this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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What is preventing someone from doing that at Walmart?…
Not much. Employees don't give a fuck and if they did, they would probably get fired for trying to stop a thief.
Actually, many places where I live are scaling back self-checkout. I suspect it's because the geniuses who tried to save a buck by getting rid of tellers didn't realize they would lose more from theft. (It's amazing how many people don't give two fucks about shareholder profits, actually.)
Yeah that was my point. :P
A thief is a thief, someone willing to steal from a store covered from top to bottom in cameras and sensors is going to be willing to steal from just about anywhere.
But there are people at Walmart working. No one is in the Amazon Fresh store?
No one at Walmart is stopping you if you try to just walk out with product. No one is getting paid enough to risk getting sued, and there’s a non-zero chance they get fired if they do more than passively trying to stop you.
In reality, they are going to note down your info, pull up the camera feeds, and call the cops. The exact same steps a Fresh store would take.
Missed opportunities then.
Heathens and sinners!
Yes, shareholders aren't people so we shouldn't really care about them at all
You're right, they're not people, they're fucking parasites.
I don't know about Walmart but I heard Target will facial recognize you and deliberately wait across multiple trips until you have stolen enough to make it grand theft before taking action.
Is that tracking distributed across stores or do I have license to steal $9999 from each one?
Probably the amount stolen within the same state. But once you're committing crimes across state lines, you've got bigger problems on your hands.
And yes, they definitely share data across their whole company.
Let us know what you find out
I did Target security for a few months. Yes they build cases against people until it's criminal action. It's also not subject to one store. Rather I could just type in descriptions of people (apparent age, height, skin tone, etc) and it would search those descriptions. I could then match the person and add it to the running total. When I left I heard that some markets were rolling out an AI to track people. I can answer any questions if there's anyone who want to know more.
Do you know how long do they keep video for, or is it just eternity?
How would that be illegal?
This is a well known thing that Target does: https://www.dailydot.com/news/target-grand-larceny-psa/?amp
Source: Kaitlyn, e.g. tiktok.com/@reddnea
Not saying it's untrue, I totally believe it could be the case, but also not exactly the most iron-clad source of information lol.
That’s just the most recent article I could find, you can go back over reporting on the same for at least a decade.
Fair enough. I'm sure they likely are doing this, why wouldn't they if no one's stopped them. Even while being technically illegal in the US as another user stated, FBI or retired police involvement wouldn't be surprising in the slightest, unfortunately.
I highly doubt it’s illegal for a private entity to withhold reporting a crime until they have enough evidence to be actioned on. They made a claim without providing any sort of source backing it up, and the fact that many companies do it points to it being legal, at least in most places they operate.
That's a very good point. I don't know why I latched on to Target's side of things being true/untrue but looked over the legal aspect completely. Strong anti-corporation bias, I imagine...
Thanks for pointing that out. On second look, I can't seem to find anything to back up the initial claim of their actions being illegal.
Yea that's completely wrong, that's just called building a case and collecting evidence.
The state constables posted at the exit usually lol
I don't know where you live, but I've been in many Walmarts in the U.S. and they have private security who are never posted at the exit that I've ever seen. Mostly they just sit in an office and watch security cameras.
I've definitely seen actual cops standing at the front of the store. They're also there every day and park their cars up front in the fire lane.
Maybe you've seen it, but it's not common in my experience.
I just traveled across four states and, because of the bad weather, we stopped at Walmarts along the way so my elderly mother could walk around and stretch her legs.
Not one cop.
I think it's something they do or have done around the holidays when it's very busy. They might be hiring off duty cops and having them wear their uniform.
Where I live they have cops in cop cars and special 'law enforcement partner' parking closer than the nearest handicapped space. Its great.
Posadism looks better every day.
That's the thing that gets me where I live, the cops have reserved parking spots but they still choose the fire lane, I guess crossing the traffic lane to the building is a line they wont cross.