CNN ‘Journalist’ Gets Earful After Trying to Explain ‘What Happened to the Great Shoplifting Crisis’
“Stores closed, remaining stores put their wares behind locked cabinets, prices went up to pay for the added security, and your side called the stores racist for doing so.”
When all else fails, you can always count on CNN to beclown itself on any given day of the week, providing us with fresh reminders of why their ratings remain in the tank even after the numerous layoffs, line-up shuffles, and “leadership” changes they’ve made over the last several years.
These reminders often involve reporting by Jim Acosta, Brian Stelter, and/or pretty much anyone on their weekday morning crew. But this time around, the reminder came courtesy of their consumer reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn, who on Friday tweeted out a link to a story he wrote where he attempted to explain “what happened to the great shoplifting crisis”:
What happened to the great shoplifting crisis?https://t.co/lX7btykaEm
— Nathaniel Meyersohn (@nmeyersohn) September 13, 2024
As you can see from the headline, Meyersohn declared that “America’s stores are winning the war on shoplifting.” He claims they’re winning it due to a combination of things, chief among them retailers correcting course on allegedly “overestimating their original losses”:
Mentions of “shrink” on companies’ earnings calls dropped 20% during the first two quarters of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to an analysis by FactSet.
Shrink has been improving in large part because companies’ accounting of their merchandise has gotten more accurate.
At first, retailers underestimated how much merchandise they were losing. When they adjusted their metrics to compensate, they overestimated their original losses in some cases.
When it came to the actual reasons retailers are turning theft around, Meyersohn incredibly tried to suggest that the solutions they implemented, like locking up merch and reducing self-checkouts, only “may” have helped some:
Stores have also added ways to prevent theft, which may have been effective at reducing the problem, even if they frustrated shoppers. Companies locked up products and removed self-checkout stations.
It was only when you got about midway down the piece that you found out the reason it was written in the first place: to question whether there was ever a shoplifting crisis at all:
The change in retailers’ messaging around shrink this year shows that their efforts to address the problems are working. But it also raises questions about how severe their shoplifting problems were in the first place.
[…]
But the narrative that shoplifting exploded nationwide has been mostly unfounded. In reality, retail crime has not meaningfully gone up nationwide in the past few years, and it has even gone down in many places.
Hmm. I’m sure it was totally coincidental that this article questioning the shoplifting epidemic was published three days after the presidential debate during which GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump talked about the issue of rising crime and then was wrongly fact-checked on it by one of the co-moderators. Totally coincidental.
Whatever the case may be, Meyersohn got an earful from Twitter/X users who weren’t about to be gaslit:
Well, Nathaniel… https://t.co/jwTRrdSz2s pic.twitter.com/54jmDdwZa6
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) September 13, 2024
They can't steal from you if you go out of business https://t.co/1VRbtumsvc pic.twitter.com/7Aaa9um8Jw
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) September 13, 2024
I have to beg someone to unlock a private label tube of toothpaste for $2, and $4 laundry detergent. Those fixtures aren't cheap, and the labor to maintain that type of security isn't free… If the store even still exists there.
Galaxy brain take. https://t.co/Hy3m00kZnh
— Magnus (@JacksonTDawes) September 13, 2024
They closed stores in Democratic strongholds that don't prosecute crime, got rid of self-checkout in lots of areas, and locked a lot of merchandise behind glass. All of this is admitted in the piece and this apparently is a win for CNN. https://t.co/qYNBw3Yh0c
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) September 13, 2024
In the last two months, two major grocery stores in my area have now put laundry detergent into lock and key cabinets. You have to track down a clerk to open them.
Hope this helps, Nate. https://t.co/PUWeJWBXwZ
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 13, 2024
Stores closed, remaining stores put their wares behind locked cabinets, prices went up to pay for the added security, and your side called the stores racist for doing so .
Oh, and thugs & thieves continued to avoid jailtime or any meaningful consequences whatsoever.#YesOn36
— Doug Quixote-sama (@DeTroyes1) September 14, 2024
All brought to you by Woke, Inc., something to think long and hard about before you head to the ballot box in November.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It’s time for some ignorant liberal to come out of his ivory castle.
FedGov wants to be your single source supplier…of communism.
The truth emerges – inventory control is racist.
So ALL retailers, across all the companies and market segments, changed how they count shrink at the same time? It would take an act of Congress to do that.
So what does he say about those videos of the smash and grabs at the expensive stores that were cleaned out? Louis Vuitton only lost one purse and not all of their displays? I didn’t see what I thought I saw?
That’s all AI generated by racist cartoonists.
Nothing but Harris commercials in central Texas
Never see a Trump ad
Never
Biden campaign funds buying blocks of ad time NOT to promote but to block.
I honestly wonder how effective ads are anymore. I hate seeing political ads. And I hate seeing ads at all on YouTube. I specifically don’t buy the products advertised because they annoyed me while I was trying to watch something else.
I live in eastern NC and we see very few ads for harris. I am guessing it is because the democrats know they are wasting their $$$. Same with the governor’s race, very few ads here, we aren’t going to vote for a Raleigh liberal so why waste the $$$. I suspect that most of the democrat $$$ is going to Mecklenburg county(Charlotte) and Wake County(Raleigh) because that is where most of the blue state liberal expats have moved to.
If businesses do a better job of securing their goods, the criminals that still aren’t being prosecuted will just turn their cross hairs towards more vulnerable targets.
Great shoplifting crisis?
Ohio solved this problem by importing up to 30% of the population of some of their cities from Haiti. Instead of shoplifting, Haitians depend on low cost, high protein food obtainable from sources other than stores.
“Park to Table.”
Be careful, lest someone saying they are a dog walker is really a “dog wokker.”
Killed the golden goose, so having to make do with “off-label” Canadian.
Also left out of the discussion is how many of the worst offending stores have been closed.
I just went to the grocery store and because I had a stroke after getting my booster Covid shot, I now use a handicap parking permit. While I was sitting in my car, every person but two were young black females using the handicap spots. I bring this up because it is an indication of the disrespect they have for rules and an entitled attitude created by obama. When there are no consequences for breaking the law, laws will be broken by some.
Nice sidewalls you got there…
Several months ago in SW Florida, I parked in a supermarket area and as I walked to the store I passed the HCP parking places and observed a nice new Lexus pull into one of them. When a 20 something white woman got out, obviously quite mobile and healthy, I said “you don’t look handicapped to me” and she gave me the middle finger and flounced into the store. I looked for a cop but never found one.
Last I checked in Olympia it is still so bad, cops just wait in the parking lot at Kohls and Target and pick them up 5 at a time.
Fat good it does- jails let them out hours later with promise to show up in court.
CA so wrecked now. Retail should go completely online.
Yeah….the Fed wants a cashless society…..easier to track your purchases
A White Lib will do or say ANYTHING to excuse the behavior of persons of hue.
I think we had better have some hard conversations with Democrat voters in the produce aisle.
Another reason crime statistics have been declining is that in 2022 the FBI changed its crime reporting format, and many locales cannot report into that format. Where the crime reporting used to have compliance levels above 90%, after changing the format the reporting compliance has fallen below 60%. NYC and LA don’t report at all; there are whole states which don’t report.
Yeah, if you want the crime stats to decline, just stop reporting them.
Guess who wins? Amazon.