Posted on 10/21/2011 7:55:14 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Retailers this holiday season are preparing to protect themselves against a new group of unwanted visitors: swarms of teenagers and young adults who plot via Twitter, phone texts and Facebook to descend on stores and steal merchandise.
Law enforcement officials call them "flash robs," a criminal incarnation of the "flash mob" phenomenon in which participants use social media to organize impromptu gatherings, from dances in shopping malls to uprisings in the Middle East.
In Philadelphia, about 40 boys swarmed into a suburban Sears in June and made off with thousands of dollars in merchandise including sneakers, socks and pretty much anything else they could snatch, police said.
Several retail chains including Filene's Basement, Armani Exchange and The North Face were victimized by similar incidents in Chicago this spring in which teens ran inside stores in Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile shopping district, screamed, knocked over displays and fled with jeans, sweaters and shirts.
In Washington, D.C., surveillance cameras caught a group of 10 young women streaming into a convenience store in August and making off with bags of snacks. Similar incidents have broken out in Cleveland, Las Vegas and St. Paul, Minn., among other places.
The National Retail Federation says that flash-mob attacks were reported by 10% of the 106 retailers it surveyed in July, a group that included department stores and big-box chains, as well as grocery and drug-store operators. Security personnel or police nabbed suspects in about half the cases, according to the survey, which examined crimes involving more than one perpetrator. Several incidents resulted in injuries, the survey found.
...
[S]ecurity experts strongly discourage store employees from trying to intervene or stop shoplifters, due to the risk that it could turn violent.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“In Philadelphia, about 40 boys swarmed into a suburban Sears in June and made off with thousands of dollars in merchandise”
Damn amish. Send them back to Europe where they belong.
Due to political correctness, they are not reporting that almost all of the “youth” involved are ghetto black youth. In other crimes, we’re allowed to be more descriptive of who perpetrators are, but in this case, we can’t say the obvious.
Of course not all black youth are criminals, any more than all terrorists are Muslim. But, how far do we have to take political correctness?
“all terrorists are Muslim”
The vast majority are.
We have entered a new era of tribalism.
Shoot to kill
I once built a set of metal doors/gates for a pawn shop that allowed the operator to push a button and lock the front of the store down in case of a robbery while he disappeared into the back room and called the cops.
I don’t know if he ever used it but I thought he had a good idea. Of course libs would call it false imprisonment or some such.
Holder's People.
- This is protected "Speech" because stealing, robbing and mugging are expressions of their cultural heritage.
/s
Every employee armed with at least an extendable baton...
...MACE...
oh yeah... and a taser...
uniformed and undercover security legally permitted CCW...
...and armed with a well-oiled 9mm.....
It would only take making "flash rob" headlines once or twice...
... Big Momma would have a stern word with the twins; Oblivious and Lascivious....
Ths "fad" would become "so much yesterday".... really quick!
Holder's People.
- This is protected "Speech" because stealing, robbing and mugging are expressions of their cultural heritage.
/s
that’ll fix em.
I’ve been saying that for months; everybody thinks I’m some racist crackpot when in fact, I’m just an amateur Sociologist. Beware!
The thing I can’t quite wrap my mind around is the propellant behind this descent into tribalism; maybe its just a normal social reaction to the breakdown in civil society. For example, when Rome finally fell and Europe descended into a long “dark” age from approximately 600 a.d.~1100 a.d., the “tribe” was the only remaining “social structure” that offered any modicum of security.
Exactly.
You mean O'Blivious and LaScivious?
:^)
this is part of why I Christmas shop entirely online.
Remote locks on the doors. When you see a mob outside, just lock the doors.
Fire at will, store owners.
I think the mindset has been there for several generations,
but the election of a “black” man to the presidency
“empowered” them to act out on their generationally passed culture.
The obvious solution is a shotgun behind every counter!
On monday of this week, there was a mod that kept pulling comments and even whole threads that made observations such as yours.
I’m curious as to why a PC-oriented individual such as that would be appointed as moderator on FR.
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