Between 30 to 50 people swarmed the Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, making off with thousands of dollars worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing, an LAPD spokesman told NBC News.
It makes me laugh how many people think this is a new development only in CA and in 2023.
This happened back in the 90s to my mom while working retail. Like 10 people came in and carried off the furniture they had in the store, because they knew the employees were instructed not to do anything.
Shit like this has been happening all over the US for decades, the media just decided it was the hot new topic to get more clicks recently. Even the Walgreens CEO who said theft was so awful they had to close a bunch of stores later admitted they “cried wolf”.
Rich people love the idea that theft is out of control in the media because it gives them a talking point to keep us peasants in control. Starbucks was charged by the labor board for closing down unionizing stores under the guise of “safety concerns”. Starbucks isn’t the only place that has been pulling that shit.
And that’s not to say I agree with 50 people bear spraying people and stealing luxury shit either. This isn’t someone stealing food from the grocery store to feed their kids. It wasn’t billionaires working in the store, it’s people working a shitty retail job for shitty pay no doubt. But it is a topic being overblown for rich people’s benefit.
Same energy as people bitching about the homeless in SF and Portland. It’s like have you seen our downtown bro, there’s a tent city
Strongly considering buying property in Portland because values are depressed because of the propaganda/fear-mongering. I think there is a small, but legitimate risk that it eventually becomes true, though.
Downtown Portland has gone to shit, no doubt about it. But there are problems in every city that needs addressing. For what it’s worth I’d move to Portland still, the area is beautiful and much better than the increasingly overpriced desert I’m living in
This isn’t someone stealing food from the grocery store to feed their kids… But it is a topic being overblown for rich people’s benefit.
How is it overblown? It is a real issue with law enforcement in America. People are being permitted to destroy and steal property. We need to get to the root cause of what’s going on their. It’s due to failures on multiple fronts. You can’t just say ignore it because capitalism bad. Capitalism is a founding principle of this country’s economy. You can’t play the card that these people are protesting corruption because others are enriching themselves by stealing goods. That’s not noble in any way and doesn’t help employees.
I used to work at a dollar store back in the day, and I was warned that this guy comes in every few weeks and grabs a bunch of jackets then runs out the back door.
No shit like clockwork it happened.
I was warned not to engage and just call the cops. My first time, I was in the back taking a shit in the bathroom next to the rear emergency exit. I heard the alarm go off and jumped up, pulled up my pants and ran out to catch him. He ran out back, I ran out after him. He pulled a gun on me and I learned my lesson. Let the dude have the jackets. Got it.
It’s changed recently to be far more organized. Crime goes in cycles though, catalytic converter and retail rings are just the big ones right now.
This is organized crime.
Looks like run of the mill theft to me. Sure, perpetrated by a lot of people at once, but without proof of a legitimate business operating as a money laundering front for the proceeds of the fenced goods, this isn’t organized crime.
Loosely by definition sure, but not real organized crime
“Keep those wages low, the poors will never do anything about it”
“I’m poor so I’m not responsible for stealing luxury goods and bear spraying minimum wage security guards.”
I grew up poor. I didn’t do this. Your comment is dripping with the implicit accusation that poor people are basically just animals. Incapable of controlling themselves when they see nice handbags.
Poverty doesn’t affect everyone the same. To try to discount the fact that poverty increases crime just because you aren’t a criminal is ignoring the complexity of humanity.
To say that this particular crime was caused by poverty also ignores the complexity of humanity.
We can all speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I agree that lessening poverty will lessen crime of most types.
Thing is, there’s a difference between stealing a loaf of bread and looting a Nordstrom and assaulting the guards.
Stealing from wealthy corporations is an extremely valid and morally acceptable form of protest. Hell, it’s a morally good thing to do even if it’s not meant as a protest.
I’m not going to defend assaulting the guards, though, except in the case of self-defense. Store security guards have no business using force against shoplifters, and most company policies align with that fact.
So all those people who work for a living and contribute to society, who save up that money to buy those handbags are just schmucks? Give me a break.
You know someone is a shit person when they equate income with value as a human being.
Even if that were a valid take, almost every working poor person contributes more to society than nearly any rich person does, and would therefore still have more human worth.
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Feel free to explain why it’s not objectively a good act to steal from the entities that themselves commit the overwhelming majority of theft, intentionally, systematically, and forcefully hold the majority of the worlds working population either in actual slavery, poverty, or at least unjustifiable and extreme financial insecurity that technically isn’t poverty because government definitions of poverty are patently absurd, and and who are actively and knowingly driving us towards towards the collapse of the environment and the greater part of biological life itself.
I’ll give you a hint: you’re actually just wrong by any standard that values human life in any way.
Yeah have you ever been in a Nordstrom? Fuck that place, snatch all the handbags you can and sell them on eBay I don’t really care.
You shouldn’t bear spray security and maybe they should be charged for it but at least he wasn’t shot or something.
i feel bad for the employees who had to deal with it and clean up after and the guards that got assaulted. i dont feel bad for the above store level managers and execs who have to deal with this shit.
Everybody has different needs, but imo if you work as a security guard for a place like this AND take it seriously you not only signed up for violence but you deserve it. These companies are robbing us blind of good health, personal space and time on the planet- why defend that?
There is a difference, that doesn’t mean they don’t have similar root causes.
If poverty was driving crime rates, then most of the world (as most countries are much much poorer than the US) would be a crime infested shit hole. Somehow that’s not true at all. US crime is not related to poverty in any way.
All you have to do is look at the crime statistics and income statistics for cities across North America. Cities that have lower GDPs (less money, less opportunity) generally have higher crime rates. If despair is high, people will act out of desperation. What you are wilfully ignoring is the fact that “countries that are poorer than the US” also are drastically different culturally than the US. Almost nowhere else on Earth has the same kind of income disparity that the US has. You can’t take a developing nation where 50% of people live in poverty, and compare it to a developed nation where no one needs to live in poverty but are forced to do so by manipulated housing and job markets.
Lol what? Do you even hear yourself?
Of course poor people aren’t “basically just animals”, the OP didn’t imply that. What the OP is saying is that when genuine opportunity doesn’t exist, some people will find their own opportunity and/or weigh the consequences of their actions differently.
Wealth and income disparity have consequences and this is one of them. Public unrest is another eventual outcome. Something needs to be done about it or something will be done about it.
The mace part isn’t great but otherwise I say go get it.
This is nothing compared to what these corpos stole from us.
And how they treat the laborers that make the clothing.
Imagine being an oblivious shopper trying out clothes in the change room, eventually coming out with your selections, only emerging to a store that looks like a hurricane went through it.
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Nobody is looking for them. Blasting the video out to the public was the goal here, corporate media loves a crime spree.
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Well you added that last part.
Good for them.
No, fuck them for harming somebody.
I can’t muster up sympathy for security guards who work at an obscenely wealthy mall.
Edit: Let me clarify, these men are paid to use violence to protect the interests of capital.
When have you ever seen a mall security guard use violence?
When have you ever seen a mall security guard that isn’t overweight or retirement age? Or both?
They carry live weapons in some cities, but more often they carry pepper spray and tasers. They also work with the police to incarcerate people who threaten the profitability of the stores on the property. State violence is still violence, the most cowardly kind.
You don’t see the loss prevention staff.
Please do not downvote people you disagree with if they’re contributing to the conversation.
💀
They don’t matter on an individual level. They do matter for keeping relevant content at the top.
Flash mobs doing shoplifting should be the new TikTok trend, can’t stop everyone.
I suppose people in California get the kind of society they vote for.
A society where a store can sell $2k purses made in sweatshops by children in the 3rd world while its own veterans languish with addiction and PTSD problems brought on by the ever-more-unsustainable quest for cheap oil?
That’s a fucked society right there.
This doesn’t really effect Californians though, except that security guard, rip. The only people it effects is the owners of Nordstrom who lost $500 of stuff they bought from Vietnam.
This happens all over the country all the times I experienced it several times in 2004 to 2007 at one retail store.
In that case it was organized Columbia gangs associated with human trafficking, coyotes would bring people to America and then force them to shoplift. They all arrive at the same time in stolen cars. The car key is left on top of a wheel in the parking lot in case the driver is caught. There wasn’t a department store loss prevention employee in the Northeast that didn’t know about Columbians.
But hey if you’re gullible and love corporate media, do your thing. They never leak the videos of them doing wage theft.
Good
They maced people
Malls? They still have those?
When they steal food, I cheer. When they steal jewelry and snearks and whatnot I lol
Will somebody think of the housewives?!
Ban all mainstream social media
