Matthew Abraham: It makes you wonder whether this sort of thing is no longer regarded as a crime by police

Dancing is treated like a major crime today but thieves stroll around confident the long arm of the law won’t reach them, writes Matthew Abraham.

A pro-Trump insurgent smiles as he steals the lectern of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi during the January 06 attack on the US Capitol. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP

Pasadena boasts a high school, what’s left of a hospital and a cemetery. It’s the suburb where you can get “edikated, medicated and creeemated”, as my brother Frank, a former Pasadenite, likes to say.

But it’s also home to a rather complex supermarket complex, one that began life as the Big Crow but is now anchored by a Foodland supermarket that is stupendously over the top.

At a bit of a loose end on my birthday during the week, I headed up the road to the Pasadena monolith, on the flimsy pretext of getting some grog. The truth is my birthday falls the day before the anniversary of dad’s death, so stuck between happy and sad, I select vague.

I scored a “Seniors Park”, thoughtfully reserved by the centre’s management near the escalators that deliver you straight up to the booze emporium, the one run by Mrs Murphy’s little boy.

At the almost deserted check-outs, the conversation with the young shop assistant moved from birthdays to security as they scanned the six-pack of Coopers Lite and two bottles of Black Chook sparkling red. Last of the big spenders.

A “customer” before me had waltzed off without paying. In other words, he wasn’t a customer but a brazen thief.

Talk to shop assistants and you’ll find this is now a happening thing in Adelaide. People aren’t bothering to hide the stuff they’re knocking off by tucking it under their coat or down their jocks. That’s for amateurs.

No, now they simply take it and walk off. Once outside the premises, it’s a police matter apparently. But the thieves are gone well before the flashing blue lights appear. Start the car, start the car, to quote the IKEA ad.

Shop assistants are cautioned against trying to detain or even touching the thieves, because of the risk of being assaulted themselves or, perversely, facing allegations of assault.

Just before Christmas my wife and I were in the checkout queue at Bunnings when the man in front of us, his trolley stacked with gear, did a neat sideways manoeuvre and steered off out the front entrance and into broad daylight, without paying.

It’s so ridiculously brazen it leaves you stunned. Happens all the time, the shoppies shrugged.

Many crime categories have dropped during the past 12 months of the COVID pandemic, except for a disturbing leap in domestic violence.

SA Police’s 12-month rolling crime statistics show “theft from shop” is down 11 per cent. This doesn’t compute.

It makes you wonder whether this sort of thing is no longer regarded as a crime by police, or certainly not one they can do anything about, which amounts to the same thing.

The law did, however, finally catch up with the stolen lectern. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Has it just become an unhappily accepted part of doing business? Because so much of society is driven by a winner-takes-all ethos, is the flip side that the losers now take what they want?

And what do we make of the epidemic of what I dub the UNOBs – Unlicensed, Unregistered, Uninsured, On Bail – who so blithely cause death and mayhem on our roads? Drivers licences and rego bills are for suckers, obviously.

One of the most symbolic images of the Trump-fuelled invasion of the US Capitol was of one of the mob strolling through the building’s rotunda, grinning and waving at the camera, while carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern. It was the ultimate up yours, not just to the political elite but to the rest of us, raised to not take something that isn’t ours.

The COVID pandemic has skewed the whole notion of good and evil.

Once harmless activities, like dancing while holding a drink, are now treated as major crimes against humanity. But waltzing off with a trolley load of booze? It barely warrants calling a cop.

Instant celebrities now make millions simply by becoming “social influencers”, urging you to pay for things they get for free. Isn’t that just a nice way of stealing?

“I feel if someone’s stealing, I should be able to tackle ‘em,” the shoppie at Murph’s said indignantly.

In an ideal world, yes you should. But that’s because you know the difference between right and wrong, a quaint concept, to be sure. It’s safer to select vague, it’s all the rage.