BF2S Forums "Loss Prevention"

A tree of surveillance cameras was perched on one side. With the introduction of A.I., this particular installation, atop a lamppost, would unlock all sorts of shoplifting prevention. As the cameras monitored the lot, they would be able to detect loiterers, ne’er-do-wells, and the like. Spending too long in Zone 5 could be an indication that one was on the path to crime, and an A.I.-generated voice could call down to the would-be boosters with specificity, meant to strike fear with a human touch. “The red sedan, please leave,” for example, said Josh Bush, research project coordinator. “It can give the impression of active monitoring.”

There were other flourishes as well. The contraptions could use their speakers to play the infamous mosquito ringtone, the high-pitched noise that adults can’t hear but is loud and grating to teenagers. Blaring that in the parking lot was another way to ward off the criminal element. Shoplifting, after all, was a young person’s game.

[…]

From there, we passed into some of the staged aisles of Justin’s General Store, where various high-theft items were displayed on fake shelves. Cereal, baby formula. I looked at a shaving kit locked inside a plastic box, which was referred to as a “freedom case.” There were various kinked hooks and plastic buffers and knobs, plexiglass shields that had to be slid one way or another, all inconveniences that caused shoppers friction, which happened to be good at stopping crime. The problem, of course, is that they are also good at stopping sales altogether. Sometimes you cure the disease and lose the patient.

Bush pointed to a pile of plaster in our aisle. “We’re never getting our security deposit back on ceiling tiles,” he joked. That was because they had affixed so many ceiling-mounted surveillance cameras to the drop ceiling of the lab that the panels routinely buckled beneath the weight and came crashing to the ground. I marveled at the number of obsidian half-domes mounted overhead. I couldn’t marvel for too long, though, because advanced cameras would alert a store’s loss-prevention staff if someone was seen lingering in an aisle or mulling items in a criminal-y manner. Some of these, A.I.-enabled, would even quote you how much potential revenue a customer was worth walking through the door.

[...]

But in the lab, they were cooking up more than just neologisms. Dr. Hayes also invented “public view monitors,” video screens that show people on surveillance cameras so they know they’re being watched. He had them built, tested them in the lab, and proved their worthiness. What he did not do was patent them—he just gave them away—so now they’re made and sold widely, which won him a stern meeting with the University of Florida’s commercialization department.

I noticed a clicking noise in the background. One of the LPRC’s scientific studies had determined that one thing shoplifters do not like is noise. I asked if that was one of the higher-tech sensory deployments.

I went down into the Reddit annals myself for some research. A self-proclaimed former Target LP worker posted that the store used to be all that, sure. But it’s fallen off now. “Can confirm, target tech used to be insane. Having TSS on my resume got me jobs elsewhere. Nowadays it’s all theater.” Another self-identified LP from Target, when asked whether it was facial recognition or phone numbers that tipped off in-store agents to tail shoplifters, responded: “race.” He wrote: “If you are white. find at least two black friends, have them go in the store and split up, then you go in 5 minutes later, then you can take whatever you want. LP will be focused on the black ppl.” Then again, maybe that’s what they want you to think. Remember the deterrence. How do we know what we know?

“I would be very skeptical of the LPRC’s statistics and studies. Most if not all of them are funded by the big shrink-reduction companies,” said Rachel Shteir, author of The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. “And it’s in those companies’ interest to exaggerate the problem of shoplifting.”