The gospel of Christ never disappeared in the so-called "dark ages", as it is incorrectly labeled.
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.
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[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 ...
The gospel of Christ never disappeared in the so-called "dark ages", as it is incorrectly labeled.
Property crimes should be considered violent crimes for legal purposes. I don’t know why right-thinking state legislators can’t expand on the ‘home-is-your-castle doctrine’ and introduce state laws to immunize people who use deadly force to protect private property at private businesses. So even if you are not in immediate fear for your life, you should be able to shoot to protect merchandise.
Seems to me it would pass constitutional muster. We’d be dealing with the use of deadly force by private citizens and not any state actors — therefore no problem under the 14th amendment.
Correcting for grammar and punctuation.
The Japanese were upset with this--culturally insensitive of them.
We are rapidly heading toward a degraded culture where our living environment will be like a mix of Port-au-Prince, Ciudad Juárez, Mogadishu, and San Juan.
We will be enjoying the fruits of diversity every day and and every sleepless night.
People looking for jobs and work should learn welding and steel fabrication.
Installation of burglar bars and perimeter fences are already a fast growing industry.
funny how boys have changed over the years...
funny how boys have changed over the years...
used to seeing fresh markets with fruit and veggies in bins outside the store?...or stacks of bottled water or charcoal?....
there is a reason people live where they live....its not racist...its simply smart...
“WHO YOU CALLIN BOY????”
I like my wife’s suggestion: make sure there’s only one door in, and it’s the same door out — and keep a couple of trained dogs there. Be sure they’re big dogs. Make it clear that if anything happens, the dogs are instructed to keep people from leaving the premises (until the police arrive). The nice thing about well-trained dogs is that they won’t bother anybody at all unless they’re told to.
In my experience, the sort of ‘utes’ typically involved in this sort of activity aren’t particularly fond of large, hostile canines - their very presence may be enough to keep the riff-raff away.
Now that strategy actually works only *if* the police actually arrive when called.
the electronic door locks would violate fire codes in almost any major city
You are probably right, though I notice that most banks lock the customers in (and out) at closing time. It is done with a key, though.
Guaranteeing they will have more and more flash robs!
Mark Steyn had a phrase for advice like that: "Preemptive cringing".
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