The U.S. crime rate is still dropping, FBI data shows. Q4 2023 had 13% drop in murder, 6% drop in violent crime

[The Barbarian]

Here is a report from 2018.
"The rate and number of the most recent FBI statistics of crimes are for 2018. They show that crime has declined since Trump became president,"

As it had been dropping for decades before Trump. Would you like to see that, again. Yes the Trump Bump in violent crime was probably in part driven by his bungling of the pandemic response. But almost certainly not all of it.

And part of the record drop in violent crime under Biden was probably because the government took steps to address the pandemic. But not all of it.

 

[The Barbarian]

So it would seem people of all factions can see "creative statistical work" for what it is when they catch the other side doing it.

And so your position is the FBI isn't smart enough to notice this kind of thing? I'm skeptical.

 

[Astrid]

And so your position is the FBI isn't smart enough to notice this kind of thing? I'm skeptical.

Who else do we see here always claiming
the numbers they don't like must be falsifird.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

And so your position is the FBI isn't smart enough to notice this kind of thing? I'm skeptical.

It has nothing to do with "smarts"

The smartest guy in the world isn't going to be able to give accurate data output if input data is lacking or flawed to the degree of what we're talking about...


In the IT world, we call it "garbage in - garbage out"

If someone came to me and asked for data/reporting comparing last years sales results to this year's sales results by region, and said....

"We have 22% of the data from these 5 counties for the months of Jan-Mar of last year, and 13% of the data from this year for these other 5 counties for Aug-Oct, the rest is all backlogged by 3-6 months...what do you make of this?"...I'd be heavily hedging my work with "This isn't enough data to go on, I'll try my best, but don't quote me on this, there's a good chance it'll be wrong"

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I grew up in NYC during the 70s and 80s and left mid-90s. Attributing the drop in crime to Rudy and his administration seem specious when you consider that the crime rate of NYC dropped the same amount as other large but Rudyless cities. While infrastructure maintenance was far better, his approach to crime was to concentrate on locking up young minorities through Stop and Frisk, enforcing draconian drug laws (15 years minimum for carrying four ounces of marijuana first offense) and coming down super hard on minor offenses (Broken Window policy) - to his credit, as a prosecutor, he did indict and convict white collar criminals as well.

Other big cities were implementing "Rudy-style" (for lack of a better term) policies as well. Portland and Baltimore were two such cities that implemented similar policies. (Baltimore called theirs "Operation Ceasefire"...forget what Portland called theirs)

But it involved many of the same tactics that would make libertarians shudder and civil rights activists cringe (things like stop and frisk...extra scrutiny if someone "looked like a gang member", etc)

But the inconvenient truth is that those policies can create safer neighborhoods, it's all just a matter of how much privacy and political correctness people are willing to create in the name of public safety.


People have to counter balance a moral position with some pragmatic truths.

Is it wrong to stop and pat down a person merely for the clothes they're wearing? from a constitutional standpoint and principled standpoint...yes

If a person in an area where the local gang wears the color red to signal their affiliation with said gang, and is dressed exactly like them and you stop them for a random search on the street, is it more likely than not they're going to have weapons/drugs and actually be a part of that crew? ...also yes


The fact that there's a racial component involved makes these things tricky/uncomfortable to discuss...I get it.

...but if we remove that component
if you're in a city where the Hells Angels are causing a lot of trouble, and you randomly stopped and frisked everyone one who was a burly looking white biker who was wearing red/white/gold or a shirt that had the number "81" or "Knockout Crew" on it, chances are you'd find some stuff.

 

[The Barbarian]

It has nothing to do with "smarts"

The smartest guy in the world isn't going to be able to give accurate data output if input data is lacking or flawed to the degree of what we're talking about...

And yet the FBI uses it and publishes it. You really think they're that dumb? Or are they lying, too?

But the inconvenient truth is that those policies can create safer neighborhoods,

Here's some inconvenient facts...

NYPD’s deployment of extra police to high crime neighborhoods contributed far more to the crime reduction than the use of stop, question, and frisk. Research on the NYPD’s program of Operation Impact found that extra police deployed to high crime areas in New York was a major factor in the crime decline: a 12% to 15% reduction. The additional use of stop, question, and frisk made almost no difference. The stops only had a detectable impact on crime when the stops were based on probable cause, and these kinds of stops were very rare. Other research by Weisburd and colleagues also showed that stop, question, and frisk practices had only small associations with crime reduction (on the order 2%). And this study did not measure the effects of stops over and above increased officer deployment.

MacDonald J, Fagan J, Geller A (2016) The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0157223. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157223

Weisburd D, Wooditch A, Weisburd S, Yang SM. Do Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices Deter Crime?Criminology & Public Policy. 2015 Nov 1.

 

[The Barbarian]

Who else do we see here always claiming
the numbers they don't like must be falsifird.

We don't have to name names.

 

[The Barbarian]

...but if we remove that component
if you're in a city where the Hells Angels are causing a lot of trouble, and you randomly stopped and frisked everyone one who was a burly looking white biker who was wearing red/white/gold or a shirt that had the number "81" or "Knockout Crew" on it, chances are you'd find some stuff.

Your assumption has been tested. Notice that the police would have had better luck if they just stopped all the drivers they didn't profile.

Significant findings from Shoub’s and her colleagues’ analysis of the North Carolina dataset include:

• Blacks were 63 percent more likely to be stopped even though, as a whole, they drive 16 percent less. Taking into account less time on the road, blacks were about 95 percent more likely to be stopped.
• Blacks were 115 percent more likely than whites to be searched in a traffic stop (5.05 percent for blacks, 2.35 percent for whites).
• Contraband was more likely to be found in searches of white drivers.

“So, black drivers were stopped disproportionately more than white drivers compared to the local population and were at least twice as likely to be searched, but they were slightly less likely to get a ticket,” Shoub says. “That correlates with the idea that black drivers were stopped on the pretext of having done something wrong, and when the officer doesn’t see in the car what he thought he might, he tells them to go on their way.”

Racial disparities revealed in massive traffic stop dataset

Traffic stops are the most common interaction that citizens have with law enforcement. But what happens after the stop is not a universal experience for everyone, says Kelsey Shoub, an assistant professor of political science and one of three co-authors of "Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million...

sc.edu

BTW, another study shows that this disparity mostly goes away at night. Can you guess why? So it's not driving behavior that causes it to happen.

 

[DaisyDay]

Other big cities were implementing "Rudy-style" (for lack of a better term) policies as well. Portland and Baltimore were two such cities that implemented similar policies. (Baltimore called theirs "Operation Ceasefire"...forget what Portland called theirs)

But it involved many of the same tactics that would make libertarians shudder and civil rights activists cringe (things like stop and frisk...extra scrutiny if someone "looked like a gang member", etc)

But the inconvenient truth is that those policies can create safer neighborhoods, it's all just a matter of how much privacy and political correctness people are willing to create in the name of public safety.


People have to counter balance a moral position with some pragmatic truths.

Is it wrong to stop and pat down a person merely for the clothes they're wearing? from a constitutional standpoint and principled standpoint...yes

If a person in an area where the local gang wears the color red to signal their affiliation with said gang, and is dressed exactly like them and you stop them for a random search on the street, is it more likely than not they're going to have weapons/drugs and actually be a part of that crew? ...also yes


The fact that there's a racial component involved makes these things tricky/uncomfortable to discuss...I get it.

...but if we remove that component
if you're in a city where the Hells Angels are causing a lot of trouble, and you randomly stopped and frisked everyone one who was a burly looking white biker who was wearing red/white/gold or a shirt that had the number "81" or "Knockout Crew" on it, chances are you'd find some stuff.

Yeah, it’s a great policy in theory but in practice it devastates the targeted communities. First, the young black men stopped were no more likely than young while guys to be holding drugs and weapons. But the consequences for having what would be a legal amount of marijuana became illegal simply for being in public - with the only reason for being in public is that the cops forced them to empty their pockets. This not only exposed them to jail but a loss of the possibility of Pell grants for education but their entire family could lose their housing and benefits.

Do you think that that sort of constant harassment and bullying by cops doesn’t have a psychological impact?

When Stop ‘N’ Frisk stopped, instead of a resurgence of crime, the opposite occurred. But the economic effects of lost time and lost opportunity on the men, on their parents, on their wives and on their children still resonate in those communities.

 

[The Barbarian]

When Stop ‘N’ Frisk stopped, instead of a resurgence of crime, the opposite occurred.

That's the single most damning indictment of Stop and Frisk.

In the years leading up to the program’s official end, stops had already begun to plummet, leading article after article to claim that a jump in crime was just around the corner. All of the hard work of previous mayors and police chiefs could be undone, some said.

This alarm turned out to be both premature and incorrect, and data from the history of the program indicates this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

After growing slowly in the early 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapidly increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops citywide. By 2011 the number peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops in 2012.

Given this large scale effort, one might expect crime generally, and murder specifically, to increase as stops tapered off between 2012 and 2014. Instead, as shown in Figure 1, the number of murders fell while the number of stops declined. Murder also continued to drop after as stop-and-frisk wound down from its 2011 peak. In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013.

Ending New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Did Not Increase Crime

New York City police ended their stop-and-frisk policy two years ago. Dire predictions about increased crime were wrong.

www.brennancenter.org

Ultimately, Stop and Frisk was illegal fun for the police, a constant harassment of any group police didn't like much, and it didn't work. That's all there is to say about it.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Yeah, it’s a great policy in theory but in practice it devastates the targeted communities. First, the young black men stopped were no more likely than young while guys to be holding drugs and weapons. But the consequences for having what would be a legal amount of marijuana became illegal simply for being in public - with the only reason for being in public is that the cops forced them to empty their pockets. This not only exposed them to jail but a loss of the possibility of Pell grants for education but their entire family could lose their housing and benefits.

Do you think that that sort of constant harassment and bullying by cops doesn’t have a psychological impact?

When OMalley did this in Baltimore, the BPD clocked 100,000 arrests in a single year. In a city of 600,000.

 

[Lukaris]

Quote from above:



Ultimately, Stop and Frisk was illegal fun for the police, a constant harassment of any group police didn't like much, and it didn't work. That's all there is to say about it.


It sounds like stop & frisk actually helped decrease crime and save lives. Saying this seems much more real than saying things like “illegal fun for the police”.

I live about 15 miles south of Scranton, Pa; the birthplace of the POTUS. Last December a guy I used to work with was shot & later died in front of a strip club just outside Scranton. I really didn’t like the guy and not many did. He cheated the time clock at work, helped cost my supervisor his job ( who was well liked but messed up bad here by covering it up), & was nicknamed “murder” ; I pray for his soul. Another guy I work with in my age group ( 55-60) who grew up in a gang area in Philly told me he could see what happened coming. He told me he tried to talk to “murder” but that his attitude was all gang.

In January Scranton detective Kyle Gilmartin was shot & has miraculously survived by a gang member ( shooting houses for fun). I guess if I believe crime is bad is because I stand in front of a mirror everyday wearing a “maga” hat screaming, “maga, maga, maga…””

Residents react to deadly club shooting in Lackawanna County

The deadly shooting early Sunday morning in the parking lot of a gentleman's club in Old Forge has residents questioning their safety.

www.wnep.com

Man accused of shooting Scranton detective blamed co-defendant for directing night's violence

Aiden Deininger told state police that Jeremiah Cleveland told him to shoot at houses in the hours before Detective Kyle Gilmartin was shot, new filings show.

www.wnep.com

 

[The Barbarian]

Ultimately, Stop and Frisk was illegal fun for the police, a constant harassment of any group police didn't like much, and it didn't work. That's all there is to say about it.

It sounds like stop & frisk actually helped decrease crime and save lives.

That's a testable assumption:

In the years leading up to the program’s official end, stops had already begun to plummet, leading article after article to claim that a jump in crime was just around the corner. All of the hard work of previous mayors and police chiefs could be undone, some said.

This alarm turned out to be both premature and incorrect, and data from the history of the program indicates this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

After growing slowly in the early 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapidly increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops citywide. By 2011 the number peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops in 2012.

Given this large scale effort, one might expect crime generally, and murder specifically, to increase as stops tapered off between 2012 and 2014. Instead, as shown in Figure 1, the number of murders fell while the number of stops declined. Murder also continued to drop after as stop-and-frisk wound down from its 2011 peak. In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013.

Nope. Didn't work.

Saying this seems much more real than saying things like “illegal fun for the police”.

Turns out it is illegal fun for them.
A police officer in New York state has been suspended without pay after a body camera recorded him calling Black people “the worst race,” adding an expletive for emphasis. David Haupt was suspended from Albany police for 30 days on Wednesday, the Albany Times Union reported. Haupt has been on the force since 2016.

NY Police Officer Suspended for Racist Remarks Caught on Camera Against Black People

A police officer in New York state has been suspended without pay after a body camera recorded him calling Black people “the worst race,” adding an expletive for emphasis

www.nbcnewyork.com

They had no lawful justification for targeting young black males. And, as you see, it didn't work.

I guess if I believe crime is bad is because I stand in front of a mirror everyday wearing a “maga” hat screaming, “maga, maga, maga…””

It wouldn't be any more pointless than Stop and Frisk turned out to be.

"In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013."

I get that for some people, "getting tough" is the answer to crime prevention. But we did a large real-world experiment. And it failed to show any effect on crime whatever. Crime actually declined after stops decreased.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

And yet the FBI uses it and publishes it. You really think they're that dumb? Or are they lying, too?

Again, has nothing to do with intelligence or honesty.

Bad (or lacking) data leads to incorrect conclusions about various trends.


If I was a store owner, and I tasked you with determining which things were selling the best on certain days/times in order to help me form a strategy with regards to running sales and promotions

...and all I could give you is:
"here's 13% of the sales data for Mondays and Thursdays for the 10am and 6pm hours, we don't have the data for the rest of the day parts"
"here's 28% of the data for Wednesdays"
"we don't have anything for Tuesdays because the clerk said he was too busy to write things down and take inventory, so he's just not gonna participate"
"our info for weekends is backlogged because that clerk is way behind, so the data you'll get for that tomorrow, was actually for things that were selling on Fri/Sat/Sun 4 months ago"

Are you going to be able to derive anything meaningful with that and build a solid assessment and plan? Or is that data going to be so lacking that you'd like have to make some "not so precise" inferences and hope for the best?

 

[Lukaris]

Ultimately, Stop and Frisk was illegal fun for the police, a constant harassment of any group police didn't like much, and it didn't work. That's all there is to say about it.


That's a testable assumption:

In the years leading up to the program’s official end, stops had already begun to plummet, leading article after article to claim that a jump in crime was just around the corner. All of the hard work of previous mayors and police chiefs could be undone, some said.

This alarm turned out to be both premature and incorrect, and data from the history of the program indicates this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

After growing slowly in the early 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapidly increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops citywide. By 2011 the number peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops in 2012.

Given this large scale effort, one might expect crime generally, and murder specifically, to increase as stops tapered off between 2012 and 2014. Instead, as shown in Figure 1, the number of murders fell while the number of stops declined. Murder also continued to drop after as stop-and-frisk wound down from its 2011 peak. In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013.

Nope. Didn't work.


Turns out it is illegal fun for them.
A police officer in New York state has been suspended without pay after a body camera recorded him calling Black people “the worst race,” adding an expletive for emphasis. David Haupt was suspended from Albany police for 30 days on Wednesday, the Albany Times Union reported. Haupt has been on the force since 2016.

NY Police Officer Suspended for Racist Remarks Caught on Camera Against Black People

A police officer in New York state has been suspended without pay after a body camera recorded him calling Black people “the worst race,” adding an expletive for emphasis

www.nbcnewyork.com

They had no lawful justification for targeting young black males. And, as you see, it didn't work.

It wouldn't be any more pointless than Stop and Frisk turned out to be.

"In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013."

I get that for some people, "getting tough" is the answer to crime prevention. But we did a large real-world experiment. And it failed to show any effect on crime whatever. Crime actually declined after stops decreased.

It didn’t work huh? In 2007 there almost 15,000 homicides in the USA. There was a steady decline down to 12,810 in 2011. In 2012, homicides increased (slightly) to 12,992 & basically plateaued through 2014. I mentioned that it seemed like crime decreased alongside stop & frisk & the homicide numbers ( always tragic regardless) were less in tandem. It seems like stop & frisk did have an impact on decreased crime and it took crime a couple years to rebound from the cessation of this policing.

In 2013, the policy was being rejected and by 2015 homicides increased to 13,783 and steady,as the fruits of lib death & disaster cycles go, up to 15,320 in 2016. Homicides stagnated by 2017, dropped in 2018, and slightly increased in 2019.

https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/shr

In 2020, homicide rates exploded and this occurred during the summer months when defund the police agitation was rampant.

Breaking Down the 2020 Homicide Spike

In 2020, amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests and riots surrounding the death of George Floyd, America’s homicide rate increased by an astonishing 30%, even as many less serious types of crime held steady or even declined.[1] The purpose of this brief is to describe the...

manhattan.institute

If the police are so racist why are more whites actually shot dead annually?


Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2024*, by race

Characteristic	White	Black
2019	424	251
2020	459	243
2021	446	233
2022	389	225

4 more rows
•
Mar

People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2024 | Statista

The trend of fatal police shootings in the U.S. seems to only be increasing each year, with 1,097 civilians, 225 of whom were Black, killed by police in 2022.

www.statista.com

 

[The Barbarian]

It didn’t work huh?

Nope:
In the years leading up to the program’s official end, stops had already begun to plummet, leading article after article to claim that a jump in crime was just around the corner. All of the hard work of previous mayors and police chiefs could be undone, some said.

This alarm turned out to be both premature and incorrect, and data from the history of the program indicates this shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

After growing slowly in the early 2000s, stop-and-frisk began to rapidly increase in 2006, when there were 500,000 stops citywide. By 2011 the number peaked at 685,000. It then began to fall, first to 533,000 stops in 2012.

Given this large scale effort, one might expect crime generally, and murder specifically, to increase as stops tapered off between 2012 and 2014. Instead, as shown in Figure 1, the number of murders fell while the number of stops declined. Murder also continued to drop after as stop-and-frisk wound down from its 2011 peak. In fact, the biggest fall in murder rates occurred precisely when the number of stops also fell by a large amount — in 2013.

In 2007 there almost 15,000 homicides in the USA. There was a steady decline down to 12,810 in 2011. In 2012, homicides increased (slightly) to 12,992 & basically plateaued through 2014.

Here's the long-term graph...

It seems like stop & frisk did have an impact on decreased crime and it took crime a couple years to rebound from the cessation of this policing.

Notice the most dramatic decreases occurred long before Stop and Frisk. And as documented, stopping Stop and Frisk in cities where it was tried, did not increase violent crime. The other issue is, you confused national crime states with the few cities that engaged in that unlawful abuse of police power. Keep in mind, this practice is entirely constitutional, if it is done lawfully:

In fact, Judge Scheindlin pointedly wrote in her opinion that she was “not ordering an end to the practice of stop and frisk.” She said they could continue if the city complied with court-ordered remedies to make sure that the stops and frisks did not violate the Constitution. (Scheindlin called these “Terry stops,” referring to Terry v. Ohio, in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 ruled that a police officer can stop and frisk individuals where there is a reasonable basis for suspicion.)

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/is-stop-and-frisk-unconstitutional/

Of course, that would take all the fun out of it. But since it didn't work, why bother? New York police still do legal Terry stops, and those seem to be useful in reducing crime. Targeting racial groups was not useful in preventing crime, as you see documented above. There's more evidence for this; police tend to stop black motorists significantly more often than white motorists, even though white motorists are ticketed or found to have contraband more often than black motorists. And the difference goes away at night, when it's harder for the police to identify the race of the motorist. Would you like me to show you that?

In 2020, homicide rates exploded and this occurred during the summer months when defund the police agitation was rampant.

No police were defunded, unless you count the republican house rejecting Biden's funding for police. And that wasn't technically a defunding; it was just refusal to give them more funds. There was a Trump Bump in homicides, but by 2023, it had dropped significantly. Most people looking at the rise concluded it was caused by the pandemic.

But again, you're looking at the nation as a whole not on the relatively few cities that engaged in the illegal practice of Stop and Frisk. New York, instead of experiencing a sudden flood of homicides, as predicted by Stop and Frisk fans, remains one of the safest large cities in the nation.

Ranked: America’s 15 Safest Cities, According To A New Report

Searching for the safest cities in the U.S.? MoneyGeek has issued its annual report on the safest cities in America.

www.forbes.com

Meantime, that money to police forces under has made a difference:
Cities say the 2023 drop in homicides and other violent crimes can be attributed to expanded efforts to prevent crime, including working with community volunteers, targeting gun possession in high-crime areas and placing officers on foot and bike patrols.

"It is historic. It's the largest one-year decline," said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and the New Orleans Police Department. "It's cities of every size, it's the suburbs, it's rural counties, tiny cities, it's large cities. It's really a national decline."

Homicide numbers poised to hit a record decline nationwide. But most Americans think murder is on the rise

With less than a week to go in 2023, the nation is poised to finish the year with its biggest yearly drop in homicides on record.

abcnews.go.com

Announcing his five-point strategy at the White House on Wednesday, the president urged cities and states to use $350bn (£250bn) of funding from a Covid-19 relief bill on public safety efforts, including adding more police officers, even beyond pre-pandemic levels.

Biden backs funding more police to fight crime wave

Amid claims his party is soft on crime, the president backs hiring more police beyond pre-pandemic levels.

www.bbc.com

 

[Reasonably Sane]

Why does the public think it's going up? “There is definitely more disorder in cities than there was five years ago," said one expert. “People confuse disorder and crime."

New FBI data confirms previous indications that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying widespread perceptions that crime is rising.

“It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded,” said Jeff Asher, a former CIA analyst who now studies crime trends.

View attachment 344405

Well, when people commit crime but are not arrested, and the crime is not recorded, crime rates go down. It's just a statistic and it's based on data points.

So the real question is, are NYC subways and San Francisco streets safer than they were a year ago? To properly digest stats, it's important to understand the data points on which they are built.

 

[The Barbarian]

Well, when people commit crime but are not arrested, and the crime is not recorded, crime rates go down. It's just a statistic and it's based on data points.

So the real question is, are NYC subways and San Francisco streets safer than they were a year ago? To properly digest stats, it's important to understand the data points on which they are built.

New York is safer than a year ago. But like most cities, some places are a lot safer, and some places might even be less safe. Statistics measure how it is on the average. Even if fewer people are being attacked, you could still be the unlucky one.

"Oh, they just aren't recording crime now." is such an obvious clinker, I'm surprised anyone actually tries it.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Well, when people commit crime but are not arrested, and the crime is not recorded,

Why would the crime not be recorded?

If you report your store was robbed, that's a crime, whether or not a suspect is ever identified, much less charged.

 

[Reasonably Sane]

New York is safer than a year ago. But like most cities, some places are a lot safer, and some places might even be less safe. Statistics measure how it is on the average. Even if fewer people are being attacked, you could still be the unlucky one.

"Oh, they just aren't recording crime now." is such an obvious clinker, I'm surprised anyone actually tries it.

I'm thinking about minor crimes that are no longer reported. Like shoplifting.