Locked-Up Toothpaste: Retail Theft vs. Reality

Walk into a big-box store in 2025 and you’ll find the future of shopping hiding behind Plexiglas. Toothpaste in cages. Deodorant under lock and key. A clerk with a jangling ring of keys, jogging down Aisle 7 like a jailer of Crest and Dove. It’s an image tailor-made for doomscrolling: “America has given up—we even locked the toothpaste.” But is this really a story about runaway crime? Or have we mistaken a symbol for the whole plot?

The short answer: retail theft is up in some places, not everywhere, and the loudest numbers often don’t mean what people think they mean. The longer answer is messier—and more interesting. It lives at the intersection of data gaps, corporate incentives, shifting laws, viral videos, and the emotional power of a locked cabinet to make us feel like society is fraying. Let’s separate the signal from the static.

Why toothpaste? Because it’s ordinary. When ordinary things get locked up, it screams “crisis” louder than charts ever could. Brands know this. Politicians know this. News producers know this. You do, too—you’ve stood there waiting for someone with a key.

The feelings are real. The question is whether the facts match.

Start with the gold-standard, non-partisan read: the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ). Their 2024 report looked closely at shoplifting in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, and compared FBI data sets that don’t even agree with each other. The top-line: compared to 2019, reported shoplifting in 2023 was 87% higher in Los Angeles and 55% higher in New York, while Chicago was lower than pre-2020 in 2023 but rose through 2024. CCJ also found that in a 23-city sample, shoplifting in the first half of 2024 ran 24% higher than in the same period of 2023 (Lopez, 2024).

Stateline put a fine point on it: New York’s shoplifting rose sharply from 2021 to 2022, dipped slightly in 2023, but still sat 55% above 2019; LA’s 2023 level was 87% above 2019, with 2024 undercounts likely due to a reporting-system switch (Hernández, 2024). In short, headline-ready spikes exist—but they’re not universal, and measurement quirks matter.

California’s numbers also complicate the narrative. The Public Policy Institute of California reported that overall crime fell in 2024 and the state’s property crime rate hit a three-decade low—even as shoplifting kept rising, up ~14% year-over-year and ~48% above 2019. Retail theft (shoplifting plus commercial burglary) was up just 3% in 2024, 22.8% above 2019 (Lofstrom, 2025). Translation: retail theft is a meaningful problem—but it’s not the same thing as “crime is exploding.”

If you’ve seen claims that “organized retail crime” (ORC) accounts for nearly half of retailers’ losses from “shrink,” you’re not alone. That line ricocheted across TV hits and legislative hearings—until the National Retail Federation (NRF) pulled it back. In December 2023, Reuters reported that NRF removed the claim after discovering it leaned on a misinterpretation of older testimony and mismatched data—an error widely amplified in media and lobbying (Masters, 2023).

This matters because big numbers drive big policy. When a marquee statistic turns out to be wrong, everything tethered to it—penalty hikes, funding rejiggers, the narrative that “we’re under siege”—deserves a second look. Stateline summarized the correction bluntly: the “nearly half” figure was closer to about 5% (Hernández, 2024). None of this means ORC isn’t real; it is. It means we should be allergic to iffy math—especially when it’s used to lock up the toothpaste and unlock tougher laws.

Another viral driver: store-closure announcements linked to crime. Target’s September 2023 statement is a case study, explicitly citing theft and ORC for closing nine stores across four states and detailing new security investments and partnerships (Target Corporation, 2023).

But zoom out. The Washington Post cautions that closures rarely hinge on a single factor: foot traffic, inflation, rent, local competition, and broader retail shifts all matter. Shrink is a piece—not the whole pie (Peiser, 2023). Some analysts think “crime” sometimes acts as a convenient umbrella term when a store is underperforming for multiple reasons. The bottom line: closures may feature crime, but they co-star economics.

You could feel the narrative wobble in January 2023 when Walgreens’ CFO admitted the company might have overstated its shoplifting problem—“maybe we cried too much”—and said shrink had fallen back toward historical levels (Bekiempis, 2023). The comment landed like a pin in a balloon: if a top retailer walked back the alarm, maybe the public panic was outrunning the signal.

Again, nuance: different chains, different neighborhoods, different realities. But the Walgreens mea culpa is a reminder to treat sweeping claims with skepticism, even when they fit our feeds.

If the data fight feels chaotic, it’s not your imagination. Here’s why:

1. “Retail theft” isn’t a single metric. Shoplifting is one slice. “Shrink” is bigger (also covering employee theft, miscounts, damage, fraud). ORC is a subset of external theft. Mixing these up can create monster statistics that don’t map to reality (Peiser, 2023).

2. National data is imperfect. The FBI’s legacy SRS and newer NIBRS systems tell different stories about shoplifting since 2019. Agencies migrated to NIBRS at different times; some places under-report; others changed processes (Lopez, 2024).

3. Policy shifts change reporting. In Los Angeles, a 2024 records-management switch likely produced an undercount, per CCJ. In California, PPIC cautioned that data coverage issues complicate year-to-year comparisons (Lopez, 2024; Lofstrom, 2025).

4. Viral videos ≠ baseline reality. A flash-mob clip gets 10 million views; a nuanced spreadsheet gets ten. Perception outruns prevalence—even as some cities genuinely grapple with increases (Peiser, 2023).

Because retailers optimize for loss prevention and customer flow—and lately, the loss-prevention part is shouting. Target, in its own words, is adding guards, locking some items, and partnering with law enforcement and DHS (Target Corporation, 2023). That can be rational if a specific store faces repeated theft in high-demand items that are easy to flip. But it can also backfire: shoppers hate friction, and the visual of a “caged aisle” amplifies fear, regardless of actual risk.

Public policy is rushing in. California passed a package of retail-theft bills in 2024, even as PPIC’s statewide data showed declining overall crime but rising shoplifting (Lofstrom, 2025). Across the country, legislators are tweaking thresholds, aggregation rules, and penalties for repeat offenses. The danger is overshooting—writing laws for the viral edge cases rather than for the data-driven middle.

• Workers feel it first. Clerks and security staff deal with confrontations and the emotional toll of being told “don’t intervene.” That’s a morale and safety problem, not just a spreadsheet line (Peiser, 2023).

• Communities lose convenience. If a store shutters, the neighborhood loses access to basics. Even when stores stay, the customer experience degrades behind plexiglass, and the idea of your town changes—toward distrust (Peiser, 2023).

• Trust in institutions wobbles. A widely quoted stat gets retracted; another gets walked back on an earnings call; a third is “under review.” People start to believe nobody is telling the truth. That vacuum is where bad ideas thrive (Masters, 2023; Bekiempis, 2023).

1. Some cities really are seeing more shoplifting than before the pandemic. CCJ’s city-level work and PPIC’s California trends show real increases in specific contexts (Lopez, 2024; Lofstrom, 2025).

2. The national picture is muddy. FBI data systems conflict; retailer surveys conflate categories; reporting practices shift. Beware sweeping national declarations built on inconsistent foundations (Lopez, 2024; Peiser, 2023).

3. The most viral numbers have stumbled. NRF withdrew the bombshell “half of shrink is ORC” line. Walgreens softened its own alarm. When the loudest claims wobble, healthy skepticism is a public service (Masters, 2023; Bekiempis, 2023).

1) Get the measurement right.
We need cleaner, comparable data and clarity on categories. FBI should offer plainer guidance on SRS vs. NIBRS comparability. Retailers should publish standardized shrink breakouts and ORC definitions—and stop mixing them in press-ready soundbites (Lopez, 2024).

2) Target the hot spots, not the headlines.
If a handful of districts see elevated shoplifting, surge solutions there: targeted enforcement against fencing networks, smarter store layouts, and community-based interventions. Remember: many thefts are low-dollar and need non-carceral fixes to actually reduce repeat incidents (Peiser, 2023).

3) Design security that doesn’t punish shoppers.
If you must lock items, do it surgically and test alternatives like shelf-level tagging or quick-unlock technology. Treat the Plexiglas wall as the last resort—not the brand (Peiser, 2023).

4) De-politicize the statistics.
When a powerful trade group retracts a marquee claim and keeps lobbying anyway, the public tunes out. Credibility is a currency—spend it carefully (Masters, 2023).

5) Keep workers safe without turning them into cops.
Training and clear “don’t chase” policies matter. Pair that with law-enforcement focus on fencing rings and repeat crews—not one-off poverty thefts (Peiser, 2023).

Locked-up toothpaste feels like the end of something: the end of trust, of convenience, of the idea that a community can take care of itself. But if we let a symbol set policy, we’ll get performative fixes that look tough on TikTok and do nothing in the shrink ledger. The better story is harder to sell—but it works: aim precision tools at real hot spots, clean up the data, and stop letting a few spectacular videos write the laws for 330 million people.

Because in the end, the goal isn’t to free the toothpaste. It’s to lower theft, protect workers, keep stores open, and treat shoppers like neighbors—not suspects. That’s the kind of story worth going viral.

Bekiempis, V. (2023, January 6). ‘Maybe we cried too much’: Walgreens hints it exaggerated shoplifting surge. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/walgreens-shoplifting-surge-chief-financial-officer

Walk into a big-box store in 2025 and you’ll find the future of shopping hiding behind Plexiglas. Toothpaste in cages. Deodorant under lock and key. A clerk with a jangling ring of keys, jogging down Aisle 7 like a jailer of Crest and Dove. It’s an image tailor-made for doomscrolling: “America has given up—we even locked the toothpaste.” But is this really a story about runaway crime? Or have we mistaken a symbol for the whole plot?

The short answer: retail theft is up in some places, not everywhere, and the loudest numbers often don’t mean what people think they mean. The longer answer is messier—and more interesting. It lives at the intersection of data gaps, corporate incentives, shifting laws, viral videos, and the emotional power of a locked cabinet to make us feel like society is fraying. Let’s separate the signal from the static.

Why toothpaste? Because it’s ordinary. When ordinary things get locked up, it screams “crisis” louder than charts ever could. Brands know this. Politicians know this. News producers know this. You do, too—you’ve stood there waiting for someone with a key.

The feelings are real. The question is whether the facts match.

Start with the gold-standard, non-partisan read: the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ). Their 2024 report looked closely at shoplifting in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, and compared FBI data sets that don’t even agree with each other. The top-line: compared to 2019, reported shoplifting in 2023 was 87% higher in Los Angeles and 55% higher in New York, while Chicago was lower than pre-2020 in 2023 but rose through 2024. CCJ also found that in a 23-city sample, shoplifting in the first half of 2024 ran 24% higher than in the same period of 2023 (Lopez, 2024).

Stateline put a fine point on it: New York’s shoplifting rose sharply from 2021 to 2022, dipped slightly in 2023, but still sat 55% above 2019; LA’s 2023 level was 87% above 2019, with 2024 undercounts likely due to a reporting-system switch (Hernández, 2024). In short, headline-ready spikes exist—but they’re not universal, and measurement quirks matter.

California’s numbers also complicate the narrative. The Public Policy Institute of California reported that overall crime fell in 2024 and the state’s property crime rate hit a three-decade low—even as shoplifting kept rising, up ~14% year-over-year and ~48% above 2019. Retail theft (shoplifting plus commercial burglary) was up just 3% in 2024, 22.8% above 2019 (Lofstrom, 2025). Translation: retail theft is a meaningful problem—but it’s not the same thing as “crime is exploding.”

If you’ve seen claims that “organized retail crime” (ORC) accounts for nearly half of retailers’ losses from “shrink,” you’re not alone. That line ricocheted across TV hits and legislative hearings—until the National Retail Federation (NRF) pulled it back. In December 2023, Reuters reported that NRF removed the claim after discovering it leaned on a misinterpretation of older testimony and mismatched data—an error widely amplified in media and lobbying (Masters, 2023).

This matters because big numbers drive big policy. When a marquee statistic turns out to be wrong, everything tethered to it—penalty hikes, funding rejiggers, the narrative that “we’re under siege”—deserves a second look. Stateline summarized the correction bluntly: the “nearly half” figure was closer to about 5% (Hernández, 2024). None of this means ORC isn’t real; it is. It means we should be allergic to iffy math—especially when it’s used to lock up the toothpaste and unlock tougher laws.

Another viral driver: store-closure announcements linked to crime. Target’s September 2023 statement is a case study, explicitly citing theft and ORC for closing nine stores across four states and detailing new security investments and partnerships (Target Corporation, 2023).

But zoom out. The Washington Post cautions that closures rarely hinge on a single factor: foot traffic, inflation, rent, local competition, and broader retail shifts all matter. Shrink is a piece—not the whole pie (Peiser, 2023). Some analysts think “crime” sometimes acts as a convenient umbrella term when a store is underperforming for multiple reasons. The bottom line: closures may feature crime, but they co-star economics.

You could feel the narrative wobble in January 2023 when Walgreens’ CFO admitted the company might have overstated its shoplifting problem—“maybe we cried too much”—and said shrink had fallen back toward historical levels (Bekiempis, 2023). The comment landed like a pin in a balloon: if a top retailer walked back the alarm, maybe the public panic was outrunning the signal.

Again, nuance: different chains, different neighborhoods, different realities. But the Walgreens mea culpa is a reminder to treat sweeping claims with skepticism, even when they fit our feeds.

If the data fight feels chaotic, it’s not your imagination. Here’s why:

1. “Retail theft” isn’t a single metric. Shoplifting is one slice. “Shrink” is bigger (also covering employee theft, miscounts, damage, fraud). ORC is a subset of external theft. Mixing these up can create monster statistics that don’t map to reality (Peiser, 2023).

2. National data is imperfect. The FBI’s legacy SRS and newer NIBRS systems tell different stories about shoplifting since 2019. Agencies migrated to NIBRS at different times; some places under-report; others changed processes (Lopez, 2024).

3. Policy shifts change reporting. In Los Angeles, a 2024 records-management switch likely produced an undercount, per CCJ. In California, PPIC cautioned that data coverage issues complicate year-to-year comparisons (Lopez, 2024; Lofstrom, 2025).

4. Viral videos ≠ baseline reality. A flash-mob clip gets 10 million views; a nuanced spreadsheet gets ten. Perception outruns prevalence—even as some cities genuinely grapple with increases (Peiser, 2023).

Because retailers optimize for loss prevention and customer flow—and lately, the loss-prevention part is shouting. Target, in its own words, is adding guards, locking some items, and partnering with law enforcement and DHS (Target Corporation, 2023). That can be rational if a specific store faces repeated theft in high-demand items that are easy to flip. But it can also backfire: shoppers hate friction, and the visual of a “caged aisle” amplifies fear, regardless of actual risk.

Public policy is rushing in. California passed a package of retail-theft bills in 2024, even as PPIC’s statewide data showed declining overall crime but rising shoplifting (Lofstrom, 2025). Across the country, legislators are tweaking thresholds, aggregation rules, and penalties for repeat offenses. The danger is overshooting—writing laws for the viral edge cases rather than for the data-driven middle.

• Workers feel it first. Clerks and security staff deal with confrontations and the emotional toll of being told “don’t intervene.” That’s a morale and safety problem, not just a spreadsheet line (Peiser, 2023).

• Communities lose convenience. If a store shutters, the neighborhood loses access to basics. Even when stores stay, the customer experience degrades behind plexiglass, and the idea of your town changes—toward distrust (Peiser, 2023).

• Trust in institutions wobbles. A widely quoted stat gets retracted; another gets walked back on an earnings call; a third is “under review.” People start to believe nobody is telling the truth. That vacuum is where bad ideas thrive (Masters, 2023; Bekiempis, 2023).

1. Some cities really are seeing more shoplifting than before the pandemic. CCJ’s city-level work and PPIC’s California trends show real increases in specific contexts (Lopez, 2024; Lofstrom, 2025).

2. The national picture is muddy. FBI data systems conflict; retailer surveys conflate categories; reporting practices shift. Beware sweeping national declarations built on inconsistent foundations (Lopez, 2024; Peiser, 2023).

3. The most viral numbers have stumbled. NRF withdrew the bombshell “half of shrink is ORC” line. Walgreens softened its own alarm. When the loudest claims wobble, healthy skepticism is a public service (Masters, 2023; Bekiempis, 2023).

1) Get the measurement right.
We need cleaner, comparable data and clarity on categories. FBI should offer plainer guidance on SRS vs. NIBRS comparability. Retailers should publish standardized shrink breakouts and ORC definitions—and stop mixing them in press-ready soundbites (Lopez, 2024).

2) Target the hot spots, not the headlines.
If a handful of districts see elevated shoplifting, surge solutions there: targeted enforcement against fencing networks, smarter store layouts, and community-based interventions. Remember: many thefts are low-dollar and need non-carceral fixes to actually reduce repeat incidents (Peiser, 2023).

3) Design security that doesn’t punish shoppers.
If you must lock items, do it surgically and test alternatives like shelf-level tagging or quick-unlock technology. Treat the Plexiglas wall as the last resort—not the brand (Peiser, 2023).

4) De-politicize the statistics.
When a powerful trade group retracts a marquee claim and keeps lobbying anyway, the public tunes out. Credibility is a currency—spend it carefully (Masters, 2023).

5) Keep workers safe without turning them into cops.
Training and clear “don’t chase” policies matter. Pair that with law-enforcement focus on fencing rings and repeat crews—not one-off poverty thefts (Peiser, 2023).

Locked-up toothpaste feels like the end of something: the end of trust, of convenience, of the idea that a community can take care of itself. But if we let a symbol set policy, we’ll get performative fixes that look tough on TikTok and do nothing in the shrink ledger. The better story is harder to sell—but it works: aim precision tools at real hot spots, clean up the data, and stop letting a few spectacular videos write the laws for 330 million people.

Because in the end, the goal isn’t to free the toothpaste. It’s to lower theft, protect workers, keep stores open, and treat shoppers like neighbors—not suspects. That’s the kind of story worth going viral.

Bekiempis, V. (2023, January 6). ‘Maybe we cried too much’: Walgreens hints it exaggerated shoplifting surge. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/walgreens-shoplifting-surge-chief-financial-officer