Shoplifters Swipe Everything

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31862, 14 December 1968, Page 5

Shoplifters Swipe Everything

(“Newsweek” Feature Service) Fa la la la la, Yuletiders, and what is that nice-looking young lady doing with that typewriter clutched between her legs? She is celebrating the Christmas season by stealing it, that’s what she’s doing—or shop lifting, to use the polite term. She has been practising for weeks at home with a heavy telephone book, and now she can walk almost normally out of any store whilst holding fast with her legs to a purloined radio, men’s suit or even a small turkey. She is the scourge of the nation’s shopkeepers, this nice-looking young lady. She and her fellow shoplifters—of all ages and sexes—steal an estimated minimum of $2 billion worth of merchandise every year from beleaguered merchants.

Christmas, especially, is the season to be light-fingered. One business magazine estimates that shoplifters account for one-fourth of their yearly damage in the single month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whether this increase should be associated with Yuletide spirit or with Yuletide crowds and confusion, no merchant dares guess. All he can do is try to stem the tide by increasing his store’s security forces, and in many cases by making use of some of the sophisticated electronic gadgets that have been invented to nab artful dodgers. The most fashionable such device at the moment is a plastic wafer, trademarked Knogo, that attaches with heavy-duty staples to clothing, packaged goods or books. The staples can be cut only by special scissors at the [check-out desk. If the thief [tries to lift the stuff without

removing the wafer, the wafer trips an electronic warning at the exit. The Knogo system has the virtue of overcoming the concealment problem. It is nothing for a lady shoplifter to go into a dressing room and emerge wearing five bras, three bathing suits and four slips under her dress; or even two or three dresses under her dress and a stolen coat over it. The wafers will flag her down every time. But electronic systems have their drawbacks, one being cost. The rental on a typical system is $3500 a year for each installation, and one unit is needed at each store exit. Still, with losses from all kinds of pilfering running as high as 10 per cent of the total sales volume in some stores, the investment is often wise. For the present, however, shoplifter-detection is still largely a battle of cunning between the thief and the store’s security forces, some of whom are highly trained gumshoes indeed. Kroger Stores, the food chain, hired away Cincinnati’s Chief of Police at $25,000 a year to head its shoplifter patrol. Some of the larger stores have invested heavily in surveillance tools one-way mirrors into the dressing rooms, or observation rooms above the floor where detectives may keep binoculars trained on the customers. Most managers agree that the best single weapon : against pilfering is a welltrained staff, and many stores have taken to running . special educational films on the ways of the shoplifter. The shoplifters, though, come armed with several weapons, not the least of them gall. In addition to the “knee - huggers” mentioned earlier, the ladies hake been known to deposit necklaces in their bras, steaks in their girdles, and darned near anything in oversized overcoats known in the trade as “Harpo : Marxes.”

This does not mean that all these thieves are women, and it is not certain even that most of them are. Depending on the survey, shoplifters are (1) 85 per cent housewives; (2) 60 per cent men; or (3) 75 per cent teen-agers. Still, shoplifting alone is so much of a problem that stores must raise their prices on some items by 10 to 15 per cent to cover the loss. Why They Steal The only certifiable truths seem to be that luxury goods get stolen far more than staples—ruling out the man-in-need theory—and that 99 per cent of all shoplifters ! steal because they want to—all but ruling out the kleptomania theory. A large but unknown number of light-fingers are attached to professional shop1 lifters, who fence their ! stolen stuff'for about half its ' retail value. One such was ' found to have a $65,000 bank 1 account, and police estimated ’ that her yearly income was [ about $lOO,OOO. She had been taught to shoplift at the age 1 of nine by her mother—a far-from-rare occurrence. ’ Stores are hesitant to pro- ■ secute the amateurs, partly ’ bceause of the expense and ' partly because judges tend to > let off first offenders with a ■ warning. Sometimes the s penalty even for several-time losers is only a light fine, and t the shoplifter, according to i one manager, “comes to - regard a $25 fine as a cost s of doing business.” ! Then, too, the stores cannot 1 really complain quite that much about shoplifting while , their own internal pilfering lis so blatant. Authorities f estimate that customer- ■ thieves account for about 30 1 per cent of a store’s annual i “shrinkage” (or total stock s shortages) while employees f get away with 40 per cent, ’ and bookkeeping errors or , deceptions take another 30 per cent