"You can do what you want as a business, but you're not necessarily going to get an accurate crime picture," said Hamilton, who runs the LAPD's detective bureau.
"Stopping people at the threshold" has become a priority for companies facing plunging profit margins, leading to more confrontations between shoplifters and security guards.
The LAPD's records show that incidents where theft escalates into robbery—like a shoplifter confronting a security guard—are categorized as robberies, muddying the actual crime data.
According to LAPD metrics, incidents that involve force or fear, even without weapons, are counted as robberies, raising concerns about how crime is reported.
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