In statements acknowledging the new rules and regulations, supermarket representatives detailed a reality they say must be met and overcome. The changes have been welcomed by Washington, D.C. police, who have increased their presence inside and outside retail stores and, along with prosecutors, are more aggressively targeting shoplifting. But buyers were divided in interviews over how hardening spaces, so important to their routines, would shape their quality of life, with some finding the increased surveillance insulting.
“It’s oppressive, dehumanizing, I could go on and on,” Kelsey Buckner, 44, a customer at a Safeway store in Adams Morgan, said Tuesday about the door at the front of the store.
The incriminated infrastructure, graphite gray and waist-high, stood guard. a few meters from the self-checkout section, flanked by rows of candy and impulsively purchased cold drinks, offered to the diverse confluence of residents forced to comply with new safety measures. The challenge for businesses is to make their store welcoming but secure against theft; the same customers who might complain about shoplifters raiding shelves with perceived impunity might also chafe at the inconveniences of bag bans, receipt checks and gates.
At Giant Food in nearby Columbia Heights, customers had a hard time adjusting to the ban on big bags that took effect last Thursday in some stores in the Washington, DC area. While the company, which declined an interview request, said in a statement that “open reusable shopping bags” are welcome, duffel bags or those measuring larger than 14 x 14 x 6 inches are not. not.
Customers who want to carry their groceries home in larger bags must now leave their prohibited bags at the entrance, checkout and return to the front of the store to put them back in their bags, creating chaos when the pedestrian traffic increases.
Miguel Atkins, 38, said he first noticed the change when he went shopping at Giant in Columbia Heights over the weekend, and a security guard made him take off his bag backpack before entering. He reacted to the rule with resignation.
“That’s how it is,” he said.
About a mile away in Adams Morgan, customers at the Harris Teeter said they started getting their receipts verified last month. A spokesperson for the The chain, which also has locations in Navy Yard and NoMa, declined an interview request but said in a statement that its new security measures also include banning suitcases, oversized backpacks and backpacks. casters. The statement said the new measures “will help us maintain a safe shopping experience and continue to provide our customers with the best service and products at competitive prices.”
Justin Tew, 38, who was shopping at the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan Tuesday afternoon, said checking receipts was “a little annoying, but it’s understandable” because shoplifting and flight “seems so out of control.”
Several shoppers interviewed at stores Tuesday said they felt shoplifting had increased — and said they had personally witnessed retail theft. It’s difficult to know exactly how pervasive shoplifting really is, however, because Washington, D.C. police don’t classify it into a specific category. The department includes these types of crimes in a broader category of theft, and these crimes have remained stable during the first five months of this year, compared to the same period in 2023.
Thefts in Washington, excluding vehicle thefts, increased 23% in 2023 compared to the previous year.
Retail theft in Washington, DC has attracted national attention. The District was presented online as an avatar of the dysfunction on the barren shelves of a CVS in Columbia Heights that closed its doors earlier this year. Other locations of the chain across the district have begun locking down vast quantities of merchandise, forcing customers to seek help from staff to access products such as toothpaste and toilet paper.
In September, Giant Food announced it would audit customer receipts and stop stocking certain brand-name products at its store on Alabama Avenue in Southeast Washington, citing high levels of theft and sparking debate public about racial profiling in a majority area. -Black.
In interviews, some shoppers questioned the focus on catching individual shoplifters and said D.C. leaders should instead prioritize improvement. the economic conditions that drive some to steal in the first place. Others have argued that the aesthetic of the security measure seems dystopian; at the Safeway in Adams Morgan, one customer said the door reminded him of a prison.
Buckner said the gate “seems targeted” to low-income people and black and Hispanic people. Columbia Road NW, where the store is located, is “historically a Hispanic and black community,” and Safeway is known as the most affordable grocery store in the area, she said, adding that the material could make people unnecessarily fearful.
“I’m sure people who aren’t from this neighborhood (come in and think), ‘Whoa, there must be a problem,'” she said.
Safeway also declined an interview request. In response to customer concerns that the portal appears to be a racist target, the Safeway spokeswoman said “all customers are subject to these security policies.”
Others support increased security. David Ryan, a 59-year-old Adams Morgan resident, said Safeway’s front door “makes me feel like the company is doing something to improve its bottom line, which is important, so that prices of our food products are not skyrocketing.”
In response to residents’ concerns about the theft, Washington, D.C. law enforcement and lawmakers have recently taken a tougher stance. The DC Council recently gave prosecutors more power in theft cases, making it a crime to commit more than one theft in a six-month period of items with a total value of more than $1,000 – a move that drew strong resistance from criminal justice reform advocates. who argued that increasing incarceration for relatively minor offenses would not make the city safer.
DC Police Commander. Colin Hall, who runs the First District station, said he thinks the changes have been effective. Authorities are seeing fewer images of store shelves emptied of merchandise, which he attributes to more focused police attention on the issue, greater repression by prosecutors and authorities. the new laws. He noted that a retail theft suspect was recently sentenced to 200 days in jail, an important measure that can make a person “think twice before walking into a store and stealing again.” in this way “.
Hall, whose district includes retail-heavy areas such as the blocks around Capital One Arena, Navy Yard and NoMa, also said new grocery store security measures could help slow quick escapes and increase the chances of shoplifters being arrested.
He said mass shoplifting was having a “huge impact” on the city.
“We want the community to feel safe in these stores,” he said, “and we need these stores to thrive.” »
Aaron Wiener contributed to this report.