I blame the suburbs and rural areas for increased theft rings.

It's all to feed their drug habits, and their lack of tech skills.

1). People who hate Bob Ferguson do not a grasp on reality.
2). If you are unaware of the local (urban and suburban) retail theft, the open markets (downtown and online) and dangers to the public (fill in your blank): then you live in a reality which likely is: ignorant, complicit, or sociopathic.

@3
Yes, and yes. Just take a stroll from Pioneer Square along 3rd Ave up to Denny. You won’t be blaming Ferguson after that.

@3 Bear in mind that what a lot of people really hate about Bob Ferguson is that for four years he was arguably the most effective Trump fighter in the entire country (maybe second to Nancy Pelosi, but I don't think anyone else comes close). Hence you get comments like the one above blaming him for the cost of living and everything else they can think of.

Why are you complaining? King County had never targeted employers organizing to steal from workers, unless handed the case wrapped up in a bow. Wage theft is the largest ignored crime in King County.

If nothing else, this post showcases the Stranger’s ferocious — if not outright fanatical — message discipline:

“… better than trumping up charges against people stealing necessities for survival,”

This is about as close as the Stranger ever gets to admitting the blatantly obvious: much of Seattle’s shoplifting problem comes from homeless persons, stealing to feed their drug habits.

Last year, as part of the futile attempt to stop Seattle’s voters from electing a Republican to city-wide office for the very first time in the Stranger’s existence, the Stranger tried (and tried, and TRIED) to find a single example of a homeless person who had done jail time in Seattle for stealing food. The result? Zero examples of anyone spending any time at all in jail for stealing food. (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/10/25/62275417/twenty-seven-days-for-stealing-a-souvenir-penny-what-it-would-look-like-to-get-tough-on-misdemeanors-in-seattle)

But a mere total lack of substantiating evidence doesn’t mean a good talking point should be discarded, so “food” became “necessities for survival,” in the apparent hope this makes the description so extremely large and vague that someone, somewhere, simply must have been jailed for it. (And there’s no longer any need to find examples, because just look what happened the last time the Stranger tried that.)