Most of the stores I frequent in South Seattle already have security. The trouble is that these shoplifters are brazen. They just don't care, and will not hesitate to attack the security.

I only know of one establishment on the south end where the store fights back aggressively, and I think most people know not to try to shoplift there. I'll leave their name out of it because I don't want to get them in trouble.

You’d better hurry and get that idea before the City Council before Kshama Sawant leaves!

Doesn't go nearly far enough -- we should also pay people not to murder. Otherwise what's the incentive?

Left out of all this is the real victims here, the rest of the community. We pay for all this nonsense with higher prices, less selection and in more and more cases stores that are closing down forcing us to look for alternatives. I'm so tired of the narrative of the criminal as some victim of society. There are lot of poor people out there who manage to get by without stealing big screen tv's from the downtown target.

I would have taken this more seriously if it wasn’t teed up with unrelated info about the latest police scandals or corporation wage theft. Isn’t this just recycled 1980s Reagan era welfare: no benefits if you get arrested, right?

Shoplifting should be prosecuted in most cases. Shoplifters must do time, for which taxpayers will pay. The druggies can dry out in jail. I don't care if it hurts.

If we start paying junkies not to shoplift, there will be 1000 more here tomorrow starting a shoplifting spree so they can get paid too. The National Park Service knows why you don’t feed the bears.

Obviously we should cut SPD pay by the amount of crime they don't actually do anything about.

Call it a Blue Flu Tax.

And take it out of their overtime and vacation pay.

Here’s what I don’t get about the decriminalize folks - why not advocate for the repealing all of these awful laws that oppress the poor? If, for example, the criminalization of shoplifting is simply a tool of our corporate overlords, run an initiative / slate of candidates who will repeal these racist, unjust laws (saves money on cops, courts, etc.)?

What say you Justin, how about getting the SECB to back this heroic fight to repeal shoplifting laws and really stick it to our corporate oppressors?

Just when you thought you’d read the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen…. Ever…. In the Stranger we get this.

"For example, we could pay people not to steal. That might sound like a harebrained scheme, but it worked for youth gun crime in California."

The harebrained part of this is the author's assumption that persons with untreated fentanyl addiction and/or mental health problems would make the same rational decisions as at-risk youth who self-selected to participate in a mentorship program.

Seattle white-guilt "progressive liberals" are the dumbest/most naive of all white-guilt "progressive liberals".

I'm honestly surprised you even bothered to "report" on the 5 people shot in the Safeway parking lot in Rainier Beach. It used to be if a "PoC" crime happened on a Friday after "Slog AM" got shat out, yall would just totally ignore it. Good for you I guess

Leave it to the Stranger to have an article that makes delusional suggestions like paying shoplifters to not shoplift. How about we pay the Stranger not to write such moronic stories? It doesn’t matter if the theives are stealing from a corporation or a mom and pop store. They are stealing something that doesn’t belong to them, and that they have no right to and that is not only illegal It is wrong. I find it funny that the stranger makes such preposterous suggestions as the ones in this article, which if enacted would lead many stores to close leaving food deserts, and then the stranger would write an article complaining about all the food deserts in our city.

If wage theft is an issue then we should address it. It doesn't justify shoplifting. Clearly. This is something you might have to teach a toddler, and is beneath adult discussion. When people worry about crime in their neighborhood, they are worried about assault, robberies, rape, homicides, car theft, etc, and not diffuse white collar issues like wage theft.

There are millions of poor people in Seattle. Almost all shoplifting crime is committed by a few hundred of them, maybe. It's not poverty, which is insulting. It's the people. People you aren't obligated to be around, or your kids, when you go to the store, even if there's some kind of progressive point about how employers and employees arguing about overtime means it's justified.

If you think punishing shoplifting is worse than shopliting, what do you seriously think the result will be?

I think the 7-11 owner down in California had a much easier and more effective solution

https://twitter.com/grahamallen_1/status/1686791080757391367?s=46&t=kOVzxj1J1zTCbS0ClWZq4g

“That’s called whoopin your ass”

pragmatically speaking

white collar criminals
make shoplifters look
unimaginative & their
Take is Hundreds of
Billions. should tS
cover that as well
I'll look Forward
to all the Moral
Outrage from
tS's commen-
tatriat Con-
deming it.