Between 30 to 50 people swarmed the Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, making off with thousands of dollars worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing, an LAPD spokesman told NBC News.
“I’m poor so I’m not responsible for stealing luxury goods and bear spraying minimum wage security guards.”
I grew up poor. I didn’t do this. Your comment is dripping with the implicit accusation that poor people are basically just animals. Incapable of controlling themselves when they see nice handbags.
Poverty doesn’t affect everyone the same. To try to discount the fact that poverty increases crime just because you aren’t a criminal is ignoring the complexity of humanity.
To say that this particular crime was caused by poverty also ignores the complexity of humanity.
We can all speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I agree that lessening poverty will lessen crime of most types.
If poverty was driving crime rates, then most of the world (as most countries are much much poorer than the US) would be a crime infested shit hole. Somehow that’s not true at all. US crime is not related to poverty in any way.
All you have to do is look at the crime statistics and income statistics for cities across North America. Cities that have lower GDPs (less money, less opportunity) generally have higher crime rates. If despair is high, people will act out of desperation. What you are wilfully ignoring is the fact that “countries that are poorer than the US” also are drastically different culturally than the US. Almost nowhere else on Earth has the same kind of income disparity that the US has. You can’t take a developing nation where 50% of people live in poverty, and compare it to a developed nation where no one needs to live in poverty but are forced to do so by manipulated housing and job markets.
TFA even mentions that one of the getaway cars was a BMW. Undoubtedly, there were both impoverished people and people who jumped at an opportunity involved.
Making people respond like you just did is the only reason they included the BMW part. I’m in California and there are pages and pages of early to mid 2000s BMWs available near me for less than $5k, which is significantly less than I paid for my car that no one would ever look at and think I’m rich.
Everybody has different needs, but imo if you work as a security guard for a place like this AND take it seriously you not only signed up for violence but you deserve it. These companies are robbing us blind of good health, personal space and time on the planet- why defend that?
Stealing from wealthy corporations is an extremely valid and morally acceptable form of protest. Hell, it’s a morally good thing to do even if it’s not meant as a protest.
I’m not going to defend assaulting the guards, though, except in the case of self-defense. Store security guards have no business using force against shoplifters, and most company policies align with that fact.
You know someone is a shit person when they equate income with value as a human being.
Even if that were a valid take, almost every working poor person contributes more to society than nearly any rich person does, and would therefore still have more human worth.
Feel free to explain why it’s not objectively a good act to steal from the entities that themselves commit the overwhelming majority of theft, intentionally, systematically, and forcefully hold the majority of the worlds working population either in actual slavery, poverty, or at least unjustifiable and extreme financial insecurity that technically isn’t poverty because government definitions of poverty are patently absurd, and and who are actively and knowingly driving us towards towards the collapse of the environment and the greater part of biological life itself.
I’ll give you a hint: you’re actually just wrong by any standard that values human life in any way.
There was also needless destruction. I can see breaking a glass case to grab some watches, but it appears that there was also destruction for the sake of destruction (at least in the video I watched).
Some people dont seem to grasp how all of this works. They seem to think the insurance fairy will pay for the damages and not the businesses (and finally the customers).
You know, because obviously I'm a complete moron who has never had an intelligent thought in their life, in your estimation, I'd never thought about that...
Of course premiums will go up. Insurance agencies are predatory scumbags, too. But I still have a hard time feeling sorry for luxury brands having to pay slightly higher premiums than they were before. Shockingly, its still just things.
I know some people put the value of things over all else, but I find that to be a shortsighted and selfish way of thinking.
Who actually gives a fuck about corporate property being destroyed? These companies commit more theft from their workers than all other theft combined. They objectively deserve this.
i feel bad for the employees who had to deal with it and clean up after and the guards that got assaulted. i dont feel bad for the above store level managers and execs who have to deal with this shit.
Of course poor people aren’t “basically just animals”, the OP didn’t imply that. What the OP is saying is that when genuine opportunity doesn’t exist, some people will find their own opportunity and/or weigh the consequences of their actions differently.
Wealth and income disparity have consequences and this is one of them. Public unrest is another eventual outcome. Something needs to be done about it or something will be done about it.
Imagine being an oblivious shopper trying out clothes in the change room, eventually coming out with your selections, only emerging to a store that looks like a hurricane went through it.
Doesn’t matter what they steal. If it’s food, it’s for their stomach. If it’s luxury, it’s to resell. Either way, it’s not my place to condemn how someone survives and thrives in this fuck of a late-stage capitalist existence.
Looks like run of the mill theft to me. Sure, perpetrated by a lot of people at once, but without proof of a legitimate business operating as a money laundering front for the proceeds of the fenced goods, this isn’t organized crime.
My Ex used to work in Saks 5th Avenue, so I would often browse around while waiting for them. I once saw a short sleeve button up shirt on the clearance rack that I really liked. It was $175 after the discount. I never seriously shopped in there after that.
Nordstrom will put high end goods near brands that are more affordable. It’s like having an expensive bottle of wine on the menu so the customer doesn’t feel so bad about paying 50 bucks. If you need to laugh go to a genuine luxury store and the prices are insane. Like $10k for a back pack nuts.
They even mention the use of bear spray. That alone turned it from being shoplifting to a robbery. Since now there’s the inclusion of violence and/or threat of violence
I’m a lawyer and you’re absolutely right legally speaking. In the eyes of the police though, it’s shopifting, or at best like shoplifting+. The perpatrators had masks on and got away. The store is insured for the loss.
Based, when cost of living is too high, lifting becomes an inevitability. You’ve heard of the ‘invisible hand of the market’, now meet the ‘ignored voice of the market’. If piracy is a service problem-- and it is-- then it’s only logical that shoplifting is a societal problem.
It makes me laugh how many people think this is a new development only in CA and in 2023.
This happened back in the 90s to my mom while working retail. Like 10 people came in and carried off the furniture they had in the store, because they knew the employees were instructed not to do anything.
Shit like this has been happening all over the US for decades, the media just decided it was the hot new topic to get more clicks recently. Even the Walgreens CEO who said theft was so awful they had to close a bunch of stores later admitted they "cried wolf".
Rich people love the idea that theft is out of control in the media because it gives them a talking point to keep us peasants in control. Starbucks was charged by the labor board for closing down unionizing stores under the guise of "safety concerns". Starbucks isn't the only place that has been pulling that shit.
And that's not to say I agree with 50 people bear spraying people and stealing luxury shit either. This isn't someone stealing food from the grocery store to feed their kids. It wasn't billionaires working in the store, it's people working a shitty retail job for shitty pay no doubt. But it is a topic being overblown for rich people's benefit.
Strongly considering buying property in Portland because values are depressed because of the propaganda/fear-mongering. I think there is a small, but legitimate risk that it eventually becomes true, though.
Downtown Portland has gone to shit, no doubt about it. But there are problems in every city that needs addressing. For what it’s worth I’d move to Portland still, the area is beautiful and much better than the increasingly overpriced desert I’m living in
Have you actually been to Portland? It’s not propaganda or fear-mongering. There are massive tent cities of homeless people under all of the major overpasses, and at a few random points throughout the city. It’s a very real problem.
I used to work at a dollar store back in the day, and I was warned that this guy comes in every few weeks and grabs a bunch of jackets then runs out the back door.
No shit like clockwork it happened.
I was warned not to engage and just call the cops. My first time, I was in the back taking a shit in the bathroom next to the rear emergency exit. I heard the alarm go off and jumped up, pulled up my pants and ran out to catch him. He ran out back, I ran out after him. He pulled a gun on me and I learned my lesson. Let the dude have the jackets. Got it.
This isn’t someone stealing food from the grocery store to feed their kids… But it is a topic being overblown for rich people’s benefit.
How is it overblown? It is a real issue with law enforcement in America. People are being permitted to destroy and steal property. We need to get to the root cause of what’s going on their. It’s due to failures on multiple fronts. You can’t just say ignore it because capitalism bad. Capitalism is a founding principle of this country’s economy. You can’t play the card that these people are protesting corruption because others are enriching themselves by stealing goods. That’s not noble in any way and doesn’t help employees.
Fuck the founding principles. The “founding principles” of this shithole have been letting nepo babies, clay-footed ‘philanthropists’, grifters, and con artists rob the common man for 400+ years. And the ‘rise of criminality’(fuckin lmao, okay settler) will only get worse the more the common are robbed. The ‘root cause’ is the elites being ‘elite’; and there is really no way you’re gonna get me to condemn actions like what these raiders took in this day and age.
I don't understand why you think bear spraying employees who probably get paid a shit wage and can barely afford rent let alone insane grocery costs right now is helping? Now they will have medical bills they can't afford on top of maybe having to miss work, which they also can't afford.
I agree the root cause needs to be fixed. But if you want to steal as an attempt at fixing that at least do it in a way that you are not fucking over other people in the same position as you. They aren't part of the problem.
Is it unfortunate that civilians were in the splash zone with lpos and rent-a-pigs? Yes. Am I going to condemn the thieves’ actions? No. Fuck the police, fuck the elites who rob us day in and day out, and fuck anyone who’s gonna sit there and pearl-clutch for them like you’re not getting robbed too.
Billionaires love when we infight amongst ourselves rather than go after the real problem. You're just playing into their hand. It's not "pearl clutching" it's called solidarity. Standing together against the real issue instead of continuing to fuck over each other. There are plenty of ways to steal without fucking over your fellow worker.
You seem to prioritize harming fellow workers over tackling the root cause, which is unfortunate. United we stand, divided we fall. There's a reason billionaires are VERY scared of us working together, even moreso than theft.
they didn’t bear spray the employees, but two security guards. a non-lethal measure that police use all the god damn time on civilians.
What this shows is the continued fraying of the social contract that exists within any society. We aren’t taking care of people, so desperate people turn to acts of civil disobedience as a means of support. These clothes don’t have special identifying markers or characteristics. There’s no VIN number. They’re being sold second hand in order to provide for people. The only way a billionaire can exist is for millions of people to live in poverty. somebody can’t have a huge slice of the pie without taking pie away from others. I fully support their actions, with my only caveat being that ideally, nobody gets maced. We’re human being after all, not cops.
No one cares about the fact that they stole some overpriced pirses dumbass, were calling them pieces of shit because they ran in and bear sprayed people who would have never intervened in the first place. The people doing this have no concept of class solidarity and the whole reason they’re stealing in the first place is for posturing, it has nothing to do with “sending a message”
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