Considering the kinds of things that you can find on their shelves, you might be wondering just how Cabela’s Inc. goes about protecting its assets. What is Cabela’s shoplifting policy and how do they prevent theft?
The exact policy that Cabela’s has for shoplifting is not public knowledge but they operate several strategies to prevent theft. They don’t appear to apprehend shoplifters directly but they do employ security devices, personnel, cameras, and electronic tagging to prevent shoplifting.
Read on to find out what their efforts look like!
Who Owns Cabela’s?
To understand what policies might be in place at a store like Cabela’s, we need to know a bit about the company structure first.
Cabela’s is a retailer in the United States and Canada that specializes in boating, camping, fishing, shooting, and other outdoor recreational activities. Its headquarters are in Nebraska and it currently operates more than 80 locations across North America.
The company started life in 1961 and saw a lot of success over the years. In 2016 it was announced that Bass Pro Shops were acquiring them for $5.5 billion.
Cabela’s is now a subsidiary of Bass Pro Shops and, as such, they will have many of the same policies as their new parent company.
Therefore, Cabela’s policy on shoplifting is likely to be very similar to the policy that is in place at Bass Pro Shops, especially since they sell a very similar kind of merchandise.
Do Cabela’s And Bass Pro Shops Have A Public Shoplifting Policy?
When we talk about the internal policies at specific companies, it will always be slightly speculative. Neither Cabela’s nor Bass Pro Shops have made their loss prevention, asset protection, or theft policies available for the public to view – and for good reason.
If the exact way that employees are trained on how to interact with shoplifters was public knowledge, then it would put the store and its employees at significant risk. It would give potential shoplifters valuable information and help them to figure out ways to work around the policy.
With that being said, we can determine quite a bit about how shoplifting is handled at Cabela’s from what the company has said about its security systems, from what current and ex-employees have shared about how things work, and from news stories that describe what happened when shoplifting did occur at their stores.
What Is Cabela’s Shoplifting Policy?
Although it is not definitively stated as such in any public messaging, Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops both seem to operate under a shoplifting policy that is centered around protecting the safety of employees and preventing the companies from being opened up to potential liability.
From what we can gather, it appears as though employees at most Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops locations are likely to be instructed to gather evidence and wait for the police to handle a shoplifting incident rather than attempt to apprehend the suspect themselves.
Security staff is legally allowed to detain anyone that they believe to have committed a crime (or to be in the process of committing a crime) in almost every US state, and they are allowed to use reasonable force to do so. This means that the staff at Cabela’s could hold a shoplifter until the police arrive if they wanted to.
However, this does not seem to be the way that Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops staff have been trained. Instead, they are more likely to call the police and attempt to delay the potential shoplifter without force – or simply allow them to leave with the stolen goods and use evidence gathered from their asset protection systems to have them arrested later.
We know this from the reports of ex-employees who have discussed the “no apprehension” policy that deters them from physically intervening if a theft is taking place, and from news reports that have described how shoplifters were not detained by staff and were instead either removed from the store or were allowed to leave without being confronted.
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Why Might Cabela’s Not Detain Shoplifters?
So, why might a store like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops not instruct their employees and security staff to physically detain shoplifters and hold them until the police can arrest them? Well, it’s all about risk management.
The risk of lost revenue from a successful shoplifting crime is obviously very important to these stores but instructing staff to try and confront and hold shoplifters could be even more risky.
The two main issues that companies are most concerned about are:
- Employee safety. A physical confrontation with a potential criminal is obviously going to put the employee in danger, particularly when you consider the type of merchandise that is on the shelves at Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops locations. It is safer to leave it to the police to pursue the criminal rather than have your employees try and handle the incident themselves.
- Liability. The laws around how and when private citizens are allowed to detain an individual are pretty complex and it is all too easy for an incident like this to result in a lawsuit against the company for unlawful imprisonment or personal injury claim.
The store will always weigh up its options and will opt for a policy with the lowest risk. Often, allowing customers to walk out of the door with the items they have stolen is safer and potentially less costly than having employees try to physically retrain them.
How Does Cabela’s Prevent Shoplifting?
So, if it seems as though shoplifters are not likely to be apprehended by staff at Cabela’s stores then how do they stop shoplifting from happening?
There are a lot of other strategies and systems in place to prevent theft and they are much less risky than having their security team try to do the work of law enforcement.
Cabela’s uses all kinds of tools to reduce theft and fraud, and they have a robust asset protection team working on ways to do this as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Some of the many ways that Cabela’s protects its stores from shoplifters include:
- Cameras and monitoring technology. Perhaps the most significant tool that Cabela’s (or any other store for that matter) will use is its monitoring equipment. High-tech cameras track potential criminals and capture evidence that can be used to pursue them if they do leave with stolen goods.
- Asset protection staff. They have dedicated teams that are constantly analyzing instances of theft and other shrinkage. They also have asset protection staff on-site at most locations who will handle actual incidents as they occur.
- Staff training. Staff at Cabela’s are trained in what they need to look out for and how they should treat customers and monitor the store in order to reduce the likelihood that a theft will occur.
- Electronic tagging and alarms. Cabela’s has spent years determining the best way to electronically tag and track items that are most at risk of being stolen.
- Return authorization. To reduce losses from people abusing their returns system, Cabela’s implemented a new return authorization policy which reportedly saved them millions and reduced returns by 10% in the first year that it was introduced.
When shoplifting does happen at Cabela’s, it seems as though their main strategy is to give evidence to law enforcement and prosecute the individual through the legal system to recover the stolen goods and any other lost revenue that occurred because of the incident.
That way, they don’t put their staff or the company at risk with a potentially dangerous confrontation – and they don’t lose any money in the process.
Summary
So, what is Cabela’s shoplifting policy? While we do not know exactly what their policy is, we can tell from ex-employees and news reports that their policy appears to be aimed at reducing risk and preventing lawsuits.
Rather than having their employees detain or apprehend potential shoplifters, Cabela’s is more likely to contact the police, gather as much evidence of the crime as possible, and potentially try and safely stall the suspect without engaging in a confrontation.
They also have many tools, technologies, and other systems in place that are designed to keep shoplifting to a minimum.
Reference Sources
https://www.readingeagle.com/2022/03/07/cabelas-shoplifting-tilden-township/