Kris Kobach’s right, it’s time to get tough on theft from big-box stores | Opinion

As regular readers of this column can attest, I don’t always see eye to eye with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach.

I think he generally spends way too much time chasing his tail on immigration and trying to find concerted voter fraud where there isn’t any.

But I do agree with him wholeheartedly on this: Retail theft is a huge problem and it needs to be addressed in a more serious fashion.

Now, we’re not talking about some random teenager trying on some basketball shoes and “accidentally” walking out in a pair of new Nikes, or some girl slipping a powder compact she can’t afford into her purse.

Remember the old TV game show “Supermarket Sweep”?

Contestants would compete to load as many high-priced items in their carts as possible, and the person with the biggest total would win a fabulous prize.

Organized retail theft is kind of like that, but instead of leaving the cart full of stuff to be reshelved for the next contestants, street-level thieves — known as “boosters” — push them out the door without paying, load the items into a car, and drive off.

They unload at a warehouse, the kingpin of the ring gives them their cut, he sells the stuff online, rinse and repeat.

It’s organized crime, and the people who do it are mostly getting away with it.

On Thursday, Kobach told the Wichita Metro Crime Commission that organized retail thieves in Kansas boosted $642 million in merchandise in 2021, mostly from big-box stores. One ringleader caught in Kansas City had a gang that stole $3 million worth.

At this point, you may be asking yourself: What do I care if Walmart or Home Depot are getting their stuff stolen?

Here’s the answer: In these already inflationary times, the hundreds of millions of dollars in goods stolen raises the prices you have to pay when you buy something at the store (I’m assuming here that most of my readers are honest people who don’t just walk out without paying).

It’s also the reason why when you’re shopping for a high-priced item, maybe a video game console or circular saw, you have to hunt down a store employee to pull it out of a locked counter or cage.

Locking down the highest-priced goods is at best a partial solution, Kobach said.

“It used to be power tools, a couple years ago, and then when the big-box stores locked down the power tools, then they moved to all kinds of other things — range finders, Crest Whitestrips, invisible fences for dogs — anything that they can get their hands on that is fairly expensive and that they can sell online,” he said.

It’s a dilemma for merchants. They know when they’re being robbed and even have it on video.

But most stores have instructed employees not to confront boosters. And that’s for the best, because a shopping cart full of merch isn’t worth the risk of a 100-pound cashier or 75-year-old greeter getting hurt or killed trying to stop a crime.

So here’s my thought: Put together a small task force of local or state police, or both.

We know where these crimes occur and they’re occurring with alarming frequency, so have the officers stick around in striking distance of some big-box stores that get targeted regularly.

Set it up so store managers could immediately contact the team, who could then swoop in and catch some boosters in the act — or better yet, follow them to wherever the goods are dropped off, and maybe catch a ringleader or two.

It’s kind of an old-school approach and I’ll admit I stole it from the Police Department of San Fernando, California, circa 1986.

It was how they got my beloved Minolta X-700 camera back to me, two years after it was stolen from my car.

A guy had been cutting holes in the windows of local stores and pulling out merchandise with a long hook. Police staked out the Sears Outlet and when he showed up there, they followed him home, where he had hidden my camera and a bunch of other stolen goods behind a false wall in his garage.

He’d steal the stuff, let it sit until the heat died down, and then sell it at a swap meet.

Retail thieves are like Pokemon — you’re never gonna catch ‘em all.

But if you caught a few boosters and bosses, word would soon get around that robbing a big box store isn’t quite as risk-free an enterprise as it is today.

And that would be progress.