Inside the subreddit dedicated to busting shoplifters

Alex McLeod is an adrenaline junkie. The 24-year-old, who lives in Ontario, Canada, is an avid martial artist with plans to sign up for a professional fighting league. He’s also a snowboarder and has been skydiving several times.

In addition, he’s always been interested in the investigations field. He’d religiously read crime thriller novels when he was young and always had a passion for solving mysteries.

Given all this, he considered it a no-brainer when he chose a career in loss prevention. It’s an industry attached to most major retailers — either at a corporate level or on-the-ground in retail stores — where officers are tasked with developing strategies to prevent employee or customer theft. As of April 2022, over 134,000 loss prevention officers — many of them white men — were employed in the U.S.

Retailers claim that shoplifting has been out of control since the pandemic began. The National Retail Federation has estimated $30 billion in economic loss caused by organized retail theft each year, a figure which some consider inaccurate. (“​​Although some retail and law enforcement lobbyists cite eye-popping figures,” the Los Angeles Times reported in December, “there is reason to doubt the problem is anywhere near as large or widespread as they say.”)

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