Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.British Columbia business owner Joe Chaput will spend $5,500 a month during the holiday season on security guards and plans on upgrading his store's video security camera system at a cost of around $5,000. A cart full of cheese in a laneway is shown in North Vancouver in this image provided by the police.
“Organized crime will steal anything they know they can sell it and so, they probably would have known who their clients are before even stealing anything at all, and that’s how a black market is organized,” said Charlebois.He said he believes there are two categories of people shoplifting — those who do so out of desperation because they can’t afford the food, or organized criminals, profiting from sales on the black market.
“If they are drug addicts, they will commit further crimes with that or feed their drug habits. It’s a vicious cycle,” said Sahak.Sahak said meat is also a top target for grocery thieves, with store losses sometimes in the thousands.Police in Ontario have been chasing down slippery shoplifters going after butter.