Between 30 to 50 people swarmed the Nordstrom at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Woodland Hills, making off with thousands of dollars worth of luxury handbags and high-end clothing, an LAPD spokesman told NBC News.

  • JasSmith@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    “I’m poor so I’m not responsible for stealing luxury goods and bear spraying minimum wage security guards.”

    I grew up poor. I didn’t do this. Your comment is dripping with the implicit accusation that poor people are basically just animals. Incapable of controlling themselves when they see nice handbags.

    • Isaac@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Poverty doesn’t affect everyone the same. To try to discount the fact that poverty increases crime just because you aren’t a criminal is ignoring the complexity of humanity.

      To say that this particular crime was caused by poverty also ignores the complexity of humanity.

      We can all speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I agree that lessening poverty will lessen crime of most types.

      • vector_zero@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Thing is, there’s a difference between stealing a loaf of bread and looting a Nordstrom and assaulting the guards.

        • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Stealing from wealthy corporations is an extremely valid and morally acceptable form of protest. Hell, it’s a morally good thing to do even if it’s not meant as a protest.

          I’m not going to defend assaulting the guards, though, except in the case of self-defense. Store security guards have no business using force against shoplifters, and most company policies align with that fact.

            • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Feel free to explain why it’s not objectively a good act to steal from the entities that themselves commit the overwhelming majority of theft, intentionally, systematically, and forcefully hold the majority of the worlds working population either in actual slavery, poverty, or at least unjustifiable and extreme financial insecurity that technically isn’t poverty because government definitions of poverty are patently absurd, and and who are actively and knowingly driving us towards towards the collapse of the environment and the greater part of biological life itself.

              I’ll give you a hint: you’re actually just wrong by any standard that values human life in any way.

          • norbert@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Yeah have you ever been in a Nordstrom? Fuck that place, snatch all the handbags you can and sell them on eBay I don’t really care.

            You shouldn’t bear spray security and maybe they should be charged for it but at least he wasn’t shot or something.

            • keeb420@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              i feel bad for the employees who had to deal with it and clean up after and the guards that got assaulted. i dont feel bad for the above store level managers and execs who have to deal with this shit.

          • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            There was also needless destruction. I can see breaking a glass case to grab some watches, but it appears that there was also destruction for the sake of destruction (at least in the video I watched).

                • Braggston08@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Some people dont seem to grasp how all of this works. They seem to think the insurance fairy will pay for the damages and not the businesses (and finally the customers).

                • Zorque@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  You know, because obviously I’m a complete moron who has never had an intelligent thought in their life, in your estimation, I’d never thought about that…

                  Of course premiums will go up. Insurance agencies are predatory scumbags, too. But I still have a hard time feeling sorry for luxury brands having to pay slightly higher premiums than they were before. Shockingly, its still just things.

                  I know some people put the value of things over all else, but I find that to be a shortsighted and selfish way of thinking.

            • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Who actually gives a fuck about corporate property being destroyed? These companies commit more theft from their workers than all other theft combined. They objectively deserve this.

          • Deftdrummer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            So all those people who work for a living and contribute to society, who save up that money to buy those handbags are just schmucks? Give me a break.

            • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago
              1. People that work for a living do not shop at Nordstrom’s

              2. The items were stolen from Nordstrom’s, not individuals

              • Deftdrummer@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                What a tacitly disingenuous statement. What the fuck are you sniffing “people who work don’t shop there.”

                Your edgy 14 your old comment is ridiculous. What a jibe on the rich you just did!

                The items were stolen period. Fact. A crime. Never mind your rage against capitalism. Commit a crime and get put in jail.

                Commit a bodily crime over property, get put in the ground.

            • MostlyBirds@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You know someone is a shit person when they equate income with value as a human being.

              Even if that were a valid take, almost every working poor person contributes more to society than nearly any rich person does, and would therefore still have more human worth.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          There is a difference, that doesn’t mean they don’t have similar root causes.

        • kttnpunk@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Everybody has different needs, but imo if you work as a security guard for a place like this AND take it seriously you not only signed up for violence but you deserve it. These companies are robbing us blind of good health, personal space and time on the planet- why defend that?

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        TFA even mentions that one of the getaway cars was a BMW. Undoubtedly, there were both impoverished people and people who jumped at an opportunity involved.

        • dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          Making people respond like you just did is the only reason they included the BMW part. I’m in California and there are pages and pages of early to mid 2000s BMWs available near me for less than $5k, which is significantly less than I paid for my car that no one would ever look at and think I’m rich.

      • Aux@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If poverty was driving crime rates, then most of the world (as most countries are much much poorer than the US) would be a crime infested shit hole. Somehow that’s not true at all. US crime is not related to poverty in any way.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          All you have to do is look at the crime statistics and income statistics for cities across North America. Cities that have lower GDPs (less money, less opportunity) generally have higher crime rates. If despair is high, people will act out of desperation. What you are wilfully ignoring is the fact that “countries that are poorer than the US” also are drastically different culturally than the US. Almost nowhere else on Earth has the same kind of income disparity that the US has. You can’t take a developing nation where 50% of people live in poverty, and compare it to a developed nation where no one needs to live in poverty but are forced to do so by manipulated housing and job markets.

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Of course poor people aren’t “basically just animals”, the OP didn’t imply that. What the OP is saying is that when genuine opportunity doesn’t exist, some people will find their own opportunity and/or weigh the consequences of their actions differently.

      Wealth and income disparity have consequences and this is one of them. Public unrest is another eventual outcome. Something needs to be done about it or something will be done about it.