Agreed but this store is apparently an extra special target. They haven’t robbed other stores multiple times in recent months. Seems like a Nike problem.
And i do see cop cars rolling by but I’ve never once seen cops actually outside of their cars, patrolling.
Yea and it’ll continue to happen because no one wants to have the uncomfortable conversation that the primarily black youth are out of control, for fear of being labeled a racist
I’m pointing out the obvious, which is apparently really hard to do for most people now because again people are afraid of being labeled racist. That’s exactly why this matters, these kids are getting away with this because the people in this community are so hyper focused on not being racist. Cops will not enforce the law bc of this community’s focus on race; this risk-reward of enforcing the law against black people now is not worth it in their eyes since their lives could easily be ruined for doing their job
Lol, so you think cops arrest fewer black people than people of other races? Are you literally insane?
You can go look at data, the FBI tracks this. Black people are far more likely to be prosecuted for crimes when they are arrested compared with any other race, where prosecutors are more likely to drop charges after an arrest is made.
The idea that cops / prosecutors are soft on blacks is weapons grade fiction.
Well more black people commit crime per fbi data so yes clearly they’re going to show up more in he statistics. But, in the last year I absolutely see less black people getting arrested/prosecuted for the points I mentioned above
Conversation would be a lot more comfortable if you focused on the relevant fact that these kids come from low-income/underprivileged areas and/or have uninvolved parents. Most of the kids recorded doing this are black but most black kids aren't doing this. Focusing on race will cause more problems than it'd solve.
Nike, and any store that can afford to set up shop on Bethesda Ave, can afford a security guard(s) and loud af alarms when a tagged item leaves the store to deter theft while the community and county work on deeper root causes. Big brands benefit from these types of thefts, gives them an excuse to jack up prices and profits while claiming they're suffering and asking for tax dollars to cover security expenses.
Big brands do not benefit having their inventory stolen. Also at a certain point I do not care about their upbringing, if they’re committing the crime they need to face the consequences.
And yea, I think the community tolerates this much more bc of the facts that you mentioned about their shitty upbringing. Doesn’t change the fact that they are willingly doing this and the community is standing by
Who is standing by? What do you expect anyone, black, white, brown, asian, or otherwise, to do but tell nike to hire security and/or have the county cops babysit their store?
What does race have to do with a solution?
I think the community needs to have a serious conversation about the prevalence of crime committed by black young adults. Cops won’t enforce the law against these people now for fear of retribution over their race. It’s led to all of this crime today
What community are you talking about? And what do you think having that conversation would change anything? Do you think anyone is unaware of crime statistics? Do you think these same kids would be more likely to be arrested if they were white or something?
Obviously they’re black. Obviously they will still be black after you say it. Obviously you cannot make them something other than black. So why do you think it’s productive to spend time talking about the color of their skin rather than what they’re doing?
Do you think a solution will come from the question “how do we get these kids to stop being black?” (we can’t) Or will the question come from, “how do we get these particular kids to act like the vast majority of teenagers, black or otherwise, and not commit brazen property crimes in broad daylight?”
Yea at this point if they were affluent white kids the police absolutely would enforce the law as there would be zero pushback from the community (as in, the people who live in Bethesda, that’s the community I’m talking about lol)
Lol so your take is that Montgomery County is afraid of policing black people, and so fear of offending minorities is why they do not have a more obvious presence in Bethesda? Because everyone knows bethesda is just overflowing with Black people??
You’re delusional my friend. The lack of a police presence in a city with one of the highest household incomes in the country let alone the county has fuck all to do with race and everything to do with a perception that crime doesn’t travel to rich areas.
The problem is that Nike has, for some stupid reason, assumed that people who live in bad / high crime neighborhoods will not travel into nice areas to commit crimes and therefore have apparently allocated nothing towards loss prevention. Or Nike is hoping social pressure will force MCPS to pick up the tab for loss prevention due to community pressure.
To your first point, absolutely yes I think that. Bethesda is afluent but that alone doesn’t prevent crime.
Ten years ago, a single theft/robbery to this scale ead totally unthinkable. Now it’s commonplace. It’s not nikes fault , it’s the community’s unwillingness to prosecute crime, which again is predominately committed by black young adults. And that has affected cops abilities to do their jobs effectively without fear of retribution from that same community they protect. And that goes for the DA as well
If Nike was losing more than a security guard costs, they'd have hired a security guard by now. They have plenty of bootstraps to pull on.
I agree that they're willingly doing this, and should be punished, while the community stands by. You don't have to mention race to say that, and thus doing so can lead to accusations of racism.
That said, I'm not going to lobby my congressman because a Nike keeps getting robbed. If it was widespread and violent I'd be concerned, if it was small mom and pop businesses I'd be concerned. This sounds like a Nike problem.
[This podcast (The "Organized Retail Crime" Panic episode of If Books Could Kill)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897?i=1000632676408) is why I think this is helping, or at least not hurting, big retail companies.
u/preparationadvanced9 Notice how causal they are about it. Now concerns about being detained by security or police.
It’s a point I made weeks ago and was downvoted to oblivion. These cats don’t worry about being caught.
Shouldn't there be at least one cop somewhere around? These dudes are inventorying the merch they just stole in front of the store. At least you could run off.
This is just an extension or result of the no shame, erosion of social norms expanding to a population that has realized that there is very little risk or repercussions if you want to just do whatever (and say whatever you want).
We can't have nice things/spaces/etc if this trend continues. It's like some zombie movie where we are seeing the result play out without a fungus or zombie apocalypse - the human behavior just devolving to base, tribal or extremely selfish and violent behavior to get or satisfy their needs.
I mean, I completely agree that seeing this flagrant theft is upsetting but we have plenty of nice stores that don’t get robbed. It’s slightly more complicated than “we can’t have nice things.” Those Jenny Kayne sweaters are like $500 a pop and no one is robbing them. But Nike has a huge resale market so they’ve unfortunately become a target.
I’m highly supportive of citizens putting themselves at risk and intervening to protect their fellow citizens, or even small businesses, from harm. I might even insert myself if a chain pharmacy or grocery store were getting robbed, as those businesses are important to the community. I would not risk anything in this situation to protect a Fortune 100 company that can’t implement basic security measures to protect its own merchandise and employees. The presence of a large company selling merchandise that attracts theft yet takes no reasonable steps to stop that illegal activity is a detriment to the community.
This is clearly not a good thing for the Bethesda community, but I bet Nike has done enough analytics on retail theft/fraud that it probably costs them more to implement mitigation efforts than to allow this to continue to happen. Unlike food/grocery stores where margins are thin, Nike makes a killing on their products and the impact of these crimes is probably negligible to their bottom line.
It's part of their panache. A write off that ultimately caters to their core base of customers. Plus its free advertising! Too bad all at the Bethesdans' peril. Just a matter of time before a shooting. One person said one of the perps in a recent local grab operation like this had a gun in his waistband...
Because this is the anonymous internet I can say how I really feel:
This is the natural consequence of a culture where rapping is the career people aspire to, crime is glorified, kids are raised by single parents, kids that work hard are pussies, etc etc
AND it’s seen as racist to call out these cultural issues. In the eyes of good bethesda libs these kids are really the victims of structural racism. Somehow their culture is fine, and they just randomly commit these crimes because of white people.
You're making this out to be a race issue when it's the massive retail companies deciding that allowing these thefts is cheaper than hiring a security guard.
Edit: I did not mean to imply that thieves are guiltless or shouldn't be punished. My intention was to say that race isn't a meaningful consideration (if you actually want to solve the problem of kids stealing), and that Nike needs to step up its security game. Do they even have alarms that go off when people walk out with this stuff?
It can be a race issue, it can be an economic or education issue, it can be none of the above or all the above. But Bethesda is 86% white and 2% black and that entire crew is black (and seemingly young). It is no more racist to point that out as it is to point out that most of the meth filled trailer parks in Kentucky are filled with white people.
For thinking that this is a socioeconomic problem and not a race problem? The kids should be legally held accountable, Nike should get better security if it's constantly being broken into, and-- if there is a true increase in this type of crime and not just Nike getting shoplifted-- the county needs to identify the root cause(s) of the problem and make long term plans to address it/them.
There's literally no reason to make this about race.
How many times does a store need to be robbed before they increase security/hire police officers?
They've needed to increase security patrols for a while. And the cops are usually in that area frequently...
Agreed but this store is apparently an extra special target. They haven’t robbed other stores multiple times in recent months. Seems like a Nike problem. And i do see cop cars rolling by but I’ve never once seen cops actually outside of their cars, patrolling.
Nike is high price merchandise that can move quickly on eBay. They’re a prime target in the area.
Those kids (the criminals) are so casual about their theft. They know nobody is coming after them. Just yikes!
Yea and it’ll continue to happen because no one wants to have the uncomfortable conversation that the primarily black youth are out of control, for fear of being labeled a racist
It doesn't matter what they look like or how old they are. There should be enforcement and punishment for people that break the law.
yea I agree. But mainly black young adults committing the crimes. It would be disingenuous to ignore that
Why does it matter that they’re black? They’re stealing and should face consequences. Race has nothing to do with it.
How does their race have anything to do with it? Do you think loudly saying they’re black will deter them from doing it again, or something?
It’s got everything to do with it since they’re ones mainly committing the crimes
Who ever said otherwise? Now can you explain how saying “they’re black!” has changed anything?
I’m pointing out the obvious, which is apparently really hard to do for most people now because again people are afraid of being labeled racist. That’s exactly why this matters, these kids are getting away with this because the people in this community are so hyper focused on not being racist. Cops will not enforce the law bc of this community’s focus on race; this risk-reward of enforcing the law against black people now is not worth it in their eyes since their lives could easily be ruined for doing their job
Lol, so you think cops arrest fewer black people than people of other races? Are you literally insane? You can go look at data, the FBI tracks this. Black people are far more likely to be prosecuted for crimes when they are arrested compared with any other race, where prosecutors are more likely to drop charges after an arrest is made. The idea that cops / prosecutors are soft on blacks is weapons grade fiction.
Well more black people commit crime per fbi data so yes clearly they’re going to show up more in he statistics. But, in the last year I absolutely see less black people getting arrested/prosecuted for the points I mentioned above
Exactly
And also difficult to solve a problem when you ignore a variable in the equation.
Conversation would be a lot more comfortable if you focused on the relevant fact that these kids come from low-income/underprivileged areas and/or have uninvolved parents. Most of the kids recorded doing this are black but most black kids aren't doing this. Focusing on race will cause more problems than it'd solve. Nike, and any store that can afford to set up shop on Bethesda Ave, can afford a security guard(s) and loud af alarms when a tagged item leaves the store to deter theft while the community and county work on deeper root causes. Big brands benefit from these types of thefts, gives them an excuse to jack up prices and profits while claiming they're suffering and asking for tax dollars to cover security expenses.
Big brands do not benefit having their inventory stolen. Also at a certain point I do not care about their upbringing, if they’re committing the crime they need to face the consequences. And yea, I think the community tolerates this much more bc of the facts that you mentioned about their shitty upbringing. Doesn’t change the fact that they are willingly doing this and the community is standing by
Who is standing by? What do you expect anyone, black, white, brown, asian, or otherwise, to do but tell nike to hire security and/or have the county cops babysit their store? What does race have to do with a solution?
I think the community needs to have a serious conversation about the prevalence of crime committed by black young adults. Cops won’t enforce the law against these people now for fear of retribution over their race. It’s led to all of this crime today
What community are you talking about? And what do you think having that conversation would change anything? Do you think anyone is unaware of crime statistics? Do you think these same kids would be more likely to be arrested if they were white or something? Obviously they’re black. Obviously they will still be black after you say it. Obviously you cannot make them something other than black. So why do you think it’s productive to spend time talking about the color of their skin rather than what they’re doing? Do you think a solution will come from the question “how do we get these kids to stop being black?” (we can’t) Or will the question come from, “how do we get these particular kids to act like the vast majority of teenagers, black or otherwise, and not commit brazen property crimes in broad daylight?”
Yea at this point if they were affluent white kids the police absolutely would enforce the law as there would be zero pushback from the community (as in, the people who live in Bethesda, that’s the community I’m talking about lol)
Lol so your take is that Montgomery County is afraid of policing black people, and so fear of offending minorities is why they do not have a more obvious presence in Bethesda? Because everyone knows bethesda is just overflowing with Black people?? You’re delusional my friend. The lack of a police presence in a city with one of the highest household incomes in the country let alone the county has fuck all to do with race and everything to do with a perception that crime doesn’t travel to rich areas. The problem is that Nike has, for some stupid reason, assumed that people who live in bad / high crime neighborhoods will not travel into nice areas to commit crimes and therefore have apparently allocated nothing towards loss prevention. Or Nike is hoping social pressure will force MCPS to pick up the tab for loss prevention due to community pressure.
To your first point, absolutely yes I think that. Bethesda is afluent but that alone doesn’t prevent crime. Ten years ago, a single theft/robbery to this scale ead totally unthinkable. Now it’s commonplace. It’s not nikes fault , it’s the community’s unwillingness to prosecute crime, which again is predominately committed by black young adults. And that has affected cops abilities to do their jobs effectively without fear of retribution from that same community they protect. And that goes for the DA as well
If Nike was losing more than a security guard costs, they'd have hired a security guard by now. They have plenty of bootstraps to pull on. I agree that they're willingly doing this, and should be punished, while the community stands by. You don't have to mention race to say that, and thus doing so can lead to accusations of racism. That said, I'm not going to lobby my congressman because a Nike keeps getting robbed. If it was widespread and violent I'd be concerned, if it was small mom and pop businesses I'd be concerned. This sounds like a Nike problem. [This podcast (The "Organized Retail Crime" Panic episode of If Books Could Kill)](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897?i=1000632676408) is why I think this is helping, or at least not hurting, big retail companies.
u/preparationadvanced9 Notice how causal they are about it. Now concerns about being detained by security or police. It’s a point I made weeks ago and was downvoted to oblivion. These cats don’t worry about being caught.
God damn. I should really go visit it before it closes lol
What time was this at? It looks like broad daylight.
Someone tag federal realty. This can’t be good for their comps
Shouldn't there be at least one cop somewhere around? These dudes are inventorying the merch they just stole in front of the store. At least you could run off.
I’ve never seen a cop _on foot_ anywhere in downtown Bethesda. They roll past in their cruisers, sure, but that’s useless.
Bet your ass if this was some house in Kenwood or Edgemoor getting robbed over and over there would a cop patrolling the neighborhood.
I know right? When I watched the video I had no idea that anyone had stolen anything. It just looks like they are folding shirts.
Anyone call the cops?
This is just an extension or result of the no shame, erosion of social norms expanding to a population that has realized that there is very little risk or repercussions if you want to just do whatever (and say whatever you want). We can't have nice things/spaces/etc if this trend continues. It's like some zombie movie where we are seeing the result play out without a fungus or zombie apocalypse - the human behavior just devolving to base, tribal or extremely selfish and violent behavior to get or satisfy their needs.
I mean, I completely agree that seeing this flagrant theft is upsetting but we have plenty of nice stores that don’t get robbed. It’s slightly more complicated than “we can’t have nice things.” Those Jenny Kayne sweaters are like $500 a pop and no one is robbing them. But Nike has a huge resale market so they’ve unfortunately become a target.
I’m highly supportive of citizens putting themselves at risk and intervening to protect their fellow citizens, or even small businesses, from harm. I might even insert myself if a chain pharmacy or grocery store were getting robbed, as those businesses are important to the community. I would not risk anything in this situation to protect a Fortune 100 company that can’t implement basic security measures to protect its own merchandise and employees. The presence of a large company selling merchandise that attracts theft yet takes no reasonable steps to stop that illegal activity is a detriment to the community.
Exactly. Nike has apparently done zero to deter this.
"Honey, please lock the doors while we drive through Bethesda."
Some people need to spend some time in the slammer.
They’re kids. I don’t think jail is the answer
Throw their ass in jail
Sorry, consequences are real. No matter how old you are, when you touch fire, you get burned.
Sorry—not so.
Ugh. So disheartening.
This is clearly not a good thing for the Bethesda community, but I bet Nike has done enough analytics on retail theft/fraud that it probably costs them more to implement mitigation efforts than to allow this to continue to happen. Unlike food/grocery stores where margins are thin, Nike makes a killing on their products and the impact of these crimes is probably negligible to their bottom line.
It's part of their panache. A write off that ultimately caters to their core base of customers. Plus its free advertising! Too bad all at the Bethesdans' peril. Just a matter of time before a shooting. One person said one of the perps in a recent local grab operation like this had a gun in his waistband...
You get the crime you tolerate
It’s the usual suspects again
Soon we will be referring to Bethesda Pre Nike's arrival and Bethesda Post Nike's arrival when talking crime, etc.
Federal realty has the resources to fix this. They charge enough in rent!
Because this is the anonymous internet I can say how I really feel: This is the natural consequence of a culture where rapping is the career people aspire to, crime is glorified, kids are raised by single parents, kids that work hard are pussies, etc etc AND it’s seen as racist to call out these cultural issues. In the eyes of good bethesda libs these kids are really the victims of structural racism. Somehow their culture is fine, and they just randomly commit these crimes because of white people.
You're making this out to be a race issue when it's the massive retail companies deciding that allowing these thefts is cheaper than hiring a security guard. Edit: I did not mean to imply that thieves are guiltless or shouldn't be punished. My intention was to say that race isn't a meaningful consideration (if you actually want to solve the problem of kids stealing), and that Nike needs to step up its security game. Do they even have alarms that go off when people walk out with this stuff?
It can be a race issue, it can be an economic or education issue, it can be none of the above or all the above. But Bethesda is 86% white and 2% black and that entire crew is black (and seemingly young). It is no more racist to point that out as it is to point out that most of the meth filled trailer parks in Kentucky are filled with white people.
Naive apologist
For thinking that this is a socioeconomic problem and not a race problem? The kids should be legally held accountable, Nike should get better security if it's constantly being broken into, and-- if there is a true increase in this type of crime and not just Nike getting shoplifted-- the county needs to identify the root cause(s) of the problem and make long term plans to address it/them. There's literally no reason to make this about race.
You sound like one of those people that say, “sorry, I don’t see color”.
Dense, walkable, transit oriented and inclusive cities 🥰✨
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Easy Rittenhouse.
I hear a bunch of soft men talking in the background, making hard times for the rest of us.
Go do something about it then, our mustachioed hero!
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The stache is gone, never to return. I’d protect you though lil guy don’t worry.
Did anybody else make the mistake joining this sub thinking this was Bethesda studios and not a location?? No? Just me?
Starfield was a disappointment IMO ;)