More and more merchants, exasperated by rising shoplifting due to inflation, decide to do themselves justice by exposing petty criminals on the internet who would rather steal than pay.
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“With the price of inflation in grocery stores, merchants are reporting more shoplifting in Quebec. They mostly take luxury items. We’re not talking about spice thefts or Kraft Dinner,” humorously notes Stéphane Lacasse, director of public affairs and government relations at the Association of Food Retailers.
Raiders have fancy tastes these days. He specifies that meat, expensive cheeses and alcohol are the products that most frequently slip under the coat and into the bags of thugs.
Exasperated by the situation, some traders have decided to take the bull by the horns to denounce the situation.
Not enough evidence
In effect, The newspaper found dozens of videos and photos posted by these traders who decided to take justice into their own hands. In most cases, they publish the faces of criminals to discourage them from returning home.
Photo taken from Facebook, Isabelle Lamoureux
“There is no point in calling the police, we lacked information. Instead, we put the video of the thief on our social networks and her photo in the entrance to our door, ”says an employee of the Viet Gril Express restaurant in Montreal Nam Hoang.
The latter refers here to a client, who, in March, took the opportunity to steal several goods that are in the small grocery store of the restaurant by coming to get a take-out meal.
Photo taken from Facebook, Eric Larochelle
Ulcerated by the thefts on the rise on the floor, the merchants who have decided to take the law into their own hands are multiplying in Quebec and go so far as to expose on the Internet the thefts which prefer to sting rather than pay. Photo credit: Eric Larochelle / Facebook
Conduct your own investigation
The owner of a garage in Gatineau, Ray Martin, claims to have distributed the photo of a burglar to unmask him in February.
“I understand that the police are too busy for these petty crimes. We have to bring them all the information we have on a silver platter. Otherwise, we will never find the person who emptied our cash register and left with our two electronic tablets,” he laments.
Photo from Facebook, Ray Martin
At Dépanneur Proprio, on Ontario Street in Montreal, owner Ling maintains that customers dare to steal it more since wearing a mask is mandatory. Results ? Its window is now lined with photos of these criminals.
Photo Clara Loiseau
Ling, owner of a convenience store on Ontario Street in Montreal, decided to display in his window the faces of the thieves who raged in his business (opposite). Other traders have instead chosen to post images of the looters on social media.
“They mainly come to steal alcohol from my house. With the mask, they think they will remain anonymous, ”he denounces.
Photo Clara Loiseau
Ling, owner of a convenience store on Ontario Street in Montreal, decided to display in his window the faces of the thieves who raged in his business.
Too busy during the pandemic
The police services of Montreal, Laval, Longueuil, Lévis and the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) have recorded a drastic drop in this type of crime since 2019. But that does not mean that there are fewer, warns Mr. Lacasse, of the Food Retailers Association.
“Traders were very busy during the pandemic and no longer necessarily had the time to denounce thieves with all the health rules, for example. Same thing for the police,” he concludes.
– With the collaboration of Clara Loiseau