As a Tucson Walmart Goes, so Goes the Nation

My wife and I shop for groceries and other essentials at four different stores in the City of Tucson, although we live a few miles outside of city limits and there are closer stores, including a Whole Foods, which is too expensive for our frugality. One of the four stores is Walmart.

We will no longer be shopping as much at Walmart. The reason is that more and more merchandise is being kept under lock and key, due to an increase in shoplifting.

On our last visit, for example, I went to the drug and beauty section with a full shopping cart after we had finished our other shopping, to buy a two-can pack of Edge shaving gel, which was priced at $4.82. The item was locked behind a sliding glass panel, as was all 30 ft. of the merchandise along the aisle in question.

I asked a passing clerk why it was locked and if she could unlock it. She replied that shoplifters have made it difficult for everyone else, and that the clerk in the cosmetics section down the way had the key. She went on to say that she’d tell the cosmetics clerk that I needed her help.

Because she was busy with other customers, it took the clerk ten minutes to get to me. I waited that long just to see how long it would take. And not being one to blame workers for decisions of management, I kept my cool and was polite.

The clerk unlocked the sliding glass and grabbed the item. With that, I thanked her and reached out to get the shaving cream from her. She said that she couldn’t give it to me until I went to the cosmetics section and paid for it.  I complied, and then my wife and I went to stand in line at a different check-out station to have the items in the shopping cart checked out. The purchase of two cans of shaving cream added about 15 minutes to our shopping experience.

There’s no telling what the new procedure costs Walmart in terms of increased labor and lost sales, but evidently, that’s less than what it would cost in stolen goods without the procedure.

There are hundreds if not thousands of items in a Walmart that cost more than $4.82, many of which are smaller and easier for a shoplifter to stick down his/her pants or dress than two cans of shaving gel. T-bone steaks, DVDs, and ink cartridges come to mind. Will all such items eventually be under lock and key?

Tucson is a poor city with a poverty rate twice the national average and a high rate of property crime. The poverty can be seen in the homeless begging on street corners and the shabby appearance of many public places and commercial properties, including the litter and trash in the Walmart parking lot. But we’ve never felt unsafe during the daylight hours when we shop. Also, so far, Tucson hasn’t had incidents of snatch-and-run mobs running through stores, as has been the case in some other cities.

The day before our experience at Walmart, a moonlighting Tucson police officer shot and killed a wheelchair-bound shoplifter. The officer was moonlighting in uniform as a security guard in a parking lot shared by a Walmart and Lowes home center. The shoplifter, who was in an electric wheelchair, had a criminal record for assault and other crimes. 

The news stories on the incident weren’t clear, but apparently, the cop was notified by Walmart personnel that the guy in the wheelchair had stolen something. At the same time, the suspect headed for the Lowes while brandishing a knife. As he approached the door to enter the store, the cop yelled for him to stop and drop the knife. When he didn’t comply, the cop shot him nine times instead of using a taser on him, or hitting him with a wand, or shooting to wound him. 

It’s always easy to say from the safety and comfort of one’s home that an officer used excessive force, but that seems to be the case this time. The cop was fired and the shooting is under investigation. Maybe extenuating facts will come out in the investigation.

It’s no wonder that Americans feel that the nation is unraveling.  My wife and I felt it just by shopping at a Walmart.