Shoplifting harms store owners, state
Thanks to this week’s green light from the Boston Planning & Development Agency, “Plan: Dudley Square” is moving ahead on its development track.
And of the four sites set for building projects: 75-81 Dudley St., 2147 Washington St., 135 Dudley St. and 40-50 Washington St., at least one — 75-81 Dudley — lists retail establishments among the components of its mixed use development.
Plan: Dudley is hardly the only planning/construction venture fueling our city’s growth spurt — The Hub on Causeway, 1000 Boylston, Back Bay Station/Tower and The Fenway Center will join the other gleaming towers in Boston’s skyline. These enterprises are also designed with “mixed use” in mind — retail operations eager for customers and a chance to grow their Hub market.
One question: How do you attract — and keep — retailers when the county’s district attorney has declared shoplifting offlimits for prosecution?
It’s a point that’s top of mind with the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, which recently lambasted Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ hands-off policy on prosecuting shoplifters, and in a story reported by the Herald’s Lisa Kashinsky, said Rollins’ move made it “open season on our retail stores.”
The notion that because shoplifting is a nonviolent crime, it’s low-level and therefore unimportant clearly has little empathy for the store owner with razorthin profit margins, trying to make a living while his or her inventory walks out the door.
How bad can it be? Massachusetts businesses lose an estimated $1 billion annually in stolen merchandise, Retailers Association General Counsel Ryan Kearney told Kashinsky. And those fivefinger discounts leave the state roughly $62.5 million short in salestaxrevenue.
And while the casual boosting of a shirt here or a pair of shades there clearly adds up, Rollins has all but issued an invite to career criminals to enjoy our city’s finest.
One famously tried to RSVP, though Glenn Kerivan was a little unclear on directions. The Herald’s Sean Philip Cotter reported that the Arlington man, an admitted career criminal, liberated $126 worth of items from a Weymouth Stop & Shop, but thought he was in the clear. He was shocked, shocked!, when cops cuffed him.
“It’s not a crime, I thought. I saw it on TV when I was in prison,” Kerivan said, referring to a news story he saw on Rollins’ list of 15 crimes she pledged not to prosecute — including shoplifting.
But Weymouth is in Norfolk County, where “protect and serve” extends to tax-paying storeowners, and they do prosecute shoplifting.
If a “low-level career criminal was using the DA’s policy as an excuse to have open season on our retail stores, you can only imagine the impact on someone who’s a professional career criminal,” Kearney of the Retailers Association told the Herald. “Repeat offenders look at this as a high-reward, low-risk crime because our property crimes (laws)areasweakastheyare.”
Correct us if we’re wrong, D.A. Rollins — but shouldn’t we want the city and county to thrive and grow, and for the state to reap the benefits? We know economic development isn’t your job — but why penalize those whose “crime” is owning a store and trying to make a go of it?
There are opportunities for new retailers to open shop in Boston over the coming months and years — Rollins should not make it easy for them to go out of business.