CVS Focuses Anti-Theft Measures on Communities of Color
Two years ago, CVS angered African American shoppers when television stations in two markets reported that the chain was placing security tags on hair care products for African Americans but not on similar products for white people. CVS was sending “a poor message, saying that they don’t trust us or we’re in a position not to be trusted for some reason,” an unidentified African American shopper told KCTV in Kansas City, Mo. CVS issued a statement saying, “the suggestion that our security measures to prevent shoplifting are racially-based is absolutely untrue.” Kansas City-area NAACP leader Leon Wood retorted, “Don’t insult the average consumer – they’re more intelligent than that. They know the underlying reason for it.”
CVS’s concentration of anti-theft measures on people of color goes beyond hair care products for African-Americans, however. Surveyors shopped CVS stores in five metropolitan areas – Greater Boston, Greater Detroit, Greater Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Area and New York City Metro Area -- and found disparities between the anti-theft measures CVS employs in white areas and those CVS uses in areas with a majority of people of color.
More Anti-Theft Measures in Communities of Color
One anti-theft method CVS employs is stickering packages with anti-theft messages. Some of the tags set off an alarm if removed from the store without being deactivated at the counter; others merely identify a product as for sale only at a particular CVS, aiming to deter shoplifting and resale.
Surveyors in five markets – Greater Boston, Greater Detroit, Greater Los Angeles, the New York Metro Area and the Philadelphia Area – quantified the prevalence of items bearing anti-theft stickers, identifying a CVS as heavily tagged if at least one aisle had more than 15 unique products with anti-theft tags. In four of the five markets (Greater Boston, Greater Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Area and the New York Metro Area), surveyors found proportionally more heavily tagged stores in zip codes with majorities of color than in white zip codes.
More Locked Products in Communities of Color
- In all five markets, over one quarter of the CVS stores in majority-white areas had no products locked up.
These stores with no locked cabinets were in predominantly white suburbs such as Grosse Pointe, Michigan; Philadelphia’s Main Line; Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills, Calif.; and Greenwich Conn., as well as mostly white urban areas including downtown Boston and Midtown Manhattan. - Only two of 57 stores in areas with a majority population of color had no locked products.
- CVS stores in zip codes where people of color predominate had more than twice as many categories of products locked up, on average, as CVS stores in mostly white zip codes. At some stores in Harlem, Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, Compton, California, and Detroit, CVS locked up diabetes tests, infant formula, perfumes, electric toothbrushes, hair dryers and more. At one CVS in East Orange, N.J., deodorant was in a locked cabinet.
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