TOM HANKS AND MEG RYAN IN SHOPLIFTING IN SEATTLE – WORST ROMCOM EVER:

In December of 2022, Virginia Postrel wrote in the Wall Street Journal: What Shopping Did for American Equality.

The urban palaces of early department stores, the climate-controlled corridors of suburban malls, the endlessly scrolling pages of Etsy, the utilitarian aisles of Walmart and the chatty reveals of haul videos aren’t merely sites of envy or exchange. They’re places where Americans—both buyers and sellers—work out who we are and who we want to be. Since the mid-19th century, modern retailing has tested the practical meaning of equality and freedom.

When A.T. Stewart opened his multistory dry goods store in 1846, the Manhattan merchant introduced two revolutionary practices that we now take for granted. He let anyone come and browse freely, whether or not intending to buy, and he charged every customer the same price. Both policies changed the everyday meaning of social equality.

At Stewart’s, wrote a journalist in 1871, “you may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.” The store and its many emulators established a new social norm. Any well-behaved patron, regardless of class or ethnicity, could freely examine the merchandise without being pestered or pressured to leave.

The key phrase there is “well-behaved patron,” which requires law, order and social customs to maintain, all of which have been in short supply in Seattle in recent years. But according to the New York Post last month, they may be making a return: Seattle finally starts throwing shoplifters and other petty criminals in jail for the first time in 4 years.

Seattle has finally started tossing people in jail for low-level crimes again after four years of letting shoplifters, vandals and other petty criminals walk free.

The change, which went into effect earlier this month, reverses pandemic-era restrictions by King County that kept Seattle police from booking all but the most serious misdemeanors into the slammer.

Officials in the Emerald City argued the policy hamstrung prosecutors and cops.

But now Seattle’s ne’re-do-wells will face a jail cell if they flaunt the law.

For four years, cops in Seattle weren’t allowed to book anyone arrested for low-level misdemeanors into jail. Getty Images

The move is a win for local law enforcement, which has long pushed for more tools to fight a four-year crime wave that has continued since the pandemic — despite crime in nearly every other major city declining, an analysis by the Seattle Times showed.

“We’ve had people tell us, ‘You can’t arrest me for that.’ Well, that was true but now we can. We’re hoping to get a little bit of accountability back,” the Times quoted Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden as saying.

Maybe when there’s a lot of that accountability back, the plexiglass cases will come down – but I suspect they’re going to be there for quite a while longer.