The Rise of Organized Retail Crime Propaganda

Summary

Podcast Summary

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The Rise of Organized Retail Crime Propaganda

It Could Happen Here – Hosted by Kevin Foster
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, independent journalist Kevin Foster examines the growing narrative of an "organized retail crime crisis" in the United States. He critically explores how this narrative has been amplified by corporate lobbying, sensational media coverage, and recent legislative pushes—leading to an aggressive policy response with sweeping consequences for privacy, policing, and marginalized communities. Foster breaks down the reality behind inflated retail theft statistics, exposes the lobbying of groups like the National Retail Federation (NRF), and discusses the legislative moves that are turning retail theft into a national security and immigration enforcement issue.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rise of Retail Surveillance and Loss Prevention Tech

• Scene Setting [02:15]

  • Foster describes an incident in Redmond, Washington, where police used a drone to apprehend an alleged shoplifter, illustrating the increasingly high-tech and aggressive security climate in US retail.
  • Retailers have ramped up use of loss prevention technologies post-pandemic: pervasive surveillance, facial recognition (Face First, Safer), and even AI-driven robots like ‘Romeo’ are featured at events like NRF Protect.
  • “NRF Protect is like a National Rifle Association convention, but for people obsessed with supply chains and storefront scanners.” – Kevin Foster [04:06]

• Privacy Concerns [04:45]

  • Facial recognition data is collected at entry and exit, and photos are held unless matched to a “shoplifter watchlist.”
  • Stores freely share and pool this data, raising questions of privacy, especially as police agencies participate in these security conferences.
  • Warning about potential misuse: “Why not ICE?” Foster hints at the risks if immigration enforcement accesses these dragnet surveillance databases.

2. The "Organized Retail Crime" Hype—and Who Profits

• Definition and Narrative [06:57]

  • The term “organized retail crime” (ORC or “orc”) is vaguely defined—even the FBI’s description is broad and encompasses all theft meant for resale.
  • Use of the term has skyrocketed—up 200% over five years.
  • The NRF has spearheaded this effort, spending $50 million on lobbying since 2020 to promote dramatic claims of a retail theft crisis.

• Inflated Statistics and Legislative Impact [14:20]

  • In 2023, NRF testified before Congress that nearly half of retail “shrink” (losses) was due to organized crime. Actual figure is closer to 5%.
    • “They essentially just took some guy's word for it. Specifically Ben Dugan, president of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail.” – Kevin Foster [14:25]
  • Despite retraction, the myth persists, propelling tough-on-crime policies and resources ($374 million in California’s 2024 budget alone) to law enforcement and security tech.
  • Store closures (e.g. Walgreens, Target) blamed on theft were more likely due to shifts toward online shopping—not crime.
    • "Even Walgreens Chief Financial Officer James Cahoe would later say they cried too much about shoplifting when the issue was really overblown." – Kevin Foster [16:38]

3. Policy Fallout: Laws, Prosecutions & Mass Incarceration

• Stringent Legislation [17:16, 18:35]

  • New laws aggregate small thefts into larger felony charges, allow arrests based solely on surveillance footage or witness statements, and lower the bar for what constitutes organized retail crime.
  • Example: California's Prop 36 enables felony charges for repeat minor thefts under $950.
    • Quote: “It allowed for the aggregation of theft value from different shoplifting incidents, meaning the value can be added up to turn what would be minor charges into grand theft.” – Kevin Foster [17:59]
  • Pennsylvania case: A man faced felony charges for a $0.43 mistake due to “three strikes” rules, highlighting the collateral damage for non-habitual offenders.

• Impact on Marginalized Groups [21:21]

  • Enforcement disproportionately targets Black and brown communities.
  • Foster cites Pew Research and Vera Institute studies revealing no evidence that harsher penalties lead to reduced property crime; in fact, they lead to increased incarceration and suffering for the poor.
    • “Rather, it will result in more people, particularly minorities, being locked up for longer sentences than being saddled with felony convictions that hurt their ability to get a job and obtain housing, ultimately increasing the likelihood of committing crimes in the future.” – Kevin Foster [22:52]

• Quote Highlight

  • On the criminalization mindset:
    • “This is their sole job is to rip off your business. That's their job. That's how they wake up in the morning and so we didn't want them to wake up as comfortably as they did before with their calculator.” – Summer Steffen, DA of San Diego [24:25]
  • Foster’s response:
    • “Yes, they paint this image of people almost getting off on doing crime rather than any number of more charitable explanations.” [24:36]

• Financial Absurdity

  • Incarceration cost often dwarfs the value of stolen goods: prosecuting “organized retail crime” in San Diego cost an estimated $14 million in prison costs vs. $2.6 million in reported losses. [23:51]

4. Real-World Tragedies Linked to Retail Crime Hysteria

• Recent Deadly Encounters [25:38]
  • Foster describes a series of fatal incidents:
    • The police killing of Cohen Wiley, a one-year-old, in Mississippi during a “shoplifting” response over diapers.
    • Banko Brown, a Black trans man shot by a Walgreens security guard in San Francisco.
    • Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a 14-year-old, killed by a shop owner in South Carolina for a theft that did not occur.
  • “There's a very clear irony that may reflect the types of enforcement we could see from Korka—Tough on crime for the marginalized, not for those pulling the trigger.” – Kevin Foster [28:05]

5. The Bigger Picture: From Corporate Crisis to National Security Pretext

• Lobbying Power and Government Buy-In
  • Foster suggests the “crisis” narrative enables corporations to shift the blame for profit losses onto shoplifters, justifies price hikes, and ultimately extracts public money to protect their bottom lines.
    • “Retailers blame consumers when they fail to hit desired profits. Then they raise prices. When that fails, they demonize the poor and rattle on about crime. Then they pilfer our general funds and team up with the police to crack down. It's never enough.” [29:00]
  • He foreshadows upcoming legislation (CORCA) expanding ICE’s use of retail surveillance tech as part of a larger national security push.

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Notable Timestamps

• [02:15] – Scene-setting dystopian retailer encounter; rise of store security tech.
• [04:06] – Description of NRF Protect and loss prevention industry.
• [14:20] – Breakdown of inflated theft statistics and NRF's lobbying.
• [17:16] – California Gov. Newsom on anti-theft efforts; law changes explained.
• [21:21] – Enforcement's racial disparities; research on “tough on crime” ineffectiveness.
• [23:51] – DA Steffen’s prosecution costs; comparison of crime loss vs. incarceration expenses.
• [24:25] – San Diego DA Summer Steffen’s quote on “career thieves.”
• [25:38] – Foster summarizes recent fatal shoplifting-related shootings and their broader significance.
• [29:00] – Final thoughts on the consequences of retail theft propaganda.

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Memorable Quotes

• “NRF Protect is like a National Rifle Association convention, but for people obsessed with supply chains and storefront scanners.” – Kevin Foster [04:06]
• “They essentially just took some guy's word for it.” – Kevin Foster, on NRF’s 50% statistic claim [14:25]
• "Even Walgreens CFO James Cahoe would later say they cried too much about shoplifting when the issue was really overblown." [16:38]
• “This is their sole job: to rip off your business... so we didn't want them to wake up as comfortably as they did before with their calculator.” – Summer Steffen [24:25]
• “Rather, it will result in more people, particularly minorities, being locked up for longer sentences... ultimately increasing the likelihood of committing crimes in the future.” – Kevin Foster [22:52]
• “Retailers blame consumers when they fail to hit desired profits. Then they raise prices. When that fails, they demonize the poor and rattle on about crime. Then they pilfer our general funds and team up with the police to crack down. It's never enough.” – Kevin Foster [29:00]

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Takeaway

The “organized retail crime” panic is largely a myth manufactured by retail industry lobbyists and turbocharged by sensational media coverage. Its real-world impact includes expanded surveillance, increasing criminalization of petty theft, deep social and economic costs, and avoidable tragedies—especially for the poor and marginalized. As Foster makes clear, we are witnessing the rise not only of dystopian policy, but also a dangerous fusion of corporate interests, surveillance technology, and aggressive law enforcement—impacting far more than the bottom line of big retail.

Next Episode Preview: Foster will dissect the CORCA bill in depth and discuss the growing partnership between retail surveillance, law enforcement, and ICE.

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Transcript

[Maria Garcia]

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Cool Zone Media. Picture Going to the grocery store a few years from now. You push your cart, grab your staples, scan and head out the door. Not much to it, but unlocking your car, you hear a faint buzzing sound. Looking around, you don't see anything yet. It gets louder. Then you look up. A drone shoots out toward the street, where you spot a man running down the sidewalk with a full backpack. They both slip out of view behind some overgrown hedges. Then come the sirens as you drive away you see multiple cops on top of a man, one pulling objects out of his backpack, tags still dangling off a shoplifter. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Kevin Foster, an independent journalist and your host for this two part series on retail crime, ICE and some deeply concerning policy making its way through Congress. In this image of a shoplifter, it isn't really from the future. In late June of this year, police in Redmond, Washington used the drone to track down an alleged shoplifter who had left a store. If you live in a major city, you've probably already witnessed the bolstering of security in retail stores, the ungodly number of items locked up behind glass. Security guards flock cameras in the parking lot. This is an industry in its own right, commonly referred to as loss prevention, and it surged after the pandemic. The National Retail Federation, or NRF for short, who I'll be talking a lot about today, puts on a yearly conference known as NRF Protect where they bring together all the loss prevention asset protection bigwigs to show off new tech and security strategies. Here's a clip of a senior product manager for Amazon at the 2026 event. Pardon the awful corporate background music.

[MC Jen]

I gotta say, the most unique thing that I saw in the expo hall was the robot. Seen it on TV and you know, this was the first time I saw it in person. I was like, whoa, this thing's actually real.

[Kevin Foster]

To paint you a picture, the video features retail lobbyists, tech giants and police investigators. They show off drones, cameras, people aiming guns, others shooting some type of paintballs at hanging targets, and of course multiple robots, including one that looks like a mini tank called Romeo but spelled like roaming around. Don't worry though. This physical AI on patrol can only go 10 mph and it has a big LED smile across the front if you haven't got the drift. NRF Protect is like a National Rifle association convention, but for people obsessed with supply chains and storefront scanners. While our little tank Romeo likely invokes the strongest image of a sci fi dystopia, you it's probably the least of our worries. An October 2024 article in Loss Prevention magazine states that multiple top 10 retailers rely on facial recognition for loss prevention, many working with Face First, a company that provides AI facial recognition tech with the goal of preventing retail crime. In July of this year, Mission Local reported on grocery outlets in the Bay Area using facial recognition tech from the AI company Safer. Worried about your privacy? Well, say first president says that your photo is immediately deleted if it doesn't match a watch list of shoplifters. However, stores can manually create their own watchlist and pool data with other retailers. Surely nothing could go wrong there. Even excluding AI, retail stores have become a massive surveillance black box. Your photo is taken as you go in and out. Video cameras are at checkout. They note the time you come in. They know what days you shop, what you're buying. They know who you are. Retailers will justify this invasion of our privacy through AI, robots and large scale data collection as necessary for marketing and to protect their capital and employees. Still, I wouldn't blame you for worrying about where that data is going. After all, if police investigators are already attending NRF conventions and the retailers are happy to work with them, why not other law enforcement? Why not ice? As it turns out, Congress is having similar thoughts. The House of Representatives just pushed a bill forward that could give ICE access to this massive surveillance dragnet, and there's a bipartisan effort in the Senate to include it in the National Defense Authorization Act. Why would they do this? To answer that question, we need to look at a recently hyped phenomenon known as organized retail crime. You may have heard the term organized retail crime in the past few years, probably on the news or from a politician hinting at a hidden crisis in our stores. A basic Google Trends report shows use of the term is up 200% in the past five years versus the five years before. Organized retail crime, sometimes referred to as just orc, is defined by the FBI as the large scale theft of retail merchandise with the intent to resell the stolen items for financial gain. If you've seen the movie I Love Boosters, that's a good satirical example, although the definition is actually quite vague, which can cause a lot of problems. The outlet retail dive says the definition is neither legal nor precise, contributing to uneven reporting on the part of store workers, loss prevention staff and police, which results in it often being lumped in with more banal forms of theft such as shoplifting. And this begs the Is organized retail crime actually a thing? It is, but the threat to businesses, prices and even national security have largely been blown out of proportion. To get a sense of those proportions, here's Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley at a Senate hearing on organized retail theft. He's the chief sponsor of the bill I mentioned earlier, known as the Combating Organized Retail Crime act, or CORCA for short. The reality is, some of the worst criminal organizations, including cartels, terrorists and human traffickers, use this type of crime, funding their misdeeds or launder ill gotten proceeds side Note, after hearing how this guy talks, I had to look up how old he is. He's 92 years old. This old bat that was born in the Great Depression is probably being lobbied till his heart fails. And we're going to get into the issues with painting this all as a national security crisis later. But speaking of lobbying, the notoriety of organized retail crime is due in no small part to the National Retail Federation, the host of the aforementioned Loss Prevention Conference, and the largest retail lobbying group in the nation. The NRF has spent about $50 million on lobbying since just 2020, according to Open Secrets. And they've been the driving force behind the Combating Organized Retail Crime act, which passed the House of Representatives on May 12th with bipartisan support, including 144 Democrats. And it may well get lumped in with our defense spending this year. Corca has a slew of problems, but the general picture is a prosecution and police crackdown around this idea of organized crime in the retail theft world. Despite what the NRF would like you to believe, there doesn't appear to be an organized retail theft crisis in the US or really even a shoplifting crisis in general. With the exception of some large cities, particularly New York city, shoplifting in 2023 was actually lower than pre pandemic levels, according to the Council on criminal justice. In 2022, the council found retail shrink, the term for lost merchandise from theft or operational errors, was about 1.6%, the same as in 2019, according to the NRF's own data. Before we get too deep, I think it's worth noting measures of shrink are also somewhat imprecise. And a lot of the accessible data surrounding all of this comes directly from the retail lobby, who have an incentive to make problems look worse to justify security policing, price increases and cutting corners in inventory management. As you'll see, they have some credibility issues as well. You know who else may or may not have credibility issues? The products and services that support this podcast.

[Betrayal Weekly Host]

Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.

[Maria Garcia]

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[Kevin Foster]

Why did it start with us?

[Betrayal Weekly Host]

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[Betrayal Weekly Host]

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[Bill]

Every family has secrets.

[Kevin Foster]

The rug had been pulled from underneath me. Oh my God.

[Maria Garcia]

It was right in front of my face and I Didn't even see it.

[Betrayal Weekly Host]

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Perry Wilson]

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[Bill]

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[Juliana and Co-host]

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[MC Jen]

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[Juliana and Co-host]

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[Kevin Foster]

And we're back. In October of 2023, the NRF claimed to Congress that organized retail crime accounted for nearly half of the $94.5 billion in shrink in 2021. In reality, retail Dive found that organized theft accounted for about 5% of shrink, meaning the NRF was off by a literal order of magnitude. How did they arrive at such a conclusion? Well, they essentially just took some guy's word for it. Specifically Ben Dugan, president of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, a non profit whose website currently features a giant low resolution banner saying Vegas Baby, the nation's largest ORC investigative conference. An NRS spokesperson specifically said their 50% claim was an inference made by an analyst based on Dugan's congressional testimony, not actual statistics or data. The NRF retracted the claim about two months later, but the damage was already done. According to the Vera Institute, a non profit advocacy group and think tank focused on criminal justice reform, the NRF leveraged its inaccurate data point in a press release, testified to it in congressional hearings, and even spoke about it at a press conference with Senator Grassley. The figure, of course, stirred panic across the country, fueled by viral social media videos showing high profile thefts and retail companies pushing the narrative that they are under attack. In some cases, retailers either closed or threatened to close stores. For example, in San Francisco in 2021, Walgreens blamed organized retail crime for the anticipated closure of five locations. The closures made it into the national spotlight, but in reality the locations faced less than 2 reported shoplifting incidents per month on average over the previous five years. Target had a similar story in New York, Seattle and San Francisco, blaming retail theft for store closures when nearby locations actually had higher incidences of shoplifting what actually happened to these stores? My best guess is the shift to online shopping during the pandemic drove down the sales of many brick and mortar locations. But rather than project something that could lower their stock valuation, retailers blamed it on organized theft. Many took up controversial practices such as locking up merchandise, which decreased sales and customer satisfaction. Even Walgreens Chief Financial Officer James Cahoe would later say they cried too much about shoplifting when the issue was really overblown. But even with a lack of evidence, the NRF and Senator Grassley refused to back down from their messaging and legislation. And in a lot of ways, it worked. Let me play you a clip of Gavin Newsom at a press conference in 2024 signing legislation intended to combat organized retail crime. Here he's surrounded by a number of elected officials, law enforcement leaders, and representatives of retail associations.

[Governor Gavin Newsom]

The issue of organized retail theft, the issue of serial theft, the issue that is front and center in the consciousness of so many Californians. You see it online, social media, you see it on the nightly news. This is the real deal. Grocers and the retailers understand that after

[Kevin Foster]

the NRF retracted its inflated claim nearly a year prior, organized retail crime was still making headlines and considered a very serious issue. Serious enough that Newsom included $374 million in his 2024 budget proposal to combat retail theft. And that bill, which he happened to sign atop a table covered in orange Home Depot buckets, It stiffened both enforcement and penalties for retail crime. It allowed for the aggregation of theft value from different shoplifting incidents, meaning the value of items can be added up to turn what would be minor charges into grand theft. It also allows police to arrest shoplifters solely based on a witness's sworn statement or video footage of a crime. Again, surely nothing could go wrong with that. But the crackdown didn't stop there. In the 2024 general election, California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 36, which made key changes to how thefts are prosecute. To Newsom's credit, he did not support the proposition. Prior to Prop 36, thefts of items worth less than $950 were considered misdemeanors. But now, if the individual has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes, such as shoplifting, it could be considered a felony with a sentence of up to three years in jail or prison. San Diego's District Attorney, Summer Steffen, really hyped up Prop 36 as an advancement in fighting organized retail crime. She actually went on the NRF's podcast to talk about this. Yes, they have a podcast it's called Retail Gets Real. It's bad, don't check it out. But here she is with the host having a little laugh about locking people up.

[Summer Steffen]

So we, we used to have people with like 24 theft cases. They're all misdemeanors. Some thieves bring a calculator and they're just under $950. Literally. It's madness, right?

[Billie Eilish]

Is that a gun or a calculator? I'm not sure what.

[Kevin Foster]

Yeah, let's joke about mistaking someone for being armed in a store. It's not like that's ever gone poorly before. Anyways, what's missing from the analysis here is how these laws harm people who aren't necessarily the intended target. A particularly striking example of how this could really fuck someone's life up comes from Pennsylvania. In 2021, Joseph Sobolowski reportedly misunderstood a discount at an Exxon gas station and accidentally underpaid 43 cents for a bottle of Mountain Dew. Soboluski had two theft charges in the past 10 years, one for a tank of gas and another for a pair of shoes. After the Mountain Dew incident, state police arrested him on a felony charge because of a three strikes law in Pennsylvania, similar to what could happen with Prop 36. A judge ordered Sobolowski be held on a $50,000 cash only bond, and he faced up to seven years in prison. Fortunately, his public defender successfully argued for his release after seven days and prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charge. But it's easy to see how this could go wrong for another individual, particularly minorities who face disproportionate punishment in our legal system. This style of legislation intended to target retail crime spread like wildfire across the country. According to the text of the 2025 Combating Organized Retail Crime act, more than 30 state laws have been enacted since 2022 to address organized theft. The common theme stricter penalties and policing. Here's how New York Governor Kathy Hochul put it in her 2024 State of

[Chelsea Handler]

the State address, let's back our businesses. Back our businesses and the workers with the full force of the law and punish those who think they can break the rules with impunity.

[Kevin Foster]

After all, policing and aggressive enforcement are the American way to deal with crime, rather than, I don't know, addressing the root causes, notably poverty and inequality. The pervasive tough on crime mentality doesn't have much evidence backing it up, but of course there is a wealth of research indicating flaws. For one, enforcement is heavily racialized, with black and brown people facing retail theft charges at significantly higher rates than whites. The Verre Institute also highlights how increasing sentences as a deterrent doesn't actually work. A 2018 article from Pew Research says states can safely raise their value threshold for what counts as a felony theft without risking more crime. The 30 states that did so between 2000 and 2012 saw no meaningful increase in property crime or larceny rates. In South Carolina, Pew found that when they doubled the felony threshold from $1,000 to $2,000 in 2010, property crime continued to fall by 15% in the next three years. Pew also found that the value of stolen goods remained steady and when adjusted for inflation, the median value actually decreased. In essence, the state level push for these three strikes, shoplifting laws and the aggregation of theft value won't meaningfully decrease crime. Rather, it will result in more people, particularly minorities, being locked up for longer sentences than being saddled with felony convictions that hurt their ability to get a job and obtain housing, ultimately increasing the likelihood of committing crimes in the future. The nonprofit think tank Prison policy initiative estimates $27.7 billion in annual direct costs of incarceration on individuals and families across the U.S. families pay in on bail, legal fees, civil asset forfeiture, commissary for loved ones, and more often going straight to private prison operators. This also doesn't begin to factor in the impacts on children and local communities. The cost of incarceration on the state also needs to be factored in. The California Legislative Analyst Office estimates the annual cost of incarcerating one person in state prison at $127,788. With massive spending to bolster retail theft enforcement, this could create a compounding problem costing hundreds of millions of In July of 2025, DA Stephan wrote in congressional testimony supporting Corka that her office had prosecuted over 218 cases of organized retail crime in just two years. She says these cases involved theft losses of more than $2.6 million. Putting this into perspective, if even half of those prosecutions resulted in one year sentences in California state prisons, you're looking at an estimate of nearly $14 million in incarceration costs over five times the reported theft value. But these thoughts don't really seem to cross the mind of people like DA Stefan or our pals at the nrf.

[Billie Eilish]

This is an argument that drives me crazy. You know, the idea that they're stealing because they can't afford the food to put on the table to feed their

[Summer Steffen]

children, this is their sole job is to rip off your business. That's their job. That's how they wake up in the morning and so we didn't want them to wake up as comfortably as they

[Kevin Foster]

did before with their calculator. Yes, they paint this image of people almost getting off on doing crime rather than any number of more charitable explanations. At face value, it may just sound like typical high minded BS from an aggressive DA and lobbyist, but obviously when you think about the position of power someone like Stefan is in, it's pretty sickening. In another section of the NRF podcast episode they discuss people switching from drug dealing to selling stolen merchandise because of lower penalties, generally glossing over the circumstances that might lead an individual into crime. Stefan even mentions the need to go after, quote Frontline boosters, the people who are being hired to go into stores and steal who she admits are often homeless or poor. It's honestly maddening listening to this. So that's the last quote I'm going to bring from that. Anyways, here's some ads.

[Chelsea Handler]

Foreign.

[Kevin Foster]

So in the next episode we're going to dive into the specifics of the Corka bill and how ICE has become a key player. But for now I want to end on a note that ties together some of the broader consequences of all this retail theft propaganda. Lobbyists for the bill have a common refrain organized retail crime is not a victimless crime. I think the same goes for their lobbying. Corca hasn't even passed the Senate yet. There may already be some downstream tragedies because of the intensified rhetoric around retail crime. In recent years and months there have been a number of high profile killings of individuals accused of shoplifting by both shop owners and police. In June of this year, police shot and killed Cohen Wiley, a one year old boy, while responding to a shoplifting call in Senatobia, Mississippi over allegedly stolen diapers. Police also shot his mother while her friend was driving their car. Authorities claim they tried to stop the vehicle but the driver nearly hit an officer, a story we've unfortunately become far too familiar with at this point. Wiley's mother disputes that the diapers were even stolen in the first place and denies that her friend drove towards the officers. Obviously it didn't matter to the trigger happy cops on the scene who never should have pointed firearms at the vehicle in the first place. Other similar cases include the killing of Banko Brown, a black 24 year old trans organizer in San Francisco by a Walgreens security guard and the killing of black 14 year old Cyrus Carmack Belton by a shop owner in South Carolina. In Brown's case, San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins, who ran on a tough on crime Agenda did not pursue charges against security guard Michael Earl Wayne Anthony, saying he acted in self defense based on video footage. The video shows Brown and Anthony fighting as Brown apparently tried to leave the Walgreens without paying. They grapple on the ground for a minute, then Anthony releases Brown but follows him to the door. Brown stops just outside the store, possibly talking back to the guard. Then the guard pulls his gun and shoots Brown as he turns to run. Brown was unarmed and in interviews following the shooting, Anthony repeatedly misgendered him for Carmack Belton, his killer. Shop owner Chike Rick Chao faced trial for murder but was found not guilty. Thing is, Carmack Belton never actually stole anything, not even the water bottles Chao wrongly accused him of. Prosecutors say Chao chased the teenager 130 yards outside the store before shooting him in the back. Prosecutors acknowledged that Carmack Belton had a pistol, but said that it fell on the ground in the chase. It seems, based on the reporting, that the only person who claims to have seen the pistol or had it pointed at him was Chao's son. I think all this just goes to show where we place property, even just a few water bottles, snacks or diapers relative to human life, especially those in black communities. There's a very clear irony that may reflect the types of enforcement we could see from Korka Tough on crime for the marginalized, not for those pulling the trigger. There's no easy way to determine whether political statements about retail crime have an effect on police or shop owners, but it's not hard to imagine how a constant bombardment of propaganda could embolden someone to take matters into their own hands. The retail companies are complicit in this. Somehow they've managed to turn a manufacturer's story into a national security crisis, where states grant hundreds of millions of dollars to protect corporations. Retailers blame consumers when they fail to hit desired profits. Then they raise prices. When that fails, they demonize the poor and rattle on about crime. Then they pilfer our general funds and team up with the police to crack down. It's never enough. Now they've sucked in the federal government and we could be on the verge of the next upgrade to ICE Terror. But that'll have to wait for the next episode. We'll see you tomorrow.

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[Maria Garcia]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.