" it took them 2 months to figure this out? i know how target works, anyone has access to the registers, so the fact that it took them this long, is surprising all the while she was a new employee. "

" Oops, I guess the eyes in the sky at Target aren't decoys after all. "

" What happend to innocent until proven guilty? she was arrested on "suspicion"is there any PROOF ? Do they have her on video camara? For petes sake there is obviously more to this story than is being reported... "

" Target management obviously wasn't doing their job if it took them two months to figure out what was going on. If she was taking money from the register, I'm sure her drawer had come up short a significant amount of money more than a few times. If she had been reprimanded for her shortages she should have been fired by her third significant register shortage.

Maybe I'm wrong about Target management but it seems to me that if they cared enough about their job and the company they would have figured this out quickly, before she made off with over $2,000. I guarantee Ms. Bravo won't be the only one losing her job over this incident. "

" Isn't it great to live in a town where this kind of thing is Big News ? "

" Target likely knew about this very early on. I'd be willing to bet that they let this employee continue to steal so they could build a lengthier case against her so they can get a conviction.

Target is notorious for prosecuting against their employees and always has a visible security presence in their stores. It amazes me that people (especially employees) somehow think they can steal from them and get away with it. "

" we are living in a recession which has been caused by the unstable nature of capitalism which is perpetuated by huge corporations such as target. they are the true criminals. why are the victims such as the workers being criminalized? "

" Is it possible they were building a case against her and just "give her more rope" as time went on? Isn't it common knowledge by now that there are cameras everywhere and you can't get by with this kind of thing anymore?? "

" From what I have heard from friends who work in retail, the store waits until the employee has stolen a substantial amount. They do this for a reason; 1) proof that this is not a one time mistake - easier to prosecute 2) Once the theft is over something like $500 it becomes a felony, not a misdemeanor - again easier to prosecute. I am sure there are others out there with further knowledge. "

" I have worked as a retail investigator.

Till Tappers don't remove money, they manipulate cash transactions so the cash never makes it into the till. A register till that comes out perfect to the penny day after day is a huge flag to investigators. Everyone makes mistakes, the stores allow for people to be a few cents or a couple dollars off.

Investigators pose as a customer, pay with exact change many times, and then review the register tapes to see if their sales were recorded. This can take many weeks to build a case.

From my experience? Statistics show that a woman in her 50's is highly likely to be a candidate for investigation. My biggest catches were grey-haired grannies. "

" alixzander wrote, "they are the true criminals. why are the victims such as the workers being criminalized? " the workers are being criminalized because they are the ones stealing!
America, HERE'S YOUR SIGN "

" Good for Target. I worked at a large retail store many moons ago. A couple employees would have friends go through their line and not scan all the items they had in the basket and would pay a couple bucks for a huge cart of items. Guess what? They got in trouble just as they should have. "

" One cannot simply put in one honest day's work. It takes time to work towards deceiving your employer. "

" alixzander, see how you feel about the "victims" if your house gets burglarized. "

" alixander, you undoubtedly have more money and assets than a lot of people so I guess it will be OK for them to come over and take whatever from you? I fail to see your logic. "

" So I was looking at the big, unlocked pumpkin at the NVR, and I was going to make a joke about somebody walking by and slipping it into their pocket, stealing it, and walking away.

Then I saw the headline that said they were going to "Target employee suspected of stealing from the register", and it scared me off. I mean, if they were already targetting an EMPLOYEE suspected of stealing from The Register, I might get caught up in the investigation, even if I'm not an employee.

So I'm not going to steal the pumpkin. "

" alixander. ha ha, really? This employee is a victim? Target employs her, she steals from them and she's a victim. Yes, they wait until they're sure of a crime before reporting it, which is why it took them 2 months. The theft that goes on in these stores is probably huge, as well as the shoplifting. Get a life alixander, capitalism? That made me laugh out loud. "

" alixander: hooray youth revolution! Oh wait, she was 53. "

" ...and all before the shopping Holidays, this is so said for everyone involved.

Reasonator wrote-

Isn't it great to live in a town where this kind of thing is Big News ?

2:45 update: Target's Bullet lamp went out shortly after 2pm today and no word as of yet of it's replacement. Please do not dial 911 if you're wondering what the UFO shaped object is in the sky around the 200 block of Soscol this evening. "

" Antipc and 109823:

You are asserting a false dichotomy. You are comparing personal property with corporate property. A house is very different from a retail store. Personal property belongs to an individual person. Corporate property belongs to a corporation. People are motivated by a complex array of factors. People have psyches, emotions, consciousness and so forth. Corporations are driven by a need to maximize profits. Profit maximization is the corporation’s bottom line. Factors such as emotion, morality, even rationality don’t play a role within the corporate structure.

Also, your analogy overlooks the fact that corporations such as target take much away from local businesses, natural resources, and resources in third world countries. And they operate and thrive within a system that is inherently unstable and prone to recession. Taking from such an entity would essentially be Robin Hood ethics.

whocares21: the fact that one is dependent upon a job, such as target, in order to obtain and income and survive demonstrates how enslaved we are to this system. She applied for target due to survival. And target employed her so they could keep making profit, not because they are a good corporate citizen. "

" To alixzander,

How would you look at this case if you found out the lady who stole the money did it to buy expensive shoes, or a nice purse, or took a vacation with that money? These things have nothing to do with survival, but personal greed? Just wondering what your opinion is on that? Since most people seem to steal for something they want, not need. People steal for drugs, they don't NEED drugs, they WANT drugs, They steal because they WANT nice things, they don't NEED nice things. "

" Alixzander: This latest response is your most coherent and well constructed comment I have seen you post.

I am impressed!

All this time I thought you were a undereducated, unmotivated, misguided youth. It turns out I was wrong and you are something between a rampant radical socialist and an anarchist.

Thank you for letting your true colors show!

Property regardless of who or what owns it is still inviolate under the law and (at present) the Constitution.

"Robin Hood " ethics are no morally superior to any other sort of ethical argument. Under our (and many other ie British) legal system, corporations are afforded "artificial person" status where if they commit crimes they can be sued, and if proven their managers/owners can be sent to jail.

Likewise their property is as inviolate as yours or mine. Failure to respect property rights whether personal or corporate will lead to a very dangerous degradation in our society, as people begin to value others rights as less than their own.

I will grant you that there are real problems with corporate power, however I remind you that we are living in the highest standard of living that the world has ever seen and if you are successful in promoting your "Robin Hood" ethics society will devolve into a "I will take what I want because I am stronger" mentality.

Not the way I want to live!

We all need to respect every person equally, and we all need to respect property that is not ours.

If we only respect those we like or approve of we will not be able to survive as a society.

You hold some very scary beliefs my friend! "

" Tiredofcomplainingnapkins,

you pose an interesting hypothetical. firstly, it overlooks the fact that her needs and our needs can't be met within the system without a job.


i reject your premise that people by and large steal out of want and not need. specifically looking at this case, it is reasonable to infer that she isn't wealthy and likely poor if she is working at target. if she was already in a bad finical situation, the bad economy could have made it worse. maybe she had a family to take care of. maybe she was a student and had loans, units, textbooks, gas, food and what not to pay off. maybe she was divorced which left her in a tough spot. we don't know but any of these scenarios are possible. and it is very possible she had needs that her paycheck simply couldn't meet. perhaps it did come down to survival. "

" To alixzander,

Well I reject your premise that people steal out of need and not want. Maybe in 3rd world countries people steal to survive, but in the United states I don't believe that. Now I must ask what if she was in a bad situation by her own bad choices. What if she racked up credit card debt buying things she "Wanted" not stuff she "Needed". Maybe she married the wrong guy and knew it was the wrong guy but just wanted to be married so desperatlely she didn't worry about what would happend if she got divorced. I don't see how this is Targets fault and why they should be vicitimized by her bad choices. And I reject your claim that are needs can't be met without a job in this system. Read the book or see the movie Into the Wild, and if youv'e already seen it, then you know what I'm talking about "

" Maybe she was just "spreading the wealth." "

" the guy from Into the Wild was only able to survive by rejecting the system. my claim is that needs can't be met without a job within the system. if anything the Into the Wild story supports this claim.

the deeper question is why did Alexander Supertramp so disfranchised, disillusioned, and marginalized by the system that he had to try to leave it in order to feel empowered, free, and human? that's the question i am interested it. and it is likely the question that is a the crux of the problems we are discussing. "

" notanapanative,

i am glad that we can agree "there are real problems with corporate power". perhaps that could be a baseline of sorts.

we may have a high standard of living in some regards (mainly in materiel luxuries i suggest. we also have a high rate of depression and mental illness. plus, i've read studies that suggested some of the Scandinavian countries had great standards of living.) but at what cost? what are the human, environmental and even spiritual costs of our standard of living?

you make a good point in regards to robin hood ethics denigrating society into a take what i want mentality (although maybe its a bit of a slippery slope fallacy?). another ethic framework that could remedy this outcome could be situationalist ethics. it is rooted in christian theology in fact. the idea is one should do what brings about most agape or universal love. an example, if your son has a fatal disease and you are to poor to afford the medicine, and if the medicine was left outside a doctors office, is it morally correct to steal medicine? which decision would bring about the most agape? "

" alixzander, most people who steal today do it to support a drug or alcohol habit. It's done for want, not need.

I am not crazy about uplifting our corporate world above a certain level, but they do pay salaries to people who might otherwise be without work. If we ever sink into a "free for all" society which thinks it's ok to steal from either our corporate world or from people off the street, we will be in so much trouble that the idea of having an art/music outlet for youth will sink far below trivial.

I don't know where you came from or why you carry such a tone of hostility, whether it was transferred from your parents or from another culture or what, but you're starting to sound like a revolutionary searching for a cause. You're not solving problems, just creating more of them.

Have you ever considered that there are just bad people in the world and no matter how much social justice there is, there will still be bad people? Kindof scary to admit isn't it, because then it means we really do not have that much control. "

" Alixzander, you made the comment "corporations such as target take much away from local businesses, natural resources, and resources in third world countries."

You're a supporter (or at least you said you were in a previous NVR article) of the Napa Pipe development. Exactly who do you think these people are? You're being contradictory. "

" vocal-de-local,
i don't claim to have many solutions, especially when it comes issues of such gravity. i mainly have critique. i think before you have solutions you need critique. you need to know what is wrong. I'll propose solutions when i can, but if i can't I'll encourage dialogue with others that are smarter than i am.

i'll open up a bit, my hostility comes from constantly seeing people mistreated, alienated, ostracized, and devalued by the system, power structures, and the culture. i went through a phase where i challenged everything i believe. and many of my arguments against the system come from people within the system that explain how its operated. for example, if a need exists in the community the city will usually only push for it if it is considered economically viable. this doesn't come from a karl marx book, this comes from the mouth of many of the city officials that represent us. and as its constantly stated by nay sayers on this site, its just the nature of the system. its just how it works. also, my hostility is a reaction to the hostility that exists on these forums from the other side. and i am tired of not seeing people stand up to it.

your last point is a question of human nature. i simply point believe that humanity is inherently flawed. humanity existed for thousands if not millions of years before the agriculture revolution. and during this time many of the problems, oppression and pathologies didn't exist. that's why i feel the problems are systemic. plus, its a perspective that isn't considered much. many of the people on this forums are always saying bad stuff happens because of bad people. "

" Vocal-de-local,
you make a good point and i concede. initially, i was excited by Napa Pipe for its possibilities for art spaces, venues and cafes. plus they had wrapped the entire project in these "green" terms. they were highlighting all these environmentally friendly aspects to the project. it was greenwashing. bottom line, a city by its nature will be pollutive. it will increase waste and much of the waste will enter into the river.

if the project is approved i will push them to include lower income housing the is actually lower income. and i will push art, music and vibrancy in the town.

i regret writing that opinion piece and have lately distance from self from the project. but you are right, it is indeed contradictory. and i am no longer pushing for the project. "

" Thank you alixzander for the feedback.

I remember thinking a lot like you, back when I was in my late teens/early twenties. As you get older (and it WILL happen to you, too) and you become one of the middle class taxpayers (I suspect that this, too, will happen to you because you're bright enough to make it happen), you will discover that there are so many shades of gray, and that not everything can be deduced down to black and white (corporate world bad, deprived people, good). People are sometimes, but not always, victims of their own device.

For example, if someone is poor but chooses to spend what little money they have on tobacco and drugs (happens often), whose fault is it? If a woman goes out and gets pregnant by five different fathers by the time she is 25, refusing to use birth control, then allows her children to essentially raise themselves, how supportive should we be? What about females, who allow their bodies to be used as vessels for babymaking (without any "plan" for their upbringing), or the various fathers, who go around impregnating women because it's the macho thing to do? These are just a few examples.

Let's say that they steal from Target because they now want to support their own foolishness?

If you truly want to improve conditions for people, there are a few ideas I want to put forth. One is that we are increasingly destroying our environment and setting ourselves up for resource depletion and excess competition because of over population. Secondly, we need "expense" to control reproduction (expense can be in the form of environmentalism), and we need unions to protect us from corporate greed (and yes, unions will increase "expense"). Think about it. "

" vocal-de-local,

i more or less agree with the gist of your statements. at this point i think its just a matter of degree.

for example, i don't disagree that people have the ability to make decisions. however, i do think that a person's environment can limit their scope of options. once again using the medicine analogy: if a person's son has a fatal disease and the medicine is expensive, a poor person would be more likely to steal it then a wealthy person due to their specific economic conditions. for me it isn't about reducing everything to black and white. it is about understanding the conditions, systems and cultures that guide our existence and evaluating their effects.

i think your ideas for improvement have merit and should be seriously considered. "