Have you been reading these stories on how food stealing is on the rise? Here are a few:
Shoplifting Spikes In U.S. Amid Increasing Desperation As Pandemic Drags On
The devastating reason food shoplifting is on the rise
Hunger Crisis Leads More Americans to Shoplift Food Essentials – Eater
Pandemic-caused unemployment leading to more ‘people being forced to steal’ food to survive
I wanted to put a little how-to guide together on how to steal food better.
First, you should know that roughly 90% of the population has stolen something in their lifetime. So anybody that tells you it is wrong to steal can go suck a dick. Most of those people were stealing just for fun. You are stealing to feed your family.
You also should know that it is much more likely that you are going to get caught these days than 20 years ago. Cameras and social media make it a lot easier to find people that have stolen something.
Make sure you know the kind of crime you are committing. If the value of the goods was less than $400 – it will be charged as misdemeanor petty theft, which is punishable by up to six months in jail and fines ranging from $50 to $1000. I’m talking a pack of gum can get you 6 months in jail if they want to do you like that.
I’ll just pull the last two paragraphs from this article. They sum it up well:
Where the value of the property stolen was worth more than $400 – the person will be charged with grand theft, which can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony. The decision will be ultimately left up to the prosecution as how to charge you. This is normally dependent upon any past convictions on your criminal record. The penalty for grand theft can be up to one full year in jail or state prison; a large price to pay, especially if you had a momentary lapse in judgment.
The best scenario is to be charged with an infraction. An infraction is less serious than a misdemeanor and the penalty for infraction petty theft is less than $250. Infraction petty theft is applied to theft cases involving merchandise valued below $50. If you were arrested for shoplifting, your best defense is to hire a criminal defense attorney as soon as possible. The last thing you want is to have to spend a number of months in jail over a mistake. Any type of conviction will result in a permanent criminal record which will haunt you for the rest of your life.
So yeah… if you are starving and you are stealing food, just hire a criminal defense attorney to bail you out. As always, the rich can get out of crimes that poor people will pay the full price for.
That article is right about one thing. Stealing food because your family is starving will sit on your record the rest of your life. It will make it harder for you to ever get a job or rent an apartment.
But you are hungry today. So do what you’ve got to do.
I’m not going to give you advice on how to steal. I don’t have any great wisdom on that. Know where the cameras are. Watch some how-to videos on YouTube. Be smart.
I would, however, like to offer a little wisdom on WHERE you are stealing.
As you know, cities segregate poor people into certain areas of the city. So, theft is going to be higher in some areas than others. If you are able, I’d like to strongly encourage you to try to stop stealing from stores in your own neighborhood.
The Dollar Store in my neighborhood is constantly getting their front door broken into and have hundreds of thousands of dollars of loss every year.
The logistical risk to this is that the store could leave the neighborhood. Then if the local grocery store leaves we’ll have a real problem. People won’t have any place to buy food, much less steal, and then desperate people will start doing even more desperate things. They’ll start attacking each other more than they already do.
I would like to HIGHLY encourage you to stop stealing in your own neighborhood. Get on a bus and go to the multinational big box stores that have intentionally stayed out of your neighborhood because they don’t like you. Bring the hood to them.
I have a friend who has made a decent life traveling to the surrounding neighborhoods with “shopping lists” for his friends. He’ll pick up what people need and then sell the stuff to them at deep discounts.
There is no amount of theft that would make even the slightest dent in these multi-billion dollar stores. It’s just a rounding error for them. Consider yourself a modern day Robin Hood. Don’t feel the slightest bit bad about surviving off the scraps of big box stores. They are creating billionaires as your family starves.
There is another way.
My friend Mary lives at 47 N. Arlington in Akron.
EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. 7 days a week she makes hot meals for homeless people in the neighborhood. And then she packs a lunch for them to eat later in the day.
She’s no one special. She’s not a nun. She’s not a minister. She is just a person who used to live in our tent village and is recovering from alcoholism. By every metric she is just a poor woman living in a group home with other poor people.
As she and I went to the Food Bank yesterday she told me she was super excited because her food stamps were coming and she was going to go buy the makings of biscuits and gravy to make and give out next week. She makes some of the best biscuits and gravy you will ever eat in your life.
I hope it twists your brain that one poor, recovering alcoholic woman can feed the entire neighborhood out of her house and countless churches don’t do a GOD DAMN THING.
Or if they do manage to do something it’s one day a week. You can live eating once a week. But it’s a brutal existence.
I truly don’t understand the use of churches these days. Most of them are nothing more that self-aggrandizing, masturabatory, insular corporations that pay no taxes and make shit tons of money for themselves.
Do what you were put on earth to do: HELP PEOPLE IN NEED.
Bread lines are back. People are starving. Get your shit together, churches!
Take a lesson from Mary and make meals for your local hungry people (I guarantee you have them) 7 days a week. (And don’t take off Christmas and other holidays. I REALLY hate that shit.)