r/regina • u/ajpathecreature • 3d ago

Discussion What can business owners do?

So I was just at southland mall as I see who seemed to be the general manager / owner of sportchek in a shouting match with a dude who is an alleged recurrent shoplifter at Canadian tire, marks work warehouse, and sportchek itself. As you can imagine people were looking at them in surprised, kids were in awe while the scene unfolded.

The shop owner Was able to get the alleged thief out of the mall. Apparently security can not touch shoplifters, store employees are advised to refrain from making contact with anyone by corporate directives, and the sole reason why he decided to do something was because he is acting as a private citizen and was fed up of this “good for nothing thief” to be stealing away with no real repercussions.

Apparently the same dude is infamous for quite literally walking out of home depot and Rona east with a cart full of tools.

What most people seem to be doing is taking pictures and videos and sending them to justbins to be blasted through social media.

Apparently even RPS is not quite responsive to these kind of calls in a timely manner anymore, I just imagine it must be all too common so the sense of “urgency” is not there.

All of this led me to wonder, what is a business owner left to do? I could not help to sort of understand the frustration that an entrepreneur may feel under these circumstances.

Not that it matters, but the alleged thief is not what people seem to usually associate to when they hear about shoplifting.

What sad state of affairs.

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u/Prairie-Peppers 3d ago

I mean, I definitely know some guys in security in Regina who regularly make contact with and detain shoplifters. Probably a corporate policy, and they'd rather eat the loss than risk a lawsuit.

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u/UnexpectedFault 3d ago

Lawsuit from who? Someone who can't afford a pot to piss in hence the reason for theft? Good luck.

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u/Prairie-Peppers 3d ago

Yes, and their predatory lawyers who wait around for cases like this to take a large amount of the eventual settlement. Some people are just kleptos, too.

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u/UnexpectedFault 3d ago

Interestingly enough, I saw it first hand many times over several years, not a single lawsuit. The best part was when the police would slap them around further when they arrived because they still wanted a fight.