Retailers have a few options for rolling with the changes. They can, like Nike, hire their own off-duty cops while the on-duty ones are still hobbled. They can accept the deputization of Mayor Adams and enact theft-prevention measures on their own. (And it sure will be interesting to see what happens if shop owners actually start demanding that New York shoppers take off their masks.) They can do what most big chain stores have done and lock up hundreds of items behind plexiglass. But according to Axios, “locked cases can cause sales to drop 15% to 25%,” driving away customers who don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of wrangling a store assistant to unlock the shelf and hover impatiently while you decide on a shampoo. Or they can do what Walmart did in Portland: accept some degree of loss until it’s no longer worth it and then close shop.
As Glenn wrote during 2020’s “Defund the Police” moral panic among the left, the end result will be, “a lot of vigilante justice. And what are people gonna do about it? Call the cops? Remember, in the end the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.” QED:
Very rarely do you see anyone actively stop, or even try to stop, some of these shoplifters.
However, one mystery woman in Portland has quickly gathered a reputation as a shoplifter’s worst nightmare. At this time, it’s still a mystery what her name is or what craft store she worked at, but her TikTok alias goes under the handle “bworrrd” but lists her name as “B Word.”
Her TikTok has only three videos uploaded, but each of them has sailed past one million views, including her first one which has a whopping 8.7 million. In each of them, the hero woman is seen stopping shoplifting women and commanding them to drop their stolen items, sometimes forcefully if need be.
The first video shows a pink-haired woman being confronted for stuffing her canvas bag full of stolen items. Initially, she agrees to give the items back but it’s clear that she’s intent on walking out with most of the items. “B Word” isn’t having it and forcefully grabs the bag. During the scuffle, a woman threatens to call the police on “B Word” to which she replies “call them right now.”
Ace of Spades adds that “For some reason her TikTok account has been suspended. I’ll bet you they’re claiming that her videos ‘glorify violence against marginalized groups.’ You know — filthy disgusting thieves. I could only find this copy of one her videos:”
This is how to deal with shoplifters pic.twitter.com/OS6YnNs9mw
— E (@ElijahSchaffer) March 6, 2023