Police StatePunch Out

Fake ‘Shoplifting Surge’ is the Just Latest in Crime Wave Propaganda

The following is a lightly edited transcription from The Punch Out with Eugene Puryear, a daily news podcast that comes out Monday through Friday, 5pm ET. Subscribe here.

It’s the story that has been burning up local news, Fox News, conservative radio, gentrified community listservs and even the press conferences of the Mayor of San Francisco. That is the story of the so-called “surge” of retail thefts taking place across the country, at places like Walgreens and grocery stores, and allegedly causing them to close en masse.

A CVS executive testified in the Senate on Nov. 2 that the ongoing epidemic had already cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and he implored lawmakers to crack down on this supposed wave of criminality.

But like essentially everything else pointed to to defend or expand the criminal justice and policing system, the retail theft surge is a total manipulation. First off, there is not much evidence it even exists. As the news website The Appeal details, “data does not back up claims of a nationwide shoplifting “surge.” According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data, the number of reported shoplifting offenses dropped 18 percent between 2019 and 2020, the last year for which full data is available.”

The issue has become one of the key fronts in the development of law and order rhetoric. It is part of the backlash from pro-police elements of society to prevent any changes at all to the country’s hyper militarized, mainly ineffective, racist, and brutal system of policing and the accompanying system of mass incarceration. These forces are going out of their way to cherry-pick every fact, stat and anecdote they can to roll back the changes in public opinion that has occurred since the Black Lives Matter movement kicked off in 2014, and since last summer’s uprising against racism.

LISTEN NOW AND SUBSCRIBE TO THE PUNCH OUT ON APPLE, SPOTIFY & MORE!

San Francisco has really been at the center of the controversy around shoplifting, cited even by the Mayor London Breed. I went and took a look at the stats provided by the city’s cops. In December 2020, larceny was down 40% compared to 2019. Then from September 2020 to September 2021, there was a 7% increase. In what world does that really represent a “surge,” given the previous year’s decline. The September 2021 figures were still 30% below the numbers from two years ago — at a time when, notably, no one was pushing a theory of a massive retail theft surge.

Looking at some NYC statistics, from the NYPD reporting just last week, grand larceny is down 13% over the past two years and petty larceny is down 5.3%. Grand larceny is actually down 23% in NYC since 2001 and 67% since 1990. So, again, the idea there is some huge out-of-control surge of retail thefts just does not add up.

As the journalist Adam Johnson has been explaining, there are other clear points of context that cast doubt on this overall story. Since 2017, Walgreens has been publicly stating that it plans to close hundreds of stores to both save money and capitalize on the real estate value of their many locations.

So what’s really going on here? It seems fairly clear that what is happening is that these companies want people to go to jail, and for longer, if they steal things, while — as they’ve been indicating in the social spending debates — paying no taxes in order to actually try to help address the social conditions that cause people to commit economic “crimes.”

This whole story has become part of a much broader fight over whether or not there should be any changes to the law-and-order mindset that has ruled the country for nearly 40 years. Crime wave propaganda, now backed directly by giant corporations, is all designed to make sure that nothing changes.

Wait! we need your help!

BreakThrough News is building the media arm of the movement. We tell the untold stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities — because out of these stories we will construct a different narrative of the world, as it is and in real time.

Think to yourself, is this article something that would be published anywhere other than BreakThrough?

Five mega-corporations dominate the media landscape — controlling 90% of what we read, watch and listen to. People’s movements in every corner of the globe are changing history and shifting consciousness. But these movements barely receive any coverage from the corporate media. They need visibility. They need amplification. They need a media arm to break through.

Working-class people deserve better, we deserve media for and by us. We are not funded by billionaires or corporations – we are funded by you. Without you, BreakThrough would not be possible, so become a member and build the media arm of the movement with us.

To send a check to BreakThrough News, please make it out to BreakThrough / BT Media Inc. and send to 320 W. 37th Street, NY, NY 10018. Donations are tax-deductible in accordance with the law.

Will you help us break through the corporate news cycle?

about the author

Eugene Puryear

Eugene Puryear is a longtime journalist and community organizer currently-based in New York City. Eugene helped to organize a number of the large-scale demonstrations that took place against the continuing U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, he was a key leader In the struggle to free the Jena Six in 2007, and a founder of the anti-gentrification group Justice First, the Jobs Not Jails coalition, DC Ferguson Movement and Stop Police Terror Project-D.C. Puryear is the author of the book Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America, and spent five years in radio prior to helping found BT News.

Related Articles