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at Whole Foods Market. Hello,

0:21

hello. I'm Brittany Luce and

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you're listening to It's Been a Minute from

0:25

NPR, a show about what's going on in

0:27

culture and why it doesn't happen by

0:30

accident. This

0:38

week we're connecting the dots between culture

0:41

wars, hot takes, and basketball.

0:43

I know, I know. How are

0:45

all these things connected? Well, we're

0:47

gonna find out with Gene Denby, co-host of

0:50

NPR's Code Switch and my three Anantharaman, who

0:52

covers the WNBA for defector. Gene, my three,

0:54

welcome to It's Been a Minute. What's good

0:56

with you, Brittany? So good to be here.

0:59

Thanks for having me, Brittany. Oh, it's so good

1:01

to have you both. Okay, so you're

1:03

both WNBA fans, right?

1:06

Well, a lot has been happening in

1:08

the league lately, so I want to

1:10

know in one word, how do you

1:12

feel about the WNBA's seemingly sudden popularity?

1:15

Overwhelmed. Gene, what about you?

1:17

Salty, probably. Salty.

1:19

Well, those are two very good

1:22

words, overwhelmed and salty. We'll get

1:24

into why you chose those words,

1:26

but I'm gonna throw another word

1:28

into the mix, dismayed. Okay. And

1:30

not for the reason you think,

1:32

okay? I'm thrilled the WNBA is

1:34

getting more and more popular. I

1:36

am one of those recent

1:38

converts, and I'm not alone. More than 400,000

1:40

people attended women's basketball

1:43

games in May, as I

1:46

did, and half of them were sellouts.

1:48

That makes this past May the

1:50

highest turnout for the league

1:52

in over two decades. Wow. I mean,

1:54

the WNBA is officially having

1:56

a moment, but with

1:59

that, great viewership, apparently comes some growing

2:01

pain. Indeed. Let's take a look at the

2:03

player of the moment right now. Indiana

2:06

fever rookie and number one draft pick,

2:09

Kaitlyn Clark. After finishing her

2:11

college run as the highest scoring college

2:13

basketball player ever, Kaitlyn, like

2:15

many rookies, is adjusting to life in the

2:18

big leagues and has been on the receiving

2:20

end of some intense fouls. The

2:22

latest incident that had everyone clutching

2:24

their pearls was between Kaitlyn and

2:26

Chicago Sky player, Kennedy Carter. Carter

2:29

fouled Kaitlyn and the media frenzy

2:31

that ensued afterwards has been just

2:33

wild to watch. I've

2:35

seen WNBA players get called

2:37

Caddy. Women are Caddy, even the ones

2:39

on her own team. Jealous. She's getting knocked down

2:41

for just no, I mean, this is just

2:43

a form of jealousy that looks like. Bullies. She's

2:46

a bullier, right? No one feels sorry for the

2:48

bully. And even a congressman

2:50

weighed in, saying there was, quote,

2:52

excessive physical targeting. My three, Jean,

2:55

what do you think of these

2:57

reactions? Again, overwhelming to sort of

2:59

consume this. And I don't blame

3:02

anyone who's come to women's basketball

3:04

lately, like welcome, join the

3:06

club, it's fun here. But I think when

3:08

you're in that position, you do need

3:11

some of that context. Kennedy Carter's also

3:13

a player with this really specific history

3:15

in the WNBA, who has, I think,

3:18

struggled to get along with teammates, who's

3:20

kind of a known, like fiery player.

3:22

Does that mean every player in the

3:25

WNBA is like that? No, I don't

3:27

think so. So I think it

3:29

helps to have that grounding in the league's

3:31

history in some of the stories and some

3:34

of the people who have been playing in

3:36

this league for a while. And so

3:38

I hesitate as

3:40

someone who's in the WNBA

3:42

media to come across

3:45

like a gatekeeper, right? To say, no, you

3:47

have to go to the library and read

3:49

all these books before you can join. But

3:51

when it gets to the point that we

3:54

have congressmen sending letters to

3:56

the commissioner, asking her to

3:58

investigate this. I think maybe

4:01

we need to all calm down, take a little

4:03

bit of a breather. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And just to piggyback

4:05

on, my three said, you have this player in Kaitlyn

4:07

Clark who went to the University of Iowa, she's a

4:09

white woman, and she played on a, you know, we

4:11

gotta say, like a mostly white team. She

4:14

can hoop. I want to make that absolutely clear.

4:16

She is cold. Yeah, she's a great player. She's

4:18

a fantastic player, but she brought this giant fan

4:20

base of people who rock with

4:23

her and weren't necessarily WNBA

4:25

fans. And now they're

4:27

in the league, and I think there are fans

4:29

who like her for a bunch of reasons, you

4:31

know, fandoms are always really complex, who are suddenly

4:34

creating friction for a bunch of other

4:36

reasons that are not just about basketball

4:38

with this sort of established WNBA fan

4:41

base. I think there's several layers of

4:43

ideological and social dynamics that are playing

4:45

out in the Kaitlyn Clark

4:48

discourse. So if you look at

4:50

the partisan lean of different

4:52

fan bases for different major sports, to the

4:54

right, you have the PGA, you

4:56

have NASCAR, you have college football. And

4:59

somewhere in the middle is like baseball,

5:01

the NFL, and college basketball, right? But

5:04

to the left, the most democratic

5:06

leaning, interestingly enough, was the

5:08

WWE. But

5:11

the most democratic leaning sports fan base

5:14

was the WNBA, like by a comfortable distance.

5:16

Yeah, I mean, Jean, you touched on some of

5:18

the ideological touch points there, but I'd love to hear

5:20

more, especially from you, my three,

5:23

about some of these social

5:25

dynamics that are cropping up. I mean,

5:27

Kaitlyn Clark is a good player,

5:29

for sure. We all agree on this, but it

5:32

just seems like people are handling

5:34

her with caution. My

5:37

three, why do you think people are

5:39

trying to handle or handling Kaitlyn Clark

5:41

with kid gloves? What do you think

5:43

that's about? It's funny because if you've

5:46

watched Kaitlyn Clark in college or even

5:48

in the professionals, like, you know she's

5:50

like a real competitor. You know that

5:53

she's a hooper. She likes this. She likes

5:55

trash talking. I think she likes when

5:58

people guard her tough. Because if... Message

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about how they can

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better prevent cancer. pistachios

22:00

have been locked up. That's

22:02

Vox policy correspondent, Abdullah Fayyad, and

22:05

The Marshall Project's engagement editor, Nicole

22:07

Lewis. And they're here to answer

22:09

my big questions this week. Why

22:12

is all the deodorant locked up?

22:14

And what's the shoplifting panic really

22:16

about? As you heard,

22:18

there's a new trend at drugstores. Thick

22:20

plastic barriers between you and a

22:23

lot of everyday products. By

22:25

deodorant, toothpaste, detergent, these necessities

22:27

are basically behind bars. And

22:30

I need an employee to free them. I

22:33

don't know about you, but I find

22:35

these deodorant jails incredibly annoying. But

22:38

it's not just an inconvenience to

22:40

everyday shoppers. It's actually tied

22:42

to a much bigger panic about

22:44

shoplifting. And while shoplifting is

22:47

very much a real thing, some

22:49

of the fears that led to these locked up products

22:51

are built on very shaky ground. And

22:54

it's also connected to a broader

22:56

movement to roll back more progressive

22:58

policies around minor crimes. So

23:00

to separate panic from fact and illuminate

23:03

the systems behind them all, I'm

23:05

joined by Nicole and Abdullah. Nicole,

23:10

Abdullah, welcome to It's Been A Minute. Thanks, good

23:12

to be here. Thanks for having us. Oh

23:15

my gosh, my pleasure. Okay, so the

23:17

deodorant is locked up, but is

23:19

that something people are actually worried about? Like,

23:21

would you say they're freaked out about shoplifting

23:24

right now? Nicole, let's start with you. Yeah,

23:27

I mean, I would. I would say

23:29

that there has been a retail theft

23:31

panic. There has been this concerted media

23:34

focus, I think, on putting

23:37

chief executives on air and

23:39

them really sounding the alarm to say, hey,

23:41

this is a huge problem for us. We're

23:44

losing money left and right. Theft is

23:46

an issue. It's higher than what it's historically

23:48

been. If that's not corrected over time, prices

23:50

will be higher and or store to

23:52

close. And by

23:54

and large, those statements go completely

23:56

unchallenged. Did the former CEO of

23:58

Home Depot compare? shoplifting

24:01

to COVID? Yes.

24:04

But today this thing is an epidemic.

24:06

It's spreading faster than COVID, Steve. The

24:09

other thing to say is that there

24:11

are a handful of viral videos of

24:13

what we call like a smash and grab. So

24:15

when several people come into

24:18

a store and it's pure chaos and they

24:20

steal a bunch of stuff, right? And so

24:22

those videos also circulate and they're

24:24

really enough to generate this sense of

24:26

like, oh my god, this problem is

24:28

out of hand with no

24:30

more underlying information behind it. Hmm.

24:33

Hmm. Abdallah, how does this match up with

24:35

what you've learned? I mean, I think there's

24:37

been a huge overreaction. I think a

24:39

big part of it is a result

24:41

of the virality of these videos of

24:43

people shoplifting. But what I would add

24:46

to that is statistics numbers by the

24:48

National Retail Federation way inflating

24:50

the inventory losses of businesses

24:52

due to shoplifting by billions

24:54

of dollars. Eventually the record

24:56

was corrected, but you

24:58

know, a lot of these arguments

25:01

were fueling this idea that there

25:03

are deeper societal problems and the

25:05

shoplifting pandemic as some people called it was

25:07

kind of a window into that cultural decay if

25:09

you want to see it that way. Hmm.

25:12

Hmm. So what do we actually

25:14

know about shoplifting rates? So we

25:17

know a couple of things. I'd say the

25:19

most recent data comes from the Council on

25:21

Criminal Justice and they took

25:23

a look at what we call NIBRS data.

25:25

So that's incident report data, right? And so

25:27

that self-reported and when we look at that

25:29

data over the last several years starting with

25:32

2020, if you take New York

25:35

City out of the 24

25:37

metropolitan areas that they looked at, if you take

25:39

this big city and you just put it to

25:42

the side, that actually incidences of

25:44

shoplifting decreased by about 7%.

25:47

Wow. Wow. That's a huge

25:49

difference. Correct. Direct contradiction to the notion

25:51

that this is a pandemic. If you

25:54

keep New York in, the picture looks

25:56

slightly different. It did go up. So

25:58

really what we could say. is New

26:01

York seems to have an issue

26:03

with shoplifting, right? The

26:05

other thing though that I want to

26:08

say is that, and this can really

26:10

get into the data weeds of things,

26:12

this is NIBRS data. This is not

26:15

actually FBI crime data. Actually,

26:17

most police departments are

26:20

not really categorizing or tracking

26:22

shoplifting as its own segment

26:24

of retail crime. Oh. The

26:27

FBI's database is actually deeply, deeply

26:29

flawed. Not all police departments have

26:31

to report to it. Some of

26:33

the largest departments in the country,

26:35

including the LAPD, do not report

26:37

their crime statistics to the FBI.

26:40

That's one lesson out of all of this,

26:42

is that we can get a sense from

26:44

all this data if there's an increase, if

26:47

there's a decrease, but as to the extent

26:49

of those increases or decreases, there's really a

26:51

lot we don't know in real time. It's

26:54

really interesting that there's this panic, but we don't have

26:56

the data to show it on a wider scale or

26:58

the data presented is just wrong.

27:01

As we said, the National Retail Federation, which

27:03

is a lobbying group that represents the interest

27:05

of retailers, they had to retract some of

27:07

the massive numbers it was coming up with

27:09

for how much organized retail

27:11

theft was actually happening. And

27:14

that makes me think of another situation

27:16

with Walgreens. They said they were closing

27:18

a bunch of stores in San Francisco

27:20

because of rampant shoplifting. Back

27:23

here in San Francisco, where five

27:25

Walgreens stores around the city will

27:27

be soon closing their doors for

27:29

good. Brazen robberies

27:31

like this one have become

27:33

an epidemic. But

27:36

later it was reported in the

27:38

San Francisco Chronicle that the data

27:40

didn't really support that. Those stores

27:42

all had less than two reported

27:44

shoplifting incidents per month on average.

27:47

But then also, Walgreens coincidentally

27:49

said in an SEC filing that

27:52

they were looking to close 200

27:54

stores anyway to save money. In

27:56

a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, Walgreens

27:59

maintained. that shoplifting in their

28:01

San Francisco stores is

28:04

higher than the national average, but on

28:06

an earnings call last year, a

28:09

Walgreens exec said to quote,

28:12

maybe we cried too much about

28:15

shoplifting. So intentional or

28:17

not, how might it

28:20

benefit retailers to use inflated

28:22

claims about shoplifting? Yeah, I

28:24

think this is really the

28:26

question to be asking, truly.

28:28

If you can make stuff

28:30

flying off your shelves a

28:33

public problem, a problem

28:35

that needs to be solved and can only

28:37

be solved in their estimation by law enforcement,

28:40

then the money that actually gets spent on

28:42

dealing with that is

28:44

taxpayer money. So I

28:47

think part of the logic around

28:49

a panic like this, intentional or

28:52

not, is that if you

28:54

can get the public to pay for

28:56

it, like why wouldn't you, right? It's

28:58

such a confounding question right now why

29:00

a lot of these businesses

29:02

are interested in making it seem

29:04

like their stores are less safe.

29:07

It's also confounding why they would spend so much

29:09

money on locking up their

29:11

products and making it harder for customers

29:13

to buy them. I think they're just

29:15

creating more friction and making people less

29:17

likely to buy things. I

29:20

can't lie, it's also confounding to me

29:22

too, but talking more about public

29:24

solutions to shoplifting problems, how about

29:27

politicians responded to this panic about

29:29

shoplifting? Yeah, not well. I mean,

29:32

politicians here, oh my goodness, shoplifting,

29:34

organized crime is out of control.

29:36

We've got to crack down, right?

29:39

The NRF actually has model legislation.

29:41

Like they have thought about what

29:44

they want to see happen here. And

29:46

it's two things. They're really campaigning

29:48

and arguing for states to

29:50

basically lower the threshold by

29:53

which stealing becomes a felony. The

29:56

other big thing that they want is

29:58

to actually make organized reasons. retail theft

30:00

a crime category. Lawmakers

30:02

have to decide what's a crime. Like, we don't just

30:04

all wake up and the book of crimes is like

30:06

written for us, right? That's

30:09

not how it works. So the

30:11

NRF really wants lawmakers to add

30:13

a statute that designates organized retail

30:16

theft, and that is when you're

30:18

shoplifting for personal gain and not

30:20

personal need. So if I

30:22

steal the deodorant and I use it because I'm

30:25

stinky and sweaty, that's something different. But if I

30:27

give it to you or sell it to you

30:29

because you're stinky and sweaty, I could potentially be

30:31

charged with this other crime category.

30:34

Right. So what makes it organized crime

30:36

is the intent to sell it. It

30:38

doesn't have to be boosting it off

30:40

the back of a truck, Tony Soprano

30:42

style. You know,

30:44

organized crime rings. I don't know how

30:46

broad of a problem that is, but

30:48

I do know that the first reaction

30:50

to the shoplifting

30:52

panic came during COVID when

30:54

we saw a lot of crimes of need.

30:57

People stealing diapers, people stealing

31:00

baby formula. These were crimes

31:02

of desperation. Hmm. Hmm.

31:05

So I know for a few years in major

31:08

cities, there were pushes for more progressive policies supported

31:10

by left-leaning DAs and politicians

31:12

like Chasa Boudin in San Francisco.

31:14

It sounds like some of those

31:16

efforts have sort of rolled back.

31:19

Why do you think that is? Abdallah, I'd love to hear from

31:21

you about that. I think that's

31:24

kind of one of the casualties

31:26

of this era that we're in.

31:28

And you saw this, like you

31:30

mentioned in San Francisco, you saw

31:32

this in Boston with prosecutors kind

31:34

of declining to prosecute certain crimes

31:36

that included petty theft because there

31:38

were such disparate outcomes as to

31:40

who was getting arrested and who

31:42

was getting sent to prison over

31:44

some low-level crimes. And the

31:46

results of those policies were very

31:48

promising, actually. And they seemed to

31:50

have been working very well. But

31:53

they were also deeply unpopular in some

31:55

parts of the right. And so when

31:57

the pandemic hit... more

40:00

fear-mongering than solutions-oriented.

40:03

And could I say one other thing? Sure. This

40:05

is more of a thought that I always have

40:07

about it. So I grew up in DC,

40:10

and my family has lived there for many,

40:12

many years. And so

40:15

I remember a feature of my childhood

40:17

being my grandmother and my mom

40:20

and uncle all telling

40:22

me stories about times that they were

40:24

mugged on their doorstep in DC in

40:26

the 80s and early 90s

40:29

when there was a crime problem. And so

40:31

this was something that they all experienced. Now,

40:33

fast forward to me living and growing

40:36

up in the city. I never had

40:38

an experience like that. I have actually never

40:40

been victimized by any kind of crime. I've lived

40:42

in New York for 15 years. I've

40:45

just not had that experience. But

40:48

now think about what that does, what

40:50

that actually means, in terms of how

40:52

they're going to respond versus how I'm

40:54

going to respond or even understand your

40:56

baseline level of safety in public places.

40:59

So I do think there is a

41:02

little bit of a generational nerve that

41:04

is easily touched on because there is

41:06

a whole segment of people who did

41:08

live through high crime eras of the 70s, 80s, and 90s

41:10

because fear is not necessarily

41:14

a super rational response that

41:16

can hijack your ability to

41:18

really make decisions. I

41:21

keep thinking like there's a whole segment

41:23

of voters out there who have never

41:25

actually moved on from

41:28

the narrative that Abdullah is talking about.

41:30

When we thought about cities as high

41:32

crime and very segregated, every

41:34

city I've lived in is

41:36

extremely expensive and really

41:39

nice and full of coffee shops. But

41:42

we have not been able to shake,

41:44

I think, that deep embodied notion of

41:47

discomfort or lack of safety. And

41:49

I don't say this to gloss

41:52

over the way that racism really

41:54

does function. It's embedded in all of this.

41:56

But I really think about my parents, the

41:58

fact that they have fundamentally had. a completely

42:01

different experience of public space and public

42:03

safety than I have because

42:05

we are different generations. And

42:07

so I wonder if again, we could step

42:09

back and have a better conversation, one

42:12

that attends to some of the social

42:14

issues, lived experience, that we actually might

42:16

be able to get to better solutions.

42:20

Well, Nicole, Abdallah, this has been an incredible

42:23

conversation. Thank you both so much. I really

42:25

appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

42:28

Thanks again to Nicole Lewis from The

42:30

Marshall Project and Abdallah Fayyad from Fox.

42:38

This episode of It's Been a Minute

42:40

was produced by Barton Girdwood. Alexis Williams.

42:42

Liam McBain. Corey Antonio Rose.

42:45

This episode was edited by Jessica

42:48

Placek. Engineering support came from Tiffany

42:50

Vera Castro. We have fact-checking help

42:52

from Will Chase. Our

42:54

executive producer is Veralyn Williams.

42:57

Our VP of programming is

42:59

Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's

43:01

all for this episode of It's Been a

43:03

Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce.

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43:54

you can do about it. I really

43:56

felt like the cloud in my brain

43:58

kind of dissipated. Once I

44:00

started realizing what a difference these little

44:03

bricks were making, there's no turning back

44:05

for me. Take NPR's

44:07

Body Electric Challenge. Listen

44:10

to the series wherever you get your podcasts.