to go around the side of the building to the back parking lot. It's where the loading dock is and if there is a truck there it blocks the sidewalk and there is enough space for one car to get through at a time, so a great place to get run over. Throw in the bad curbs thst someone in a wheelchair would just have to drop off of to get off the sidewalk, the potholes and just the general awkwardness of it, im surprised its even allowed cause its hella unfriendly to people with disabilities. Like the residents of the old folks home next door
Another Walgreens manufactured crisis to justify spending on security, survailence, and terrorism?
World's smallest violin.
I scanned it as the worlds smallest violin but actually it’s a fucking TV
according to this article, the most cost effective way to obtain baby formula is probably to sell meth outside a major retailer
Tbh it probably is.
“People are running away, going to a car right away and giving that product to whoever’s in the car, in exchange for something. Its either drugs or money,”
Back in my day drug dealers were not too soft to lift their own cheese.
"either drugs or money"
Well I'd've exchanged it for NFTs but apparently that was a "bubble" that "burst" and is "inherently worthless" and I got "scammed" by "grifters" and my apes are worth "less than nothing" because "nothing doesn't require having to have internet access, electricity and a device to double check it's worth nothing"
apes were also a victim of being able to just take them
Just last August, in Windsor, Ont. more than $220,000 worth of beef was stolen from a parked tractor trailer. The large-scale heist is another example of lucrative grocery crimes on the rise.
Clearly a separate crime from shoplifting but that won't stop the media terrifying boomers into thinking every Walmart is a mad max scene
actualy just statistical error. average shoplifter steals $100 per year. Heists Georg, who lives in tractor trailer & steals over $100,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Walmart is a mad max scene just not the reasons they think. Everyone there from the workers to the shoppers are poor and desperate mostly and pitted against each other. Hell in Muskogee Oklahoma the entire landscape of the city changed when the Walmart moved.
Its a fucking nightmare. But the cause is the ruling class, not the people like boomers think.
It's like that at big box stores, too.
The same industry that just posted record profits last year, again, like they do every year? The one that openly price fixes essential staples? Those folks?
Damn that's a real shame.
you're making them do this!
Baby formula being 97 bucks, whether CAD or USD sounds a bit much, but my kids were babbies back In the 2010's so it has probably gone up even further. I know some of the specialty stuff is absurdly priced, babies w sensitive stomach, special nutritional needs etc. My daughter was on formula that was around $30 a canister if I remember right. I knew folks that would boost formula and sell it. If I had anything left on WIC or SNAP when I used to receive them I would buy formula and sell it to people who needed it.
Also:
Title of article, first two words are 'Self Checkout'. Then there's this:
Just last August, in Windsor, Ont. more than $220,000 worth of beef was stolen from a parked tractor trailer. The large-scale heist is another example of lucrative grocery crimes on the rise.
What the fuck does theft of beer from a reefer trailer have to do with the self checkout.
For comparison, in Denmark, where food prices are some of the highest in Europe, an 800g can of formula costs USD 20-30 with sales tax. You guys are being fleeced.
I don't think foreign formula was worth 97 dollars even during the whole powdered milk scandal in China back in 08. I used to have to bring a whole extra luggage filled with powdered milk and/or formula back to China every year for like a decade.
As a refresher, Sanlu was padding their formula with melamine, which caused tens of thousands of hospitalisations and 6 deaths (in infants, the substance isn't good for adults but isn't fatal). A few executives for the company were executed, a few more got life imprisonment, and the government officials that either looked the other way or weren't paying attention got fired. This sent ripples through the Chinese dairy industry with consumers worrying that all formula was tainted and many parents were willing to pay through their teeth for the foreign stuff.
the first link I read on the topic was a toronto local newspaper that said this and then I found this current link which included radioactive other stuff and so I changed the link I was going to post but didn’t update my title
to sober moms and sucking the teat.
BUT MY LINE GOING ALWAYS UP!
When the bourgeois class does price gouging of essential goods- Legitimate business
When people are having a hard time affording said goods and have to steal it to survive- Scum of the earth creating a national crisis
I was doing this in the late 90s as soon as self checkout appeared. Cut out or print a barcode and palm it under the item you're scanning. Hell, print the barcode on a sticker and you can probably get away with having a cashier scan it.
"fixing" some of these prices ourselves
Whenever they cry about shoplifting, "I Love Boosters" starts playing in my head.
Hi hi hey ho hi hi hey hi hey ho
obligatory Jane's Addiction
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
