How rampant is shoplifting in Chicago?
Pretty bad, according to a freshly-posted YouTube video.
“They gotta be really stealing up in Walmart now,” says a woman as she records video in one of the chain’s Chicago stores. “They got the men’s drawers locked up with a padlock.”
Indeed they do.
The woman’s video shows an entire aisle of men’s t-shirts and underwear secured behind locked display cases.
“Padlocks,” the woman says. “Just like the soap aisle.”
Retailers across Cook County have expressed frustration with policies instituted by first-term Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Since gaining office, Foxx has refused to pursue felony charges against shoplifters steal less than $1,000 in merchandise or who have a criminal record with fewer than ten felony convictions.
Shoplifting reports are up 20% in the city of Chicago since Foxx won her first term in office three years ago.
And retail theft mobs are a daily occurrence in the downtown retail corridors. Some of the theft rings are using children as young as 10-years-old to carry out raids on beleaguered retailers.
But Foxx insists that her policy is sound and necessary given her office’s “limited resources.”
