Target blamed theft and violence when it closed 9 stores in New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, but crime is worse at locations it kept open nearby.
I could not care less. Who the hell cares and why is this a recurring story? Seems like some weird vendetta against target solely on the .ml instances.
It’s recurring because, in the last couple of years, this false narrative has been propagated by a several large retain chains and repeated by corporate media. Either they each individually, and at virtually the same time, just so happened to decide to push this false narrative about their chain, or they colluded.
And you’ve seen this on the .ml (and hexbear) instances for a while because we noticed something fishy was going on long before corporate media finally broke away from the false narrative.
At least this article calls out that the stores kept open also are busier, so the higher potential for theft has less impact on profitability.
Nobody closes a profitable location solely over theft. The only closures that shoplifting is driving are ones at stores that were already underperforming. If increasing theft drives a store into the red, that’s a sensible closure, but profitability is the real driver, not theft.
I Books Could Kill did a deep dive on the Organized Retail Crime myth. It really shows how little fact checking goes into stories propagated by capital.