Op-Ed | Los Angeles DA’s Walmart Visit Sparks Debate on Retail Theft Narrative Concerns

Retail theft makes for good headlines. But headlines aren’t the same as evidence — and evidence suggests the so-called retail theft “crisis” may be more myth than reality. That’s what makes Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s recent photo-op at a Walmart so troubling: it reinforces a misleading narrative, elevates corporate priorities over public ones, and distracts from the deeper, systemic causes of crime in LA County.

This week, Hochman tweeted out a series of polished photos showing him touring a Walmart, flanked by corporate executives and store managers, standing in front of power tools, reviewing security monitors, and strolling brightly lit aisles. His message was unequivocal: “Retail theft is a real problem — but LADA is fighting back.”

It’s a scene designed to invoke confidence, control, and toughness. But beneath the surface, it’s mostly symbolism — and deeply misleading.

Let’s start with the facts. While retail theft certainly exists and has impacted some businesses, the scope and scale of the problem have been wildly overstated.

The National Retail Federation, a leading industry group whose alarming statistics helped fuel political panic, last year  had to walk back its most-cited claim — that nearly half of all retail shrinkage was due to organized retail crime. In reality, experts now estimate the true figure is closer to 5%, consistent with historical norms.

And yet, these inflated claims have driven policy conversations, media coverage, and — as we saw with Hochman’s Walmart visit — prosecutorial grandstanding.

The Brennan Center for Justice has found no national surge in shoplifting, despite localized spikes in a few urban areas. The Public Policy Institute of California noted that more than 90% of the state’s rise in shoplifting came from just four counties: Alameda, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Mateo. That doesn’t negate the issue — but it does contextualize it. We are not facing a nationwide crime wave. We are facing a selective political narrative.

Meanwhile, overall crime — both violent and property crime — has dropped significantly since the early 1990s. Even recent fluctuations during the pandemic have not reversed the long-term downward trend. Americans are statistically safer than they’ve been in decades. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from Hochman’s rhetoric or his carefully curated Walmart walk-through.

What’s more concerning is the deeper implication of this imagery: the alignment of public prosecutors with private, corporate interests.

Walmart is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. It has long prioritized cost-cutting measures, including under-staffing stores, reducing investment in security, and operating in ways that destabilize local economies. Now, it wants law enforcement — funded by taxpayers — to step in where it has failed to manage its own retail operations. And Hochman appears eager to comply, turning what should be a public safety strategy into a corporate partnership.

That’s not leadership. That’s acquiescence.

If Hochman truly wanted to address crime at its roots, he’d be talking to workers and community leaders — not just corporate executives. He’d be addressing wage theft, which robs workers of billions annually, far exceeding the losses from shoplifting. He’d be investing in youth development, education, job access, housing security, and the social infrastructure that actually prevents crime in the first place.

Instead, we get tough talk about “organized retail crime,” a nebulous term often used to justify increased surveillance, harsher penalties, and expanded policing powers — disproportionately targeting low-income communities and people of color. The same communities who are more likely to face food insecurity, housing instability, and unemployment — all factors that correlate with economic-driven petty theft.

By embracing this law-and-order spectacle, Hochman is signaling whom he believes deserves protection: not vulnerable residents, not underpaid workers, but corporate shareholders and storefronts. He’s using the language of safety to advance an agenda of punishment, not justice.

This is part of a broader shift in California and across the country — a retreat from the gains made in criminal justice reform, and a reversion to the politics of fear. But we know where that road leads. Mass incarceration, broken families, over-policed neighborhoods, and billions spent on cages instead of care.

We deserve leaders who base policy on facts, not fear. Who recognize the difference between protecting a store and protecting a community. Who know that safety means more than security cameras — it means dignity, opportunity, and equity.

Nathan Hochman may have walked through a Walmart. But if he wants to be more than a figurehead in a photo op, he needs to walk through the lives of those struggling on the margins — and listen. Until then, all we’ve seen is a DA pushing corporate PR disguised as public safety. And LA deserves more than that.

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