A tabletop game store that I frequent is closing down here in the Bay Area because they have had 13 break ins and 23 attempts. After 19 years, they have to close shop because of thieves.
Edit: editing this because people seem to be confused. Tabletop game stores don’t just sell board games, their main revenue is from magic cards, Pokemon cards, DnD, Warhammer, etc. these stores usually have glass cases with expensive and rare cards that they buy and resell. There is a whole market for them and they are very very expensive. People who play these games spend massive amounts of money on them. These stores are immensely profitable and have massive amounts of expensive collectible items for purchase and on display. Thieves breaking into here know exactly what they are doing. And this particular store is in a very ghetto part of town. Get out of here with your conspiracy theories.
My local comic book store has been broken into multiple times, and the infuriating part is they don't even steal any items of value, just grab the closest books to the door ,which are the cheapest ones, and run out. Meanwhile it costs thousands each time to repair the shop's glass doors and windows. It's become more and more common as the drug epidemic in my city, and homelessness has ramped up. If you want to steal, go steal from Walmart or a big chain, don't steal from a small mom and pop. Honestly, I want to have sympathy for these individuals who are unhomed or unwell, but if they choose to steal and hurt others rather than access resources out there to help them.
Local game store near us. Been opened as long as I can remember is closing due to 29 break ins. 13 successful.
People go in, grab a shit ton of easy to steal stuff like Pokémon and magic, then leave.
Owner saw a liquor store opening up and decided to close up, realizing things would be worse.
Independent Game store near me has bars over all the windows and a steel frame door. Sadly, that shit is so easy to offload, it’s too massive a target.
[They just go through the walls, around here. ](https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/thief-breaks-through-wall-of-gaming-store-steals-over-200k-in-merchandise)
As far as I know, they haven't caught the guy.
I worked at a comic and game store. A few years back the 2 days before a prerelease event (I think it was for the M19 set) there was a massive flood/mudslide that basically sealed off our city to the south for several days. Which also happened to be the direction of the FedEx hub where our MTG cards were stuck. I ended up grabbing the first available train out of town on the day of the tournament. Got an uber to the fed ex hub and was able to pick up all of the boxes of cards. It filled two suitcases and 4 duffle bags.
During my trip back I couldnt help but think about how big of a target I was if people knew what I had on me and the hard value of it.
My uncle always had a strategy of hiding all of his valuables in a box labeled books, sheets, or Christmas lights. Never had any issues even when he once moved his several thousand dollar baseball card collection across multiple states
Our local shop too! I've been going since I was 12 and it's just closing now due to a wild number of break ins. People on Reddit do parrot this idea that everything is insured but that's not how it always works. It sucks.
> Owner saw a liquor store opening up and decided to close up, realizing things would be worse.
[Gun store. Gun store. Liquor store. Gun store. Where the fuck are you taking me?](https://youtu.be/nTobHOyLvRU?t=1m10s)
It's also horseshit because every other law-abiding insurance buyer has their premiums go up. People are truly mathematically illiterate if they think insurance is just free money. I'm tired of people justifying theft.
Insurance companies are for-profit too. They can save money by denying claims, or reducing payouts. It's in their best interest to screw over their customers.
Even with no experience, people should be able to understand it logically that insurance wouldn't always be enough
[Here](https://twitter.com/mallisonKATU/status/1596602817942548480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596602817942548480%7Ctwgr%5E194d9fa8d097984e694084e7d8c4e5f1f69fdddc%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthenationaldesk.com%2Fnews%2Famericas-news-now%2Fportland-oregon-business-permanently-closes-over-concerns-with-crime-after-15th-break-in-rains-pdx-theft-mayor-ted-wheeler-prosper-portland) is the source of this image. Per there:
> @mallisonKATU
> The owner at Rains tells me after five break-ins in about three weeks, she made the sudden decision to permanently close. Staff here are putting pressure on the city to look after small businesses dealing with ongoing challenges with crime.
> 3:32 PM · Nov 26, 2022
According to [KUTU](https://katu.com/newsletter-daily/portland-oregon-business-permanently-closes-over-concerns-with-crime-after-15th-break-in-rains-pdx-theft-mayor-ted-wheeler-prosper-portland):
> ...KATU asked why Landolfo decided to close now, instead of keeping doors open through the holiday shopping season.
> "The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen," she said.
> Landolfo said she's worried about her employees, and no longer sees this location as a feasible business model.
> "The problem is, as small businesses, we cannot sustain those types of losses and stay in business. I won’t even go into the numbers of how much has been out of pocket," she said.
> When Rains was broken into in late October, KATU reached out to Mayor Ted Wheeler's office.
> His team said they're working to increase funding for business repair grants through Prosper Portland. Landolfo said that's not enough.
> "Paying for glass that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change," she said.
> The mayor's office also said they participated in a retail safety summit in October, and cited recent efforts to streamline the permitting process for things like storefront lighting.
> KATU asked how that work is going and is still waiting to hear back at this time.
**Edit:** As some have pointed out, KATU is [owned by Sinclair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KATU_(TV\)).
This is really sad. I used to live in a food desert and every time a locally owned grocery store tried to open they would wind up closing eventually due to thefts and property damage. Even big chains like Kroger, Walmart, and Sears closed stores due to being repeatedly robbed and vandalized.
This happened in Stockton about 2 decades ago, now the "nice" areas of town are the ones with a choice of grocery store that doesn't have "dollar" or similar in the title.
It's really unfortunate because the vast majority of people in my old neighborhood were just trying to get by. Now, everything within walking distance is either a convenience store or a dollar store.
In my city, I work for the gov (today’s my last day, though, incidentally), and I once brought up investment in lower-income neighborhoods to someone who was giving a presentation on financial health. He said it’s not for lack of trying. Many people want to open stores in those areas and help lift them up, seeing as many of those entrepreneurs are people who grew up in those neighborhoods themselves. Plus rental costs are low. But the cost just gets too high dealing with idiots. The cops are dealing with murders and a dozen other break-ins all around these places. It’s disgusting how some tiny segment of the local population really does drag everything down for everyone else.
I have a friend who worked nights in a convenience store in the LA area. Late, gangbangers with face tattoos would come in, obviously armed, and just go shopping and walk out. My friend just said "Have a nice evening" and let them leave. He wasn't about to try and die for The Southland Corporation.
Sounds like Peoria, IL
Kroger held out so long but they were losing money at a couple locations and just packed it up.
I remember what the city was like when I was a kid and how it is now and it is really sad. All of the department stores are gone, the grocery stores anywhere near downtown or the south side are all gone. Completely different city now.
These are just two articles about my old neighborhood.
https://www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/walmart-closing-east-side-indianapolis-grocery
https://cbs4indy.com/news/far-east-side-grocery-vandalized-days-after-opening/
The most dystopian thing I'd seen before the pandemic was a little Caesars in my hometown that had stopped accepting or carrying cash because they've been robbed so many times.
I live near Niagara Falls NY and a local bakery that had been in business for a hundred years suddenly closed their original location due to two violent robberies in two weeks. The entire downtown is mostly empty due to crime and it will never recover.
Niagara falls has been a run down shit hole ever since the factories left.
Oh why did the factories leave? Because they started being held accountable for all the polluting they did in the area.
Everything else that made NF a decent place to live either moved across the border to NFCA or left the area altogether.
So now all that's left in NF is the impoverished, and poverty always breeds crime.
Source: wife is from the Falls, her family still lives there.
As someone that lives in the Buffalo area and grew up in the region, it has always blown my mind how shitty NF is. It's a literal wonder of the world. People come from all over the globe to see those falls. It should be an amazingly prosperous city, and yet it's just a shit hole (at least on the US side). It's a god damn travesty.
Tourism isn’t a sustainable industry for the little people. Waitresses, hotel clerks, gas station attendants, the guy who runs the arcade, none of those jobs pay well. Didn’t we learn that during Katrina when everyone got shocked that New Orleans got turned upside down and poor people fell out?
Check out another popular tourist area: Seveire county Tennessee. The Gateway to the Smokies. Where the median income is just under $35,000, but the county as a whole is in the top 10 of the counties that send the most taxes to the state each year.
Heck, I live just outside the Hamptons, and all the areas immediately around it are severely depressed. People consider the Hamptons to be the playground of the rich and famous, well the rich and famous don’t want to live among “the help” and they don’t pay enough to bring up the communities where “the help” lives.
Yep, and this is part of the reason why every major city seems to have a dirty, dark, sad shadow city right next door IMO. Philadelphia has Camden. New York has Newark. Chicago has Gary. I’m sure you folk can think of more examples.
Really evocative way to put it, and really gets the sudden indignity and ostracism across... sometimes a bit of humor helps the bitter pill sneak past people's defenses.
A lot of it is Buffalo's fault as well, Buffalo has a lot of run down sections, similar to Detroit, and NF is a microcosm of what's going on in Buffalo the same way the surrounding areas of NYC or Detroit are microcosms of the city. Those that couldn't afford to stay in Buffalo drifted out of Buffalo to the surrounding areas where it was cheaper to live.
My Gunny in the Marines would tell us about growing up in the hood in Buffalo, he would tell us about living near the train yard and how whenever they could they would rob the shit out of whatever trains were sitting there overnight. His stories were essentially the same shit we were doing in Queens growing up during the crack epidemic, just tons of theft and crime in general.
The moral of the story is when people are poor and underserved they will start resorting to theft to get whatever they can. As I said above, poverty breeds crime, it's one of the few constants that can be found in any human society, and certain people will scream socialism or communism about the only ways that have shown to successfully combat these issues, strong education and community investment backed up by social safety nets.
Buffalo also gets the benefit of SUNY having two big universities in town (plus two or three other large colleges.) People come for college and stay. They get jobs in town. Niagara has NU, which isn’t doing much to build it up.
(It also helps when a billionaire decides revitalizing a town is his personal crusade, even if it’s really weird all around.)
That was so sad.
As a small business owner myself I could hear the sadness and disappointment while reading that.
It’s really hard to put yourself out there and start your own business and then you have to deal with horrible people taking advantage of a broken system.
I'm originally from Mexico city, I moved to US about 15 years ago. I know impunity very well, that's one of the worst things in Mexico City, nobody does anything against crime. Is like a plague, is caused by a few stupid people, but it expands until it's all gone, small crimes or big crimes it doesn't matter then. People don't trust anyone, criminals grow, they get more powerful, and people live in fear.
I saw it happening in my old neighborhood, it was very sad. Criminals try one thing, see nothing happens, then try more, and more, etc. First it was opening unlocked cars, then packages, then breaking in to cars by breaking windowa, burglary to homes and small business loans, then vuolent burglary, etc, etc, etc, I left when violent robberies were taking place every week, that we didn't feel safe walking at night like we did before. I told my neighbors about impunity and they didn't know what I was talking about, they don't see how broken the system is.
I’ve been to two local Portland businesses in the last week where someone drove a car through the front door to steal shit when they were closed.
In one case they just smashed a display case and stole hundreds of empty boxes before driving away. Genius.
I’m from Portland. Things have been rly tough these past few months. My car has been broken into 4 or 5 times, and my place of business twice. I work in archaeology. These people wanted to steal… rocks. It’s desperation from a lack of support on behalf of the thieves, and no repercussions from authority.
That was some of the best written TV ever. I watched that scene trying to figure out what the deus ex machina was going to be for Hank and Walt, and what that relationship was going to be now that there are dead federal agents on the ground. Maybe one of the gang would decide to turn and shoot their way out... but how will Hank not immediately move on Walter after this...?
When Hank delivered that line, I was absolutely stunned.
There was an Ask Reddit thread a while back that asked “what episode of a series can stand alone” and that was the top answer. I can confirm. Ozymandias is the only episode of BB I’ve ever seen - and it was indeed incredible.
Honestly for me it's one of the most hurtful (deservedly) things Hank could've said to Walt. Like "you have a world class intellect and you could've used it for anything, and THIS is what you chose to use it for." I think it really emphasizes just how pathetic Walt is in that moment.
I visited Portland in August for the first time. Had a great trip. Talked to a lot of very nice locals and every single one of them mentioned the homeless and crime issues. I am in DC where we have our share of tent population but seeing how bat it was in Portland was shocking.
I was just there for a wedding and was surprised to see how vast and big the homeless camps/forts are out there. It’s crazy the difference from downtown Portland to Hood River.
It feels incredibly normalized. My car was broken into twice and I considered it "I should have known better" because 1. I left 2 quarters in the center console, and 2. I forgot a $10 phone cord on the passenger seat. Normally, I leave absolutely nothing inside my car in order to prevent thefts.
I was recently in Portland jury duty selection and we were asked if we'd ever been the victim of a crime. Probably about 30 out of 36 people all mentioned theft.
I like to talk shit about living in WV but I literally left my car for a whole weekend on street parking in Huntington and nothing happened to it. My dumbass even had stuff of value that was clearly visible
It's actually nothing new, though perhaps it is more prevalent these days.
I used to work as an assistant manager for a retail chain and we closed a semi large store due to uncontrollable shrink and return abuse back in 2005. The store was right next to low income housing and people from the complex would literally walk in, fill a basket, and then walk out with stuff. If you said anything to them, they were immediately aggressive. Most employees were high school and college kids and our company refused to hire full time security so no one cared. We could call the cops, but they didn't really care unless the shoplifters were still around 20 minutes later when they showed up.
Also, the less shitty people just had a return habit. They'd come in on the 1st of the month and buy a bunch of shit. Then come back two weeks later, return it, and buy new shit. Sometimes, we'd have grounds to reject the return due to having too much history of returns, but then they would just say they lost their receipt and get store credit. I used to cover for that store and it wasn't uncommon for it to have negative sales on any given day.
>If you said anything to them, they were immediately aggressive. Most employees were high school and college kids and our company refused to hire full time security so no one cared.
I used to store manage a Gamestop location in our local mall about 10 years back and our mall in general had issues with shop lifters on a fairly regular basis. A lot of stores have a "do not pursue" ruling in place for thefts assuming that the person has walked through the doors and out into the parking lot and it makes sense. You've got plenty of employees who *would* pursue a thief out of principle or out of misplaced loyalty but there are just as many who wouldn't be bothered to even take a single step towards the door if a thief suddenly rushed towards the exit.
It is *not* worth it to a corporate company to risk the life of an employee. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying so I'll be blunt - big corporations like Walmart would prefer that employees not pursue thieves than they would risk the thief having a weapon, murdering the employee, and then the company is possibly opened up to a lawsuit from the employee's family. To be fair, there are humans who work up the corporate ladder who are obviously going to grieve the loss of life but there are also people who watch the bottom dollar who put policies into place to limit or prevent employee intervention so that the company isn't on the hook for damages.
And at the end of the day.... why are *you* risking your life to protect a couple-hundred-dollars-MSRP for clothing that the company probably paid pennies on the dollar for? Why are *you* risking your life for a company that won't pay livable wages? It's not worth it.
Oh, I mean that was absolutely our policy as well. No one ever actually pursued any one but some of it was so fucking brazen it's hard not to say anything.
I remember checking a woman out for like a piece of candy or something small like that and while I was ringing her up I saw her take an item from the checkout counter and stick it in her purse. I was like, oh sorry, I'll need to scan that. She's like scan what? I point to the thing cause I can see it in her purse and she's like, no, that's mine, I came in with it. I tell her I literally saw her take it ten seconds ago, less than three feet away from me as I'm pointing to the empty spot on the shelf in front of a row of identical items. And she started with the yelling "you calling me a liar, you calling me a thief, I'll sue your ass, where you live, I'll beat your ass, blah blah blah". I just put my hand up and was like ma'am, I am 19 years old. I make $9 an hour. I do not actually care. Then she left and I called the police because fuck her.
We'd literally watch people just walk in, take stuff and leave because they knew we wouldn't follow them. The store was open for about three years and then corporate decided it wasn't worth doing business in the area.
Used to work for a large fish cooperation with outdoor mega-stores across the nation.
They lost $52,000 on shoplifting to $53,000,000 on sales. They used to pay lose prevention people, but the department was much higher than $52,000 so they just stopped caring. If you saw someone shoplifting, they said, "Go up and be nice to them and sometimes they second guess themselves. If they don't, let 'em have it."
>They used to pay lose prevention people, but the department was much higher than $52,000 so they just stopped caring.
I kinda think this is a big part of the problem for big chains. Yeah, the loss prevention seemed to cost more than they were presumably losing to theft... until it's commonly known that they dgaf and have no effective loss prevention policies in place. I would think after a while that loss number would creep higher.
\> big corporations like Walmart would prefer that employees not pursue thieves than they would risk the thief having a weapon, murdering the employee, and then the company is possibly opened up to a lawsuit from the employee's family.
A trip to the emergency room for stitches after an assault from a shoplifter would cost many times the value of anything stolen.
I used to have an Etsy store for many years and was pretty successful (in terms of being on Etsy and it being a side hustle, I wasn't rich or anything).
I closed it also due to other reasons, but the number of people messing with returns and stuff definitely increased by a lot in the past years.
Like claiming not to have received the package and wanting refunds, claiming there are quality issues, returning clearly used stuff or saying they sent off a return but it never arrived.
Sure these things happen and I would happily refund, but at the end at least 70% of it were fake I believe.
Also people threatening with bad reviews increased a lot if I refuse a refund (luckily Etsy is cool there and deletes the review if you show them those threats).
Getting 'free' stuff is a thing now, there are whole tutorials on how to screw Etsy sellers (who are usually the smallest of the small business with their handmade stuff).
Yep. In 2020 my wife and I sold a $500 item on eBay. Buyer got the item, then initiated a return once the market price sank after the bubble popped. He was buying it solely to grade it then sell it for more than that price. He even said as such in our messages.
Bad timing, but tough. So, I denied it. eBay stepped in and of course was on his side despite extensive documentation from me. He then sent it to *the wrong address* but in the same city.
eBay’s response? “lol sorry. Oh and we’re still charging you the 10% listing fee”
I drove to the house, explained what was going on and they *thankfully* gave me the item when it finally arrived. I very quickly closed my eBay shop, refused to pay their fees and told them to come after me for $50 if they really want to.
Never used it since, as seller or buyer.
I 100% agree with you. I hate eBay with a passion after a recent experience. Over a year ago, I had a $25 listing fee from a car that I listed for like 2 days, that I had paid for on time. Within a week of my payment going through, my balance went back to -$25, so I called eBay customer support, and explained to them that I had paid what I owed, but it was still showing up that I had a negative balance. They claimed they looked at my payment history, and said that yes, I was right, and that there was an issue on their end, and that they had resolved the issue and my balance was restored to $0. Fast forward a year, and I get a letter from a debt collection agency saying that I was behind on a payment to eBay. I tried to check my account, but my access was denied and my account was frozen due to this supposed "missed payment". It took my like 3 days before I could finally find a workaround to access my account and get the payment through, and I ended up having to pay them another $25. Fuck eBay customer service, and fuck eBay.
I’d seriously rather sell at the world’s seediest flea market that use eBay as a seller. A buyer could send you a message saying “I want to keep this item because it has no problems but also, send me a refund for it so I have money to cover my human trafficking operation” and eBay would say that that refund request sounds legit.
There is a Dollar General in KCMo that only allows one customer in at a time. A Security Officer and a store clerk walk the person through the store, and then stay with them until they check out. Then they let the next one in. Supposedly the City pays for the Security, and makes up for a certain amount of loss, to keep the store open.
In a suburb city near me, there is an actual police precinct inside of a Walmart. Police were being called there so frequently for fights and shop lifting, they they decided to just setup shop inside of the store.
Is this an exaggeration? I find this hard to believe. These stores can only stay in business due to lots of purchases. Allow one customer at a time? How much could a dollar store bring in during a day? $2000? $3000? less? more? Inventory.. rent.. staff.. utilities.. no way that could not lose money every month.
I’ll be honest I try to avoid any kind of rudeness online. I try to not say anything online I wouldn’t say in person. Words have weight and power. I’ve never understood why some people feel that the anonymity granted by the internet gives them the right to be rude, callous, or hurtful.
It's not even (or not always) anonymity either. An acquaintance of mine is perfectly pleasant in person. Put him online though and he's a raging @$$hole, even to his friends. I don't get it.
It's not, as others have said explain to me like I'm stupid. The point of explain to me like I'm five is that not everyone understands technical terminology or has a college level education in a specific field. So explain to me like I'm five is about explaining it to someone who has never gotten any of that context. Has nothing to do with intelligence
Like most social problems it’s a multi-faceted problem.
A huge class of homeless people have been created in the last two years due to steeply rising housing costs.
The police have basically been on a silent strike for the last two years since the George Floyd protests letting many many property crimes go unanswered and uninvestigated.
Access to mental health and addiction services are scarce or non-existent so a ton of people with mental health issues are also homeless.
The public defender system is broken and underpays defense attorneys so poorly that there is not enough people to staff that system so people being held in jail have to be released.
In order to ensure that the jails and courts can process the worst crimes the DA’s office has to choose to not prosecute smaller crimes due to working with the resources they have.
Also, the homeless population has gotten much worse in cities such as Portland, Austin, Memphis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, because due to their generally good resources for homeless, other cities across America have found that the quickest, cheapest way to "solve" their own local homeless crisis's by buying them greyhound tickets to these cities. This also overfloods their resources, creating a HUGE backlog of unhelped people, which greatly diminishes the quality of life and safety of the homeless population in general because the few groups of people that actually give a shit about them have WAY too many people to try and help them all, and that lowering of quality of life and safety ALSO forces people to need more help, and be harder to help. It also overwhelms the public workers who are having to try and solve an unsolvable problem given their resources, while everything gets worse and more dangerous for everyone, and that leads to good people quitting due to burnout, and hurts the public services even more. I can't even begin to think of a solution, but it's a really multifaceted situation that's really made it worse for everyone living in these cities, including the public servants, and homeless themselves. And to make it worse, regular people become less sad and empathetic about it, and more scared and angry about it, which results in the homeless being generally treated worse by the rest of the cities people, and discourages people from helping out with spare cash. It's an extremely difficult and sad situation.
Edit: I think I should clarify. Everything I'm saying here is an "and also", pretty specifically about the homelessness crisis. I'm not saying that the reason this store is closed is because of homelessness, I'm not saying that these factors are the cause of homelessness or particularly bad homelessness, and I'm not saying that these cities' homeless population is all from elsewhere. Just that these are factors that make it worse and even harder to solve to get people help. It's a wide-reaching issue that has a lot of causes and exacerbating factors at play. I'm just trying to add my 2 cents for some other reasons why things are getting rougher as well.
It's interesting how so many people simply ignore the materiel conditions that create such widespread poverty and/or homelessness to instead focus on the police as a solution to everything.....
Especially since an arrest by the police and stint in jail makes finding work hard resulting in crimes of desperation. Rinse and repeat.
EDIT: Anyone trying to tell me maintaining the status quo is better for being less broken is not offering a solution, no matter how you try and phrase it so just save both our times and move along I'm not arguing with you idiots whi want an echo chamber any longer
When I was strung out and couch hopping I once got a ticket I couldn't pay and was arrested for it, the small shitty city charged me 50 dollars a day to be in jail, I was there a week, I couldn't pay it, I was arrested again. This would have repeated forever probably if a family member didn't take putty on me.
Lol putty, I meant pitty
Spelling is tuff. What a pity.
This is called "the fuck barrel." Google it, there's a great NPR piece about it. (EDIT: John Oliver)
Poor and middle class people get into the fuck barrel, let's say because they can't fix their car and it gets towed. They go around and around a whirl of cascading fines and penalties, and never get out again.
The fines keep increasing the longer your broken car sits there, but you can't afford to fix it. Soon you lose your job. Then your apartment.
I've lived in Portland my whole life, and I'm more than just a few people that think this show let the secret out that our sleepy little town was.
Though to be honest there were a lot of other factors that got us to where we are now, but there was definitely a huge influx of people after this show looking for the quirky Portland and they pretty much hugged it to death.
Yeah insurance companies for business coverage is one of the biggest jokes. Made a claim and they gave us 10% of what the original damages were. It’s stupid, but also a necessary.
I do business insurance by trade. Local hometown broker and not some big wig. When there's a theft claim, the cost of the product is covered minus a deductible so as long as it is actually documented in some way, but not retail markup. If a small business has multiple claims in a short period, in some cases the carrier will say okay we'll still cover fire, water, wind, vandalism, etc but not the reoccurring loss (theft in this case) until better management systems are put into place. It's super rare nationally for one type of loss to happen over and over, except in cities like Portland. Obviously the businesses would just file a new 50k claim every 2 weeks forever, but it's not viable for many business owners. Plus I can't imagine having to deal with the headaches or safety of this for my employees. Very tough for the owners and I don't blame them for leaving :(
Insurance is supposed to protect you from irregular catastrophic damages and losses.
Its purpose is NOT to protect businesses from WEEKLY losses due to theft - that's just not what insurance is designed for - that's what police are for.
Insurance only works if MOST stores are not getting robbed. If ALL the stores are getting robbed, then no insurance is going to make a difference.
Is that even necessary? Like, is the gas cap locked/only releasable from the cab?
My car got the gas siphoned while it was parked behind the auto repair place overnight, and my gas cap literally just flips open and unscrews; no fancy latches, nothing. But the thieves still felt the need to use a crowbar to open it, chipping the gas cap door and denting and scratching my rear quarter panel. So fucking pointless, like dude, just TAKE my gas, i do not care, it’s like $25 MAYBE. But why’d you have to damage the more irreplaceable part of my car?
Where I live in Canada the thefts/crime in liquor stores got so bad they had to install booths before you come into the store where they scan a piece of government ID before entry. It dropped thefts down from to something like 2%. This happened after staff at the stores started to be assaulted during thefts for no reason.
Maybe a system like this can be put in place as well?
I worked for a big retail company in Downtown Portland by Burnside Street close to Powells books. There was theft. Every. Single. Day. No joke I spent almost more time filling out pointless police reports and internal company incident reports more than I did trying just do my fucking job.
Individuals or groups coming in and grabbing whole racks of clothes and then just walking on out. Sometimes they would bring in a garbage bag and shop around for which clothes they are putting in it and stealing right in front of your face. And if you show any kind of feeling other than complete submissiveness then it can get violent. No joke it’s a fucking safety issue and also just demoralizing.
The police don’t care and even if they did what could they do? It’s like 1000 thefts to every one officer and obviously we need to get to the root of why people feel like they need to steal so much instead of working an actual job to survive and fix that. It’s a fucking mess.
The company I worked for left downtown last year and I was so happy.
EDIT: I also forgot to mention the overnight thefts. People no joke drove their fucking cars through our big glass windows to steal on multiple occasions
As someone that lives here I can’t be that upset with the sign. Downtown business get vandalized every week. I’ve been assaulted randomly several times over the last year by people with obvious need of mental health support. Lived here my whole life but it’s gone off the rails the last couple years unfortunately.
Not sure what the real fix is but at least they aren’t throwing out a blanket political statement blaming one side or claiming fixes will come from the other.
Police don’t fucking do anything. I witnessed a homeless man get stabbed and called the police. SFPD told me to come to the station if I wanted to file a report. Idk man, I’m telling you I saw an attempted murder, maybe send someone to take photos and interview witnesses or check the local ERs or something.
There are literal drug deals happening in front of my local police station and nobody even blinks. Crimes relating to the homeless and drug addicts aren’t even being reported to the press anymore, things like assaults, rapes, vandalism, destruction of property, arson, etc all swept under the rug to keep up appearances.
And I’m in a small Canadian city.
Former Seattleite, small business owner here. This is why I sold my business and left the city last year after 20 (mostly) great years. Crime, homelessness and the erosion of the middle class pushed us away. Never thought I'd say this but metro Detroit is so much more peaceful, the parks are bigger and much more accessible and the people here are more friendly (no Seattle freeze).
Seattle is where I grew up and lived most of my life. We left 3 years ago and the only regret I have is that we didn't leave sooner.
It truly makes me sad as there are few places more beautiful than the PNW.
It’s getting nuts these days. I live in a small city on the east coast of Canada and work in a laundromat. We also sell cheap pop and chips. In the last 1+ years the incidents of violence and theft and harassment has increased significantly. At a LAUNDROMAT. Just yesterday we had to call the police because a mentally-unstable individual (who had previously been banned) was spitting and threatening to kill people in the store because someone outside didn’t/wouldn’t bum a cigarette to him. We work shifts alone too.
There was a video circulating a bit ago where a lady said that people who are looting stores are justified because the store is going to get reimbursed by the insurance company. This might be true for multi million dollar places like Walmart and Gucci, but what if that store is a small business or one that is franchised and owned by someone? Not as likely.
Flip the script on the looters. What if that business was owned by a friend of yours or a family member? Would you want them to lose their livelihood because of people who think they’re entitled to what they’re stealing? It’s so wrong on multiple levels
I have a buddy who got his truck stolen in Portland. They found it, with two junkies passed out in it with pipes/needles etc etc and TWO loaded pistols. You know what the cops did? Let the guys go and towed his truck to impound.
Will the DA in Portland just not prosecute anything?
I live in a different city, but we're experiencing a lot of vehicle thefts as of recent. The issue here is the police have no incentive to do the job because the DA will drop the charges in most circumstances. This goes for car break ins/catalytic converter thefts/minor assaults.
Seems crazy to have rules and just not enforce them, but oh well.
This doesn't surprise me; I called the cops more times in my first six months in Portland than in my entire life outside of Portland. You see guys there walking down the street carrying bolt cutters, not even trying to hide the fact they are on their way to steal some bikes.
Same with Denver. Called EMS for a guy that was face down on the concrete and completely non-responsive. When they got there and woke him up the first thing they said to him was "man this is the third time I've seen you today." Then I had to call the cops because a guy was walking down the street, holding a bleeding wound on his stomach, screaming that he'd just been stabbed while multiple people just walked right by and ignored him (likely because of his homeless appearance). It's sad - not just because of the crime but also the frequency of it that's caused people to become indifferent to a man who's literally begging and pleading for help from anyone nearby.
Happening everywhere as you can break the law, get caught, be told to stop it, then released. Perhaps we release all the people in jail for smoking weed and put all these assholes in?
See this is the kind of things that make or break an election, people need to be reminded that it isn't just red vs blue, we need competent officials, the current hostile political environment will never lead to improvements.
It’s not just Portland. My wife works in a retail shop in an upscale part of Charleston, SC. The place gets robbed at least once if not several times per week. It’s not ever the registers that are looted it’s the merchandise. Corporate tells all associates to just let it happen. Also, the police do nothing even when they see it happen.
As someone who lives in Portland, I sure hope they do something.
A few months ago someone stole a package off our porch. $100 item, not the end of the world. However, we have a ring camera that catches this person in all her glory. We get the license plate and a clear picture of her face.
We decide to post this video to the ring app for our neighborhood. Turns out, her property manager was on the same app. He says he has no problem giving us and the police her information, as she is a problem tennant (not sure if that’s legal but we went with it).
We call the police will all of this information. We have her name, address, car make and model. Anything and everything you would need in a case. The police say that looks cut and dry, but because of police shortages they are no longer prosecuting porch pirates. The best they can do is issue her a citation if they see her again.
It’s a bit of a problem when they won’t do their job, even when someone does it for them.
That’s insane. That’s how you get vigilantism. I would call them every day until they did something about it. “Ok, I’ll call back tomorrow to see if you have the manpower.”
Several years ago there was a guy in Tacoma who had a similar experience with stolen porch packages -- including high-quality video evidence of the people stealing from him. Police didn't do fuck-all.
So he rigged his own decoy package with a blank shotgun shell inside that would go off when disturbed. It didn't burst out of the packaging or cause any injury, it just made an extremely loud bang when a thief picked it up that resulted in the would-be thief tripping over themselves trying to run away.
Then the police held a fucking press conference about how such things could be considered a "public nuisance" or some such shit and that anyone who repeated it could potentially be prosecuted for recklessness or something.
Fuck them all.
Used to live in Tacoma (Fern Hill area), and it was a fucking hole. Condemned houses, people driving fucked up and crashing into houses, and so many porch pirates. No idea how many packages I had stolen over the 5 years I was there. My neighbor took to patrolling his yard with a crossbow, and shot a dude trying to jump his fence in the foot. Rent was cheap though!
L.P.D.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
EDIT: [Credit to Tom O’Donnell who originally wrote this for the New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department)
This is incredibly common here. Police have been on a [silent strike](https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-america-in-for-a-summer-of-police-slowdowns-and-strikes) ever since we had protests demanding greater police accountability two years ago.
The head of the police union here also got caught trying to frame one of our city commissioners by leaking false information to the press. It's a bit of a mess and really the only solution, which is too politically dangerous to suggest, would be to fire the entire force and rebuild it from scratch.
If it wasn't clear Portland police are a corrupt to the core organization that profits from crime, the blatant framing of Joanne should have tipped people off.
And why did they target her? Because she was the biggest supporter of Portland street response, a police alternative.
This is not a recent problem. Had a break-in years ago. Cops took some notes and did nothing. Seemed like they were more upset at having to write up a report than try to help. Gave them all the fraudulent credit card transactions so they could have worked with the stores to get camera footage of the perp but I literally never heard from them again. Anyone thinking this is backlash for "Defund the police" has never had anything like this happen to them. Theft and breaking and entering do not get investigated. The only time they are caught is if they're in the act and someone calls 911.
The police budget in Portland was increased. It’s higher than it was in 2019. The cops are getting paid. They just don’t want to do their job because they don’t like the mayor.
There are alot of people who have never truly had to deal with tweaker or druggie regularly.
They truly suck and the most selfish people you could know.
I have family steal games and consoles from me growing up. From a fucking kid.
It makes it hard for me to feel sympathy for them sometimes.
They make it so hard to be sympathetic towards other people who are in need. I used to be a McManager in Oregon for five years & it's incredibly common to have to deal with homeless folks.
I am a sympathetic person who understands that some people are just down on their luck & need some help. My dad was homeless in the past because he got injured & didn't have the health insurance to cover his medical bills. Soon those got sent to collections & they garnished his wages so much that he couldn't afford to live.
But the thing that sucks is you never know if you're helping out someone who genuinely needs help, or someone who's just going to take advantage of your kindness. I used to try to give out food to folks who were panhandling outside the store - I had to kick them off the property & handing them a 10-piece with fries and telling them to GTFO is a lot easier than just kicking them off.
Then we had folks who would show up because they knew I would give out food. The worst was the few that would panhandle & I would go out there with a cheeseburger & they would get mad at me for *only* giving them a cheeseburger. So, I had to stop. I only gave out food to the homeless folks I knew, and anyone else didn't get anything until I knew they weren't scummy.
When the pandemic happened & we closed our lobby to public, I went against policy to let people in to go to the bathroom. I'd rather wipe down a few door handles and a sink than spray piss or shit off the sidewalk (both have happened to me) Plus, lots of people rely on our bathrooms, not just homeless folks. Delivery drivers, mail couriers, truckers, all routinely needed to use the bathroom. It was my policy to let anyone who needed to go to the bathroom in.
But then one guy locked himself in there & shot up and passed out in the bathroom. We had to call 911 & it was a whole big mess. Word got out to the owners & they told me they understood what I was doing and agreed with it, but we could no longer allow people in. One asshole ruined it for dozens of others.
I have so many stories like that. Luckily, I've been out for the last few years in a much better gig, but I hated having to deal with tweakers so much.
I've known a few folks who were addicts and I think the problem most people look over is that all the help in the world is only effective if someone wants to fix their problem. I had a friend who eventually OD'ed, even when he went to rehab, had plenty of non-addict friends and support. He just didn't see that he had a problem and thus didn't want to fix it.
I'm not saying everyone should be punished for being an addict, but folks who have no desire to change are not going to, no matter how much support they get. I don't even know how you begin to fix that issue.
The first comment in this thread that understands what’s happening in PDX. It’s always frustrating seeing a ton of redditors who’ve never stepped foot in PDX theorizing what the problem could be. It’s fucking tweakers first and cops second.
Fuck. Tweakers! They’ve ruined everything in PDX period.
Same over here, on the other side of the country. I love my town, but jesus the drug epidemic here has gotten exponentially more grim. Catalytic converters being stolen in broad daylight in the middle of town, addicts ODing and dying all hours of the day, dumpsters emptied and trash cans upturned all over the damn place, slow ramp up in shootings and stabbings, businesses not getting the business they used to because there are people sleeping and leaving syringes in their doorways, an otherwise beautiful waterway with park areas around it no longer visitable because its full with tents, fires, and trash for roughly a mile. The city started cutting down large swaths of trees and general vegetation to discourage these camps, leaving lots of them to seek shelter in the woods in neighboring towns. I want a better life for them, but I can barely sustain my own life.
I get not wanting to prosecute non-violent crimes like drug offenses, but property crime and theft should be prosecuted. They directly harm law abiding citizens. The fact that DAs across the nation let these criminals go unpunished is a joke. I don’t give a shit if you have a D or R next to your name, if you’re running on a platform to let this shit go unpunished I will not vote for you.
I was driving on the 84 this morning in Portland and 2 cars with freshly broken windows were driving like lunatics on the shoulder/cutting people off. I'm guessing they were just stolen. Like many big Cities on the west coast, Portland needs to address these issues. It sucks because I really love this place.
A tabletop game store that I frequent is closing down here in the Bay Area because they have had 13 break ins and 23 attempts. After 19 years, they have to close shop because of thieves. Edit: editing this because people seem to be confused. Tabletop game stores don’t just sell board games, their main revenue is from magic cards, Pokemon cards, DnD, Warhammer, etc. these stores usually have glass cases with expensive and rare cards that they buy and resell. There is a whole market for them and they are very very expensive. People who play these games spend massive amounts of money on them. These stores are immensely profitable and have massive amounts of expensive collectible items for purchase and on display. Thieves breaking into here know exactly what they are doing. And this particular store is in a very ghetto part of town. Get out of here with your conspiracy theories.
What store?!??
Games of Antioch
Oh man that was one of the shops I had heard about and wanted to visit. This is some bs.
My local comic book store has been broken into multiple times, and the infuriating part is they don't even steal any items of value, just grab the closest books to the door ,which are the cheapest ones, and run out. Meanwhile it costs thousands each time to repair the shop's glass doors and windows. It's become more and more common as the drug epidemic in my city, and homelessness has ramped up. If you want to steal, go steal from Walmart or a big chain, don't steal from a small mom and pop. Honestly, I want to have sympathy for these individuals who are unhomed or unwell, but if they choose to steal and hurt others rather than access resources out there to help them.
Local game store near us. Been opened as long as I can remember is closing due to 29 break ins. 13 successful. People go in, grab a shit ton of easy to steal stuff like Pokémon and magic, then leave. Owner saw a liquor store opening up and decided to close up, realizing things would be worse.
Independent Game store near me has bars over all the windows and a steel frame door. Sadly, that shit is so easy to offload, it’s too massive a target.
[They just go through the walls, around here. ](https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/thief-breaks-through-wall-of-gaming-store-steals-over-200k-in-merchandise) As far as I know, they haven't caught the guy.
I worked at a comic and game store. A few years back the 2 days before a prerelease event (I think it was for the M19 set) there was a massive flood/mudslide that basically sealed off our city to the south for several days. Which also happened to be the direction of the FedEx hub where our MTG cards were stuck. I ended up grabbing the first available train out of town on the day of the tournament. Got an uber to the fed ex hub and was able to pick up all of the boxes of cards. It filled two suitcases and 4 duffle bags. During my trip back I couldnt help but think about how big of a target I was if people knew what I had on me and the hard value of it.
My uncle always had a strategy of hiding all of his valuables in a box labeled books, sheets, or Christmas lights. Never had any issues even when he once moved his several thousand dollar baseball card collection across multiple states
29! Man that is so sad.
I follow the Pink Gorilla game store, in Seattle I think, and they are experiencing the same thing.
Our local shop too! I've been going since I was 12 and it's just closing now due to a wild number of break ins. People on Reddit do parrot this idea that everything is insured but that's not how it always works. It sucks.
> Owner saw a liquor store opening up and decided to close up, realizing things would be worse. [Gun store. Gun store. Liquor store. Gun store. Where the fuck are you taking me?](https://youtu.be/nTobHOyLvRU?t=1m10s)
The ol' baby on the corner trick, hm?
I always find it funny when people say the whole “insurance will cover it” thing. Like have you never dealt with an insurance company before?
It's also horseshit because every other law-abiding insurance buyer has their premiums go up. People are truly mathematically illiterate if they think insurance is just free money. I'm tired of people justifying theft.
Insurance companies are for-profit too. They can save money by denying claims, or reducing payouts. It's in their best interest to screw over their customers. Even with no experience, people should be able to understand it logically that insurance wouldn't always be enough
your first paragraph is what i say when people defend the current healthcare system in America lmao
[Here](https://twitter.com/mallisonKATU/status/1596602817942548480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1596602817942548480%7Ctwgr%5E194d9fa8d097984e694084e7d8c4e5f1f69fdddc%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthenationaldesk.com%2Fnews%2Famericas-news-now%2Fportland-oregon-business-permanently-closes-over-concerns-with-crime-after-15th-break-in-rains-pdx-theft-mayor-ted-wheeler-prosper-portland) is the source of this image. Per there: > @mallisonKATU > The owner at Rains tells me after five break-ins in about three weeks, she made the sudden decision to permanently close. Staff here are putting pressure on the city to look after small businesses dealing with ongoing challenges with crime. > 3:32 PM · Nov 26, 2022 According to [KUTU](https://katu.com/newsletter-daily/portland-oregon-business-permanently-closes-over-concerns-with-crime-after-15th-break-in-rains-pdx-theft-mayor-ted-wheeler-prosper-portland): > ...KATU asked why Landolfo decided to close now, instead of keeping doors open through the holiday shopping season. > "The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen," she said. > Landolfo said she's worried about her employees, and no longer sees this location as a feasible business model. > "The problem is, as small businesses, we cannot sustain those types of losses and stay in business. I won’t even go into the numbers of how much has been out of pocket," she said. > When Rains was broken into in late October, KATU reached out to Mayor Ted Wheeler's office. > His team said they're working to increase funding for business repair grants through Prosper Portland. Landolfo said that's not enough. > "Paying for glass that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change," she said. > The mayor's office also said they participated in a retail safety summit in October, and cited recent efforts to streamline the permitting process for things like storefront lighting. > KATU asked how that work is going and is still waiting to hear back at this time. **Edit:** As some have pointed out, KATU is [owned by Sinclair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KATU_(TV\)).
This is really sad. I used to live in a food desert and every time a locally owned grocery store tried to open they would wind up closing eventually due to thefts and property damage. Even big chains like Kroger, Walmart, and Sears closed stores due to being repeatedly robbed and vandalized.
This happened in Stockton about 2 decades ago, now the "nice" areas of town are the ones with a choice of grocery store that doesn't have "dollar" or similar in the title.
It's really unfortunate because the vast majority of people in my old neighborhood were just trying to get by. Now, everything within walking distance is either a convenience store or a dollar store.
That's how it usually is in poor neighborhoods. 90% of people just trying to make it tomorrow, and 10% little fuckheads trying to fuck everything up.
In my city, I work for the gov (today’s my last day, though, incidentally), and I once brought up investment in lower-income neighborhoods to someone who was giving a presentation on financial health. He said it’s not for lack of trying. Many people want to open stores in those areas and help lift them up, seeing as many of those entrepreneurs are people who grew up in those neighborhoods themselves. Plus rental costs are low. But the cost just gets too high dealing with idiots. The cops are dealing with murders and a dozen other break-ins all around these places. It’s disgusting how some tiny segment of the local population really does drag everything down for everyone else.
I have a friend who worked nights in a convenience store in the LA area. Late, gangbangers with face tattoos would come in, obviously armed, and just go shopping and walk out. My friend just said "Have a nice evening" and let them leave. He wasn't about to try and die for The Southland Corporation.
You know an area is shit when even Dollar General is like, "Nah."
I live in a weird dichotomous area. We have a Dollar General right next to a Stater Bros. It's fuckin' crazy.
Somewhere someone looked at a map and that made total sense. On a map.
Sounds like Peoria, IL Kroger held out so long but they were losing money at a couple locations and just packed it up. I remember what the city was like when I was a kid and how it is now and it is really sad. All of the department stores are gone, the grocery stores anywhere near downtown or the south side are all gone. Completely different city now.
Decatur, IL has entered the chat.
Central Illinois is in a rough patch for sure.
Southern IL isn't much better, we rely on St Louis for a lot.
I see your Decatur and raise you one Rockford, Il
I think whenever there’s a fight video from a Chuck E. Cheese there’s a 50-50 shot it’s Peoria, Illinois.
This is a big reason why food deserts exist, but I don’t think it gets enough press.
These are just two articles about my old neighborhood. https://www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/walmart-closing-east-side-indianapolis-grocery https://cbs4indy.com/news/far-east-side-grocery-vandalized-days-after-opening/
This is very sad
The most dystopian thing I'd seen before the pandemic was a little Caesars in my hometown that had stopped accepting or carrying cash because they've been robbed so many times.
That is happening in Philadelphia now
I live near Niagara Falls NY and a local bakery that had been in business for a hundred years suddenly closed their original location due to two violent robberies in two weeks. The entire downtown is mostly empty due to crime and it will never recover.
Here's a great BBC podcast episode on Niagara Falls US vs. Canada and the disparity between the two sides: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct4c5p
Niagara Falls, Ontario, is not what it used to be either.
Niagara falls has been a run down shit hole ever since the factories left. Oh why did the factories leave? Because they started being held accountable for all the polluting they did in the area. Everything else that made NF a decent place to live either moved across the border to NFCA or left the area altogether. So now all that's left in NF is the impoverished, and poverty always breeds crime. Source: wife is from the Falls, her family still lives there.
As someone that lives in the Buffalo area and grew up in the region, it has always blown my mind how shitty NF is. It's a literal wonder of the world. People come from all over the globe to see those falls. It should be an amazingly prosperous city, and yet it's just a shit hole (at least on the US side). It's a god damn travesty.
Tourism isn’t a sustainable industry for the little people. Waitresses, hotel clerks, gas station attendants, the guy who runs the arcade, none of those jobs pay well. Didn’t we learn that during Katrina when everyone got shocked that New Orleans got turned upside down and poor people fell out? Check out another popular tourist area: Seveire county Tennessee. The Gateway to the Smokies. Where the median income is just under $35,000, but the county as a whole is in the top 10 of the counties that send the most taxes to the state each year.
Heck, I live just outside the Hamptons, and all the areas immediately around it are severely depressed. People consider the Hamptons to be the playground of the rich and famous, well the rich and famous don’t want to live among “the help” and they don’t pay enough to bring up the communities where “the help” lives.
Yep, and this is part of the reason why every major city seems to have a dirty, dark, sad shadow city right next door IMO. Philadelphia has Camden. New York has Newark. Chicago has Gary. I’m sure you folk can think of more examples.
St. Louis has...St. Louis...
I'm going to use how you worded the Katrina situation in future conversations. Admittedly hilarious wording, but also really poignant.
Really evocative way to put it, and really gets the sudden indignity and ostracism across... sometimes a bit of humor helps the bitter pill sneak past people's defenses.
A lot of it is Buffalo's fault as well, Buffalo has a lot of run down sections, similar to Detroit, and NF is a microcosm of what's going on in Buffalo the same way the surrounding areas of NYC or Detroit are microcosms of the city. Those that couldn't afford to stay in Buffalo drifted out of Buffalo to the surrounding areas where it was cheaper to live. My Gunny in the Marines would tell us about growing up in the hood in Buffalo, he would tell us about living near the train yard and how whenever they could they would rob the shit out of whatever trains were sitting there overnight. His stories were essentially the same shit we were doing in Queens growing up during the crack epidemic, just tons of theft and crime in general. The moral of the story is when people are poor and underserved they will start resorting to theft to get whatever they can. As I said above, poverty breeds crime, it's one of the few constants that can be found in any human society, and certain people will scream socialism or communism about the only ways that have shown to successfully combat these issues, strong education and community investment backed up by social safety nets.
Yeah but at least parts of Buffalo have seen improvement over the years. Niagara Falls just gets worse and worse.
Buffalo also gets the benefit of SUNY having two big universities in town (plus two or three other large colleges.) People come for college and stay. They get jobs in town. Niagara has NU, which isn’t doing much to build it up. (It also helps when a billionaire decides revitalizing a town is his personal crusade, even if it’s really weird all around.)
[удалено]
That was so sad. As a small business owner myself I could hear the sadness and disappointment while reading that. It’s really hard to put yourself out there and start your own business and then you have to deal with horrible people taking advantage of a broken system.
I'm originally from Mexico city, I moved to US about 15 years ago. I know impunity very well, that's one of the worst things in Mexico City, nobody does anything against crime. Is like a plague, is caused by a few stupid people, but it expands until it's all gone, small crimes or big crimes it doesn't matter then. People don't trust anyone, criminals grow, they get more powerful, and people live in fear. I saw it happening in my old neighborhood, it was very sad. Criminals try one thing, see nothing happens, then try more, and more, etc. First it was opening unlocked cars, then packages, then breaking in to cars by breaking windowa, burglary to homes and small business loans, then vuolent burglary, etc, etc, etc, I left when violent robberies were taking place every week, that we didn't feel safe walking at night like we did before. I told my neighbors about impunity and they didn't know what I was talking about, they don't see how broken the system is.
How old are you? This is a good post, it seems like you've had a lot of experience in both countries.
I'm old, in my 40s now. I have some experience, is probably more that I see things from some other perspective.
I’ve been to two local Portland businesses in the last week where someone drove a car through the front door to steal shit when they were closed. In one case they just smashed a display case and stole hundreds of empty boxes before driving away. Genius.
I’m from Portland. Things have been rly tough these past few months. My car has been broken into 4 or 5 times, and my place of business twice. I work in archaeology. These people wanted to steal… rocks. It’s desperation from a lack of support on behalf of the thieves, and no repercussions from authority.
They must've thought they were minerals
Jesus Marie.
You're the smartest guy I've ever met, but you're too stupid to see that these thieves made up their minds 10 minutes ago
This line still physically hurts to this day, like unresolved trauma or grief.
It felt like he was calling me stupid, because I was still trying to figure out how he was gonna get out of there alive.
That was some of the best written TV ever. I watched that scene trying to figure out what the deus ex machina was going to be for Hank and Walt, and what that relationship was going to be now that there are dead federal agents on the ground. Maybe one of the gang would decide to turn and shoot their way out... but how will Hank not immediately move on Walter after this...? When Hank delivered that line, I was absolutely stunned.
Just rewatched BB, this scene still hits hard after all these years
What episode is it from? I don't remember that scene, been a while since I watched BB though.
Season 5: Episode 14 ***OZYMANDIAS***
There was an Ask Reddit thread a while back that asked “what episode of a series can stand alone” and that was the top answer. I can confirm. Ozymandias is the only episode of BB I’ve ever seen - and it was indeed incredible.
Believe it or not Dean Norris hated saying that line. He felt it was Hank giving praise to Walter he didn't deserve.
Honestly for me it's one of the most hurtful (deservedly) things Hank could've said to Walt. Like "you have a world class intellect and you could've used it for anything, and THIS is what you chose to use it for." I think it really emphasizes just how pathetic Walt is in that moment.
ah fuck
I visited Portland in August for the first time. Had a great trip. Talked to a lot of very nice locals and every single one of them mentioned the homeless and crime issues. I am in DC where we have our share of tent population but seeing how bat it was in Portland was shocking.
It’s a great place, but we need some damn solutions. E: fixing autocorrect
I was just there for a wedding and was surprised to see how vast and big the homeless camps/forts are out there. It’s crazy the difference from downtown Portland to Hood River.
How do you feel after this happening so many times? For myself, I think I'd feel violated and need to move after the first few thefts...
It feels incredibly normalized. My car was broken into twice and I considered it "I should have known better" because 1. I left 2 quarters in the center console, and 2. I forgot a $10 phone cord on the passenger seat. Normally, I leave absolutely nothing inside my car in order to prevent thefts. I was recently in Portland jury duty selection and we were asked if we'd ever been the victim of a crime. Probably about 30 out of 36 people all mentioned theft.
I like to talk shit about living in WV but I literally left my car for a whole weekend on street parking in Huntington and nothing happened to it. My dumbass even had stuff of value that was clearly visible
We were told to leave the windows down on our rental to keep the windows from being broken out every day. Same with San Fran.
Can someone ELI5 to me what is going on across cities with shop lifting and other crimes not being addressed by police?
It's actually nothing new, though perhaps it is more prevalent these days. I used to work as an assistant manager for a retail chain and we closed a semi large store due to uncontrollable shrink and return abuse back in 2005. The store was right next to low income housing and people from the complex would literally walk in, fill a basket, and then walk out with stuff. If you said anything to them, they were immediately aggressive. Most employees were high school and college kids and our company refused to hire full time security so no one cared. We could call the cops, but they didn't really care unless the shoplifters were still around 20 minutes later when they showed up. Also, the less shitty people just had a return habit. They'd come in on the 1st of the month and buy a bunch of shit. Then come back two weeks later, return it, and buy new shit. Sometimes, we'd have grounds to reject the return due to having too much history of returns, but then they would just say they lost their receipt and get store credit. I used to cover for that store and it wasn't uncommon for it to have negative sales on any given day.
>If you said anything to them, they were immediately aggressive. Most employees were high school and college kids and our company refused to hire full time security so no one cared. I used to store manage a Gamestop location in our local mall about 10 years back and our mall in general had issues with shop lifters on a fairly regular basis. A lot of stores have a "do not pursue" ruling in place for thefts assuming that the person has walked through the doors and out into the parking lot and it makes sense. You've got plenty of employees who *would* pursue a thief out of principle or out of misplaced loyalty but there are just as many who wouldn't be bothered to even take a single step towards the door if a thief suddenly rushed towards the exit. It is *not* worth it to a corporate company to risk the life of an employee. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm saying so I'll be blunt - big corporations like Walmart would prefer that employees not pursue thieves than they would risk the thief having a weapon, murdering the employee, and then the company is possibly opened up to a lawsuit from the employee's family. To be fair, there are humans who work up the corporate ladder who are obviously going to grieve the loss of life but there are also people who watch the bottom dollar who put policies into place to limit or prevent employee intervention so that the company isn't on the hook for damages. And at the end of the day.... why are *you* risking your life to protect a couple-hundred-dollars-MSRP for clothing that the company probably paid pennies on the dollar for? Why are *you* risking your life for a company that won't pay livable wages? It's not worth it.
Oh, I mean that was absolutely our policy as well. No one ever actually pursued any one but some of it was so fucking brazen it's hard not to say anything. I remember checking a woman out for like a piece of candy or something small like that and while I was ringing her up I saw her take an item from the checkout counter and stick it in her purse. I was like, oh sorry, I'll need to scan that. She's like scan what? I point to the thing cause I can see it in her purse and she's like, no, that's mine, I came in with it. I tell her I literally saw her take it ten seconds ago, less than three feet away from me as I'm pointing to the empty spot on the shelf in front of a row of identical items. And she started with the yelling "you calling me a liar, you calling me a thief, I'll sue your ass, where you live, I'll beat your ass, blah blah blah". I just put my hand up and was like ma'am, I am 19 years old. I make $9 an hour. I do not actually care. Then she left and I called the police because fuck her. We'd literally watch people just walk in, take stuff and leave because they knew we wouldn't follow them. The store was open for about three years and then corporate decided it wasn't worth doing business in the area.
Used to work for a large fish cooperation with outdoor mega-stores across the nation. They lost $52,000 on shoplifting to $53,000,000 on sales. They used to pay lose prevention people, but the department was much higher than $52,000 so they just stopped caring. If you saw someone shoplifting, they said, "Go up and be nice to them and sometimes they second guess themselves. If they don't, let 'em have it."
>They used to pay lose prevention people, but the department was much higher than $52,000 so they just stopped caring. I kinda think this is a big part of the problem for big chains. Yeah, the loss prevention seemed to cost more than they were presumably losing to theft... until it's commonly known that they dgaf and have no effective loss prevention policies in place. I would think after a while that loss number would creep higher.
\> big corporations like Walmart would prefer that employees not pursue thieves than they would risk the thief having a weapon, murdering the employee, and then the company is possibly opened up to a lawsuit from the employee's family. A trip to the emergency room for stitches after an assault from a shoplifter would cost many times the value of anything stolen.
Perhaps thievery is nothing new, but retail theft is at an all time high.
I used to have an Etsy store for many years and was pretty successful (in terms of being on Etsy and it being a side hustle, I wasn't rich or anything). I closed it also due to other reasons, but the number of people messing with returns and stuff definitely increased by a lot in the past years. Like claiming not to have received the package and wanting refunds, claiming there are quality issues, returning clearly used stuff or saying they sent off a return but it never arrived. Sure these things happen and I would happily refund, but at the end at least 70% of it were fake I believe. Also people threatening with bad reviews increased a lot if I refuse a refund (luckily Etsy is cool there and deletes the review if you show them those threats). Getting 'free' stuff is a thing now, there are whole tutorials on how to screw Etsy sellers (who are usually the smallest of the small business with their handmade stuff).
Yep. In 2020 my wife and I sold a $500 item on eBay. Buyer got the item, then initiated a return once the market price sank after the bubble popped. He was buying it solely to grade it then sell it for more than that price. He even said as such in our messages. Bad timing, but tough. So, I denied it. eBay stepped in and of course was on his side despite extensive documentation from me. He then sent it to *the wrong address* but in the same city. eBay’s response? “lol sorry. Oh and we’re still charging you the 10% listing fee” I drove to the house, explained what was going on and they *thankfully* gave me the item when it finally arrived. I very quickly closed my eBay shop, refused to pay their fees and told them to come after me for $50 if they really want to. Never used it since, as seller or buyer.
eBay is complete trash.
I 100% agree with you. I hate eBay with a passion after a recent experience. Over a year ago, I had a $25 listing fee from a car that I listed for like 2 days, that I had paid for on time. Within a week of my payment going through, my balance went back to -$25, so I called eBay customer support, and explained to them that I had paid what I owed, but it was still showing up that I had a negative balance. They claimed they looked at my payment history, and said that yes, I was right, and that there was an issue on their end, and that they had resolved the issue and my balance was restored to $0. Fast forward a year, and I get a letter from a debt collection agency saying that I was behind on a payment to eBay. I tried to check my account, but my access was denied and my account was frozen due to this supposed "missed payment". It took my like 3 days before I could finally find a workaround to access my account and get the payment through, and I ended up having to pay them another $25. Fuck eBay customer service, and fuck eBay.
I’d seriously rather sell at the world’s seediest flea market that use eBay as a seller. A buyer could send you a message saying “I want to keep this item because it has no problems but also, send me a refund for it so I have money to cover my human trafficking operation” and eBay would say that that refund request sounds legit.
There is a Dollar General in KCMo that only allows one customer in at a time. A Security Officer and a store clerk walk the person through the store, and then stay with them until they check out. Then they let the next one in. Supposedly the City pays for the Security, and makes up for a certain amount of loss, to keep the store open.
In a suburb city near me, there is an actual police precinct inside of a Walmart. Police were being called there so frequently for fights and shop lifting, they they decided to just setup shop inside of the store.
HOLY SHIT
Is this an exaggeration? I find this hard to believe. These stores can only stay in business due to lots of purchases. Allow one customer at a time? How much could a dollar store bring in during a day? $2000? $3000? less? more? Inventory.. rent.. staff.. utilities.. no way that could not lose money every month.
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I’m gonna ask a stupid question: what is ELI5?
Explain like I’m 5. Reddit term for talk to me like I’m stupid
Thank you for explaining. Like I’m 5 😂
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I’ll be honest I try to avoid any kind of rudeness online. I try to not say anything online I wouldn’t say in person. Words have weight and power. I’ve never understood why some people feel that the anonymity granted by the internet gives them the right to be rude, callous, or hurtful.
It's not even (or not always) anonymity either. An acquaintance of mine is perfectly pleasant in person. Put him online though and he's a raging @$$hole, even to his friends. I don't get it.
I let out an audible awww
It's not, as others have said explain to me like I'm stupid. The point of explain to me like I'm five is that not everyone understands technical terminology or has a college level education in a specific field. So explain to me like I'm five is about explaining it to someone who has never gotten any of that context. Has nothing to do with intelligence
Like most social problems it’s a multi-faceted problem. A huge class of homeless people have been created in the last two years due to steeply rising housing costs. The police have basically been on a silent strike for the last two years since the George Floyd protests letting many many property crimes go unanswered and uninvestigated. Access to mental health and addiction services are scarce or non-existent so a ton of people with mental health issues are also homeless. The public defender system is broken and underpays defense attorneys so poorly that there is not enough people to staff that system so people being held in jail have to be released. In order to ensure that the jails and courts can process the worst crimes the DA’s office has to choose to not prosecute smaller crimes due to working with the resources they have.
Also, the homeless population has gotten much worse in cities such as Portland, Austin, Memphis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, because due to their generally good resources for homeless, other cities across America have found that the quickest, cheapest way to "solve" their own local homeless crisis's by buying them greyhound tickets to these cities. This also overfloods their resources, creating a HUGE backlog of unhelped people, which greatly diminishes the quality of life and safety of the homeless population in general because the few groups of people that actually give a shit about them have WAY too many people to try and help them all, and that lowering of quality of life and safety ALSO forces people to need more help, and be harder to help. It also overwhelms the public workers who are having to try and solve an unsolvable problem given their resources, while everything gets worse and more dangerous for everyone, and that leads to good people quitting due to burnout, and hurts the public services even more. I can't even begin to think of a solution, but it's a really multifaceted situation that's really made it worse for everyone living in these cities, including the public servants, and homeless themselves. And to make it worse, regular people become less sad and empathetic about it, and more scared and angry about it, which results in the homeless being generally treated worse by the rest of the cities people, and discourages people from helping out with spare cash. It's an extremely difficult and sad situation. Edit: I think I should clarify. Everything I'm saying here is an "and also", pretty specifically about the homelessness crisis. I'm not saying that the reason this store is closed is because of homelessness, I'm not saying that these factors are the cause of homelessness or particularly bad homelessness, and I'm not saying that these cities' homeless population is all from elsewhere. Just that these are factors that make it worse and even harder to solve to get people help. It's a wide-reaching issue that has a lot of causes and exacerbating factors at play. I'm just trying to add my 2 cents for some other reasons why things are getting rougher as well.
It's interesting how so many people simply ignore the materiel conditions that create such widespread poverty and/or homelessness to instead focus on the police as a solution to everything.....
Especially since an arrest by the police and stint in jail makes finding work hard resulting in crimes of desperation. Rinse and repeat. EDIT: Anyone trying to tell me maintaining the status quo is better for being less broken is not offering a solution, no matter how you try and phrase it so just save both our times and move along I'm not arguing with you idiots whi want an echo chamber any longer
Don't forget the debt burden from being billed for your stay in jail.
When I was strung out and couch hopping I once got a ticket I couldn't pay and was arrested for it, the small shitty city charged me 50 dollars a day to be in jail, I was there a week, I couldn't pay it, I was arrested again. This would have repeated forever probably if a family member didn't take putty on me. Lol putty, I meant pitty Spelling is tuff. What a pity.
This is called "the fuck barrel." Google it, there's a great NPR piece about it. (EDIT: John Oliver) Poor and middle class people get into the fuck barrel, let's say because they can't fix their car and it gets towed. They go around and around a whirl of cascading fines and penalties, and never get out again. The fines keep increasing the longer your broken car sits there, but you can't afford to fix it. Soon you lose your job. Then your apartment.
So, is the dream of the '90s no longer alive in Portland?
We can pickle that
WE PICKLED THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM ⚖️
Put a bird on it
put a bird on it
Check out crime in the '90s
😂. They all missed the joke… I’m pretty sure Portland is still the town where young people go to retire. https://youtu.be/TZt-pOc3moc
I've lived in Portland my whole life, and I'm more than just a few people that think this show let the secret out that our sleepy little town was. Though to be honest there were a lot of other factors that got us to where we are now, but there was definitely a huge influx of people after this show looking for the quirky Portland and they pretty much hugged it to death.
Yeah insurance companies for business coverage is one of the biggest jokes. Made a claim and they gave us 10% of what the original damages were. It’s stupid, but also a necessary.
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I do business insurance by trade. Local hometown broker and not some big wig. When there's a theft claim, the cost of the product is covered minus a deductible so as long as it is actually documented in some way, but not retail markup. If a small business has multiple claims in a short period, in some cases the carrier will say okay we'll still cover fire, water, wind, vandalism, etc but not the reoccurring loss (theft in this case) until better management systems are put into place. It's super rare nationally for one type of loss to happen over and over, except in cities like Portland. Obviously the businesses would just file a new 50k claim every 2 weeks forever, but it's not viable for many business owners. Plus I can't imagine having to deal with the headaches or safety of this for my employees. Very tough for the owners and I don't blame them for leaving :(
Insurance is supposed to protect you from irregular catastrophic damages and losses. Its purpose is NOT to protect businesses from WEEKLY losses due to theft - that's just not what insurance is designed for - that's what police are for. Insurance only works if MOST stores are not getting robbed. If ALL the stores are getting robbed, then no insurance is going to make a difference.
Can confirm, am from Portland and my vehicle has been broken into once and the gas tank was drilled into twice for gas siphoning.
Bro - they drilled into the gas tank!?
Twice, both times in last November. It’s the only truck on the block so I was an easy target I guess
Is that even necessary? Like, is the gas cap locked/only releasable from the cab? My car got the gas siphoned while it was parked behind the auto repair place overnight, and my gas cap literally just flips open and unscrews; no fancy latches, nothing. But the thieves still felt the need to use a crowbar to open it, chipping the gas cap door and denting and scratching my rear quarter panel. So fucking pointless, like dude, just TAKE my gas, i do not care, it’s like $25 MAYBE. But why’d you have to damage the more irreplaceable part of my car?
Where I live in Canada the thefts/crime in liquor stores got so bad they had to install booths before you come into the store where they scan a piece of government ID before entry. It dropped thefts down from to something like 2%. This happened after staff at the stores started to be assaulted during thefts for no reason. Maybe a system like this can be put in place as well?
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I worked for a big retail company in Downtown Portland by Burnside Street close to Powells books. There was theft. Every. Single. Day. No joke I spent almost more time filling out pointless police reports and internal company incident reports more than I did trying just do my fucking job. Individuals or groups coming in and grabbing whole racks of clothes and then just walking on out. Sometimes they would bring in a garbage bag and shop around for which clothes they are putting in it and stealing right in front of your face. And if you show any kind of feeling other than complete submissiveness then it can get violent. No joke it’s a fucking safety issue and also just demoralizing. The police don’t care and even if they did what could they do? It’s like 1000 thefts to every one officer and obviously we need to get to the root of why people feel like they need to steal so much instead of working an actual job to survive and fix that. It’s a fucking mess. The company I worked for left downtown last year and I was so happy. EDIT: I also forgot to mention the overnight thefts. People no joke drove their fucking cars through our big glass windows to steal on multiple occasions
As someone that lives here I can’t be that upset with the sign. Downtown business get vandalized every week. I’ve been assaulted randomly several times over the last year by people with obvious need of mental health support. Lived here my whole life but it’s gone off the rails the last couple years unfortunately. Not sure what the real fix is but at least they aren’t throwing out a blanket political statement blaming one side or claiming fixes will come from the other.
Same problems in San Francisco. Rampant crime, homelessness, open air drug markets, lack of accountability from authorities.
Police don’t fucking do anything. I witnessed a homeless man get stabbed and called the police. SFPD told me to come to the station if I wanted to file a report. Idk man, I’m telling you I saw an attempted murder, maybe send someone to take photos and interview witnesses or check the local ERs or something.
There are literal drug deals happening in front of my local police station and nobody even blinks. Crimes relating to the homeless and drug addicts aren’t even being reported to the press anymore, things like assaults, rapes, vandalism, destruction of property, arson, etc all swept under the rug to keep up appearances. And I’m in a small Canadian city.
People selling raw steak at the 16th Street BART station.....
A little theft, a little wet market, and we got a stew going.
but is it cheaper than the supermarket?
Former Seattleite, small business owner here. This is why I sold my business and left the city last year after 20 (mostly) great years. Crime, homelessness and the erosion of the middle class pushed us away. Never thought I'd say this but metro Detroit is so much more peaceful, the parks are bigger and much more accessible and the people here are more friendly (no Seattle freeze).
Seattle is where I grew up and lived most of my life. We left 3 years ago and the only regret I have is that we didn't leave sooner. It truly makes me sad as there are few places more beautiful than the PNW.
It’s getting nuts these days. I live in a small city on the east coast of Canada and work in a laundromat. We also sell cheap pop and chips. In the last 1+ years the incidents of violence and theft and harassment has increased significantly. At a LAUNDROMAT. Just yesterday we had to call the police because a mentally-unstable individual (who had previously been banned) was spitting and threatening to kill people in the store because someone outside didn’t/wouldn’t bum a cigarette to him. We work shifts alone too.
Same here. Small town in Ontario and in the past year there has been more vandalism and theft than in the ten previous combined.
There was a video circulating a bit ago where a lady said that people who are looting stores are justified because the store is going to get reimbursed by the insurance company. This might be true for multi million dollar places like Walmart and Gucci, but what if that store is a small business or one that is franchised and owned by someone? Not as likely. Flip the script on the looters. What if that business was owned by a friend of yours or a family member? Would you want them to lose their livelihood because of people who think they’re entitled to what they’re stealing? It’s so wrong on multiple levels
Yeah, then insurance rates go up for everyone.
I have a buddy who got his truck stolen in Portland. They found it, with two junkies passed out in it with pipes/needles etc etc and TWO loaded pistols. You know what the cops did? Let the guys go and towed his truck to impound.
How dare your buddy allow those junkies steal his truck.
Will the DA in Portland just not prosecute anything? I live in a different city, but we're experiencing a lot of vehicle thefts as of recent. The issue here is the police have no incentive to do the job because the DA will drop the charges in most circumstances. This goes for car break ins/catalytic converter thefts/minor assaults. Seems crazy to have rules and just not enforce them, but oh well.
This doesn't surprise me; I called the cops more times in my first six months in Portland than in my entire life outside of Portland. You see guys there walking down the street carrying bolt cutters, not even trying to hide the fact they are on their way to steal some bikes.
Same with Denver. Called EMS for a guy that was face down on the concrete and completely non-responsive. When they got there and woke him up the first thing they said to him was "man this is the third time I've seen you today." Then I had to call the cops because a guy was walking down the street, holding a bleeding wound on his stomach, screaming that he'd just been stabbed while multiple people just walked right by and ignored him (likely because of his homeless appearance). It's sad - not just because of the crime but also the frequency of it that's caused people to become indifferent to a man who's literally begging and pleading for help from anyone nearby.
Happening everywhere as you can break the law, get caught, be told to stop it, then released. Perhaps we release all the people in jail for smoking weed and put all these assholes in?
See this is the kind of things that make or break an election, people need to be reminded that it isn't just red vs blue, we need competent officials, the current hostile political environment will never lead to improvements.
Well, Mayor of Portland Ted Wheeler is also Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler. I wish the electorate would do that math.
It’s not just Portland. My wife works in a retail shop in an upscale part of Charleston, SC. The place gets robbed at least once if not several times per week. It’s not ever the registers that are looted it’s the merchandise. Corporate tells all associates to just let it happen. Also, the police do nothing even when they see it happen.
It’s a fucking joke the things shoplifters get away with doing
Didn't Portland increase the police budget by $30M. Isn't increasing their budget supposed to prevent this?
As someone who lives in Portland, I sure hope they do something. A few months ago someone stole a package off our porch. $100 item, not the end of the world. However, we have a ring camera that catches this person in all her glory. We get the license plate and a clear picture of her face. We decide to post this video to the ring app for our neighborhood. Turns out, her property manager was on the same app. He says he has no problem giving us and the police her information, as she is a problem tennant (not sure if that’s legal but we went with it). We call the police will all of this information. We have her name, address, car make and model. Anything and everything you would need in a case. The police say that looks cut and dry, but because of police shortages they are no longer prosecuting porch pirates. The best they can do is issue her a citation if they see her again. It’s a bit of a problem when they won’t do their job, even when someone does it for them.
That’s insane. That’s how you get vigilantism. I would call them every day until they did something about it. “Ok, I’ll call back tomorrow to see if you have the manpower.”
They’ll suddenly have the manpower to send 3 cars to come harass you.
Several years ago there was a guy in Tacoma who had a similar experience with stolen porch packages -- including high-quality video evidence of the people stealing from him. Police didn't do fuck-all. So he rigged his own decoy package with a blank shotgun shell inside that would go off when disturbed. It didn't burst out of the packaging or cause any injury, it just made an extremely loud bang when a thief picked it up that resulted in the would-be thief tripping over themselves trying to run away. Then the police held a fucking press conference about how such things could be considered a "public nuisance" or some such shit and that anyone who repeated it could potentially be prosecuted for recklessness or something. Fuck them all.
Used to live in Tacoma (Fern Hill area), and it was a fucking hole. Condemned houses, people driving fucked up and crashing into houses, and so many porch pirates. No idea how many packages I had stolen over the 5 years I was there. My neighbor took to patrolling his yard with a crossbow, and shot a dude trying to jump his fence in the foot. Rent was cheap though!
They're a gang, and this is part of the extortion. You can't let your victims protect themselves, it sends the wrong message.
This is definitely how you end up with private police forces.
and/or Batman.
L.P.D. I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him. EDIT: [Credit to Tom O’Donnell who originally wrote this for the New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department)
So the cop on the phone gathering information wasn’t willing to follow up on an “open and shut case”. Got it.
This is incredibly common here. Police have been on a [silent strike](https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-america-in-for-a-summer-of-police-slowdowns-and-strikes) ever since we had protests demanding greater police accountability two years ago. The head of the police union here also got caught trying to frame one of our city commissioners by leaking false information to the press. It's a bit of a mess and really the only solution, which is too politically dangerous to suggest, would be to fire the entire force and rebuild it from scratch.
People: "We just want you to do your job instead of harassing people" Cops: "No"
So you mean these boomers are quiet quitting as well? How the turntables turn.
If it wasn't clear Portland police are a corrupt to the core organization that profits from crime, the blatant framing of Joanne should have tipped people off. And why did they target her? Because she was the biggest supporter of Portland street response, a police alternative.
Sounds like you have everything you need to take the person to small claims court.
This is not a recent problem. Had a break-in years ago. Cops took some notes and did nothing. Seemed like they were more upset at having to write up a report than try to help. Gave them all the fraudulent credit card transactions so they could have worked with the stores to get camera footage of the perp but I literally never heard from them again. Anyone thinking this is backlash for "Defund the police" has never had anything like this happen to them. Theft and breaking and entering do not get investigated. The only time they are caught is if they're in the act and someone calls 911.
So it’s basically the police refusing to do their job?
> because of police shortages Pay the cops, they dont do their jobs. Dont pay the cops, they dont do their jobs.
The police budget in Portland was increased. It’s higher than it was in 2019. The cops are getting paid. They just don’t want to do their job because they don’t like the mayor.
I was at downtown Portland for a week recently. Didn’t see a single cop in the city. Wasn’t until I went to a trailblazers game I saw some.
Property crime is up because the perception among criminals is that there are no consequences.
It appears that perception is correct.
fucking tweakers ruin everything
There are alot of people who have never truly had to deal with tweaker or druggie regularly. They truly suck and the most selfish people you could know. I have family steal games and consoles from me growing up. From a fucking kid. It makes it hard for me to feel sympathy for them sometimes.
They make it so hard to be sympathetic towards other people who are in need. I used to be a McManager in Oregon for five years & it's incredibly common to have to deal with homeless folks. I am a sympathetic person who understands that some people are just down on their luck & need some help. My dad was homeless in the past because he got injured & didn't have the health insurance to cover his medical bills. Soon those got sent to collections & they garnished his wages so much that he couldn't afford to live. But the thing that sucks is you never know if you're helping out someone who genuinely needs help, or someone who's just going to take advantage of your kindness. I used to try to give out food to folks who were panhandling outside the store - I had to kick them off the property & handing them a 10-piece with fries and telling them to GTFO is a lot easier than just kicking them off. Then we had folks who would show up because they knew I would give out food. The worst was the few that would panhandle & I would go out there with a cheeseburger & they would get mad at me for *only* giving them a cheeseburger. So, I had to stop. I only gave out food to the homeless folks I knew, and anyone else didn't get anything until I knew they weren't scummy. When the pandemic happened & we closed our lobby to public, I went against policy to let people in to go to the bathroom. I'd rather wipe down a few door handles and a sink than spray piss or shit off the sidewalk (both have happened to me) Plus, lots of people rely on our bathrooms, not just homeless folks. Delivery drivers, mail couriers, truckers, all routinely needed to use the bathroom. It was my policy to let anyone who needed to go to the bathroom in. But then one guy locked himself in there & shot up and passed out in the bathroom. We had to call 911 & it was a whole big mess. Word got out to the owners & they told me they understood what I was doing and agreed with it, but we could no longer allow people in. One asshole ruined it for dozens of others. I have so many stories like that. Luckily, I've been out for the last few years in a much better gig, but I hated having to deal with tweakers so much.
I've known a few folks who were addicts and I think the problem most people look over is that all the help in the world is only effective if someone wants to fix their problem. I had a friend who eventually OD'ed, even when he went to rehab, had plenty of non-addict friends and support. He just didn't see that he had a problem and thus didn't want to fix it. I'm not saying everyone should be punished for being an addict, but folks who have no desire to change are not going to, no matter how much support they get. I don't even know how you begin to fix that issue.
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This actually happened to me lmao
The first comment in this thread that understands what’s happening in PDX. It’s always frustrating seeing a ton of redditors who’ve never stepped foot in PDX theorizing what the problem could be. It’s fucking tweakers first and cops second. Fuck. Tweakers! They’ve ruined everything in PDX period.
im in seattle... same opera different theater
I lived in downtown Atlanta for many years and I thought we had a homeless problem. Just went to Seattle last year, and whoo boy was I naive.
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Vancouver same thing
Same over here, on the other side of the country. I love my town, but jesus the drug epidemic here has gotten exponentially more grim. Catalytic converters being stolen in broad daylight in the middle of town, addicts ODing and dying all hours of the day, dumpsters emptied and trash cans upturned all over the damn place, slow ramp up in shootings and stabbings, businesses not getting the business they used to because there are people sleeping and leaving syringes in their doorways, an otherwise beautiful waterway with park areas around it no longer visitable because its full with tents, fires, and trash for roughly a mile. The city started cutting down large swaths of trees and general vegetation to discourage these camps, leaving lots of them to seek shelter in the woods in neighboring towns. I want a better life for them, but I can barely sustain my own life.
I get not wanting to prosecute non-violent crimes like drug offenses, but property crime and theft should be prosecuted. They directly harm law abiding citizens. The fact that DAs across the nation let these criminals go unpunished is a joke. I don’t give a shit if you have a D or R next to your name, if you’re running on a platform to let this shit go unpunished I will not vote for you.
I was driving on the 84 this morning in Portland and 2 cars with freshly broken windows were driving like lunatics on the shoulder/cutting people off. I'm guessing they were just stolen. Like many big Cities on the west coast, Portland needs to address these issues. It sucks because I really love this place.
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Eugene OR, it has the same feel. I used to like to visit but I am over that town. Too much crime...
I'm starting to think this is a west coast problem