The rising rate of crime throughout the United States has impacted a grocery store in Washington, D.C., which will no longer stock and sell a number of items to customers.
The Giant grocery chain located in the nation’s capital will halt offering Tide laundry detergent, Colgate products, Advil products, Schick razor blades, Dove soap, Degree deodorant, and Pantene shampoo and will offer its store brands of these products instead. Additionally, customers shopping at this specific store, located along Alabama Avenue in Washington D.C., will need to show their receipts to an employee before they leave the store, according to a report.
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“We have no other choice,” said Diane Hicks, Giant’s senior vice president of operations. “I’ve been leaving it out for our customers, and unfortunately, it just forces all the crime to come to us.”
Giant president Ira Kress stated that the products they are removing have a higher resale value and that their own store brands are harder to resale. Kress emphasized that the chain grocer wants to continue “to serve the community” but that it is unable to “at the level of significant loss or risk to our associates that we have today.”
“I don’t want to do this — I’d like to sell,” Kress said. “But the reality is that Tide is not a profitable item in this store … In many instances, people stock the product, and within two hours, it’s gone, so it’s not on the shelf anyway.”
The removal of these items comes as many retail outlets and grocers are dealing with rising crime across the United States. Brian Cornell, the chief executive of Target, told investors in August that their stores “saw a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence” over the last five months.
Likewise, Dollar General has stated in a recent statement that it is expecting a $100 million loss due to retail theft. Kelly Dilts, the chief financial officer of the chain, has stated that Dollar General is expecting its pressure from retail theft will continue and that inventory shrink will increase in the second half of 2023.
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Retailers nationwide sustained nearly $100 billion worth of losses in 2021, which is the highest year on record, according to the National Retail Federation report published in September last year. These retail crimes are perpetrated by people who work as part of a crime ring run by cartels, which have gone from illicit drug manufacturing and smuggling, human smuggling and trafficking, and illegal firearm smuggling to commandeering crime in the retail environment.
“Unlike shoplifting, where an individual steals food due to hunger or related incidents of simple theft, [organized theft groups] illegally profit from systematically targeting retail establishments utilizing professional thieves known as ‘boosters,'” according to Homeland Security Investigations. “Often, boosters travel in crews throughout the country utilizing aliases, rental vehicles, and tools such as ‘booster bags’ and illegally acquired security keys to steal high-value merchandise.”
