BUNCH O’ BULL’S-EYE
Target handcuffs cops on shoplifters: sheriff
A California sheriff launched a scathing online tirade against Target, accusing the retailer of preventing cops from cracking down on shoplifting, even as the chain asks authorities for help.
Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper said on X he was outraged when the Minneapolisbased discount chain told property crimes detectives that they “could not contact suspects inside the store . . . We could not handcuff suspects in the stores and if we arrested someone, they wanted us to process them outside . . . behind the store,” an exasperated Cooper fumed. “We were told they didn’t want to create a scene inside the store and have people film it and put it on social media,” Cooper added. “They didn’t want negative press. Unbelievable.”
Cooper related one incident at Target where “deputies watched a lady on camera bring in her own shopping bags, go down the body wash aisle and grab a bunch of Native body washes. Then she went to customer service and return them!”
‘Chose to do nothing’
“Target chose to do nothing and simply let it happen,” Cooper wrote. “Yet somehow, locking up deodorant and raising prices on everyday items we need to survive is their best answer.”
“We don’t tell big retail how to do their jobs, they shouldn’t tell us how to do ours.”
Hamstrung by policies that prevent employees from engaging with shoplifters, other big chains, including CVS and Walgreens, have resorted to locking up everyday items in an attempt to combat rampant shoplifting.
The trend has some shoppers fuming that the days of quick trips to the store are over.
Dr. Emily Long, a plastic surgeon based in Boston, took to social media recently to gripe over having to wait at Target to pick up beauty products that were enclosed behind a glass case.
“The era of Target runs is officially over because tell me why it took me over an hour to buy a single bag of items,” Long posted in a TikTok video earlier this month that snagged over 3.5 million views before she took it down.
“Apparently now my Target locks away essential items,” she said, adding that her body wash, deodorant, and razors were bolted up tight. As her camera panned to the rows of items behind a glass container, Long added: “Behold the dystopian nightmare that is my Target.”
Reporters from the investigative outlet “Inside Edition” went shopping at five New York-area Targets to see just how long it takes to get employee assistance to retrieve products locked behind anti-theft cases.
In an aisle stocked with vitamins at a Manhattan Target, reporter Lisa Guerrero said she waited 10¹/₂ minutes for an employee to unlock the anti-theft barrier.
She had to ask for assistance three times and wait seven minutes before a Target staffer showed up.
“And then their key didn’t even work,” Guerrero said, who had to wait another 3¹/₂ minutes for the staffer to fetch the correct key before she could get a tube of toothpaste off the shelf.
Neither the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office nor Target responded to requests for comment, but Target said earlier this year that it expected to suffer as much as a $1.3 billion hit to its bottom line because of “theft and organized crime.”
‘We could not handcuff suspects in the store … They didn’t want negative press. – Sheriff Jim Cooper