We’re the Florida reporters who found that cops showed up to Walmart more than anywhere else -- and taxpayers footed the bill. We packaged the story like a retro computer. Ask us anything!

Did you get a sense of whether this just happens because more people are at Walmart (a simple numbers issue), or because it's something cultural, like to do with the socioeconomics of the demographics of Walmart shoppers? Also, any insight about demographics? Were more minorities targeted? Sorry for long q. Keep up the good work.

Here are a couple charts that we decided to cut from the package because they didn't work well on mobile :(

That brings up a follow up question for me. How much has reporting changed or how much does formatting for mobile or online change reporting from years ago. If you had more real estate would you have added anything?

I wouldn't say it has changed the reporting per se because the Times has been doing awesome work for decades. But moving into a the digital age, it is super important that we meet our readers where they spend most of their time - on mobile.

The chart above was the only graphic that got cut -- usually there are smart ways to deal with the smaller screen sizes on mobile. The issue with the above chart was that it did some cool animating transitions when you clicked on it and those were a little too processor intensive for mobile devices. Here's a gif of the transition.

I just wanna say, you guys down there at the Times are just killin' it. Your story was phenomenal. Laura Reiley's "Farm to Fable" was magnificent. Politifact is the de facto arbitrator of truth in the political world. And, of course, you're promoting it extremely well--I'm glad to see that there seems to be a market for innovative journalism.

Thank you! That means a lot to me and the rest of my colleagues.

That was an example of cool animating transitions? It's 2016, not 1998.

That was a graphic that was never fully finished. I suppose cool is subjective but hey, I thought it was! It was certainly complicated under the hood.

What's with the Areesteeekkkkddkdkd? What should it read

TK is garble for "to come." Something about arrests that would be readable but that we had not yet come up with

Ohhh sort of like Ipsum Lorum... when doing layout work

Exactly!

Why was the story packaged like a retro computer? Old computers don't seem to have much to do with police being called to Walmart.

The idea was to recreate an old-school police dispatch screen. I started working on the web graphics back in November so I can neither confirm nor deny that there may have been some Fallout 4 influence there ...

Zack, Laura, and Eli,

I've read your article a couple of times now, and I find it a little troubling.

Not because I think the reporting is bad, but I'm not the world's biggest fan of some of the points you try to make.

First and foremost, you spend a LOT of time comparing Walmart to other big box retailers based on property tax assessment vs. police call volume. The assertion that you make (but never say) is that Walmart is using "more" than their share because they pay less tax than other stores.

First, I'm going to assume that a percentage of the sales tax collected in these locations goes back to the city and county governments to fund these departments, so looking at property tax alone is misleading.

And second, I'm not sure I'm wild about the assertion that you should only be able to utilize police resources in line with your contribution to the local government via property and sales tax. Do poor people not deserve police protection from petty crime because they don't pay much in tax?

Am I, a long time LEO, going to refuse to investigate a minor vandalism at someone's house just because it's only 900 square feet and in a shitty neighborhood?

---

Next, let's take some time to address that Walmart is fairly unique is that they're the only big-box retailer that's willing to build in these shitty neighborhoods. You ever see a shiny Target next to a housing project?

No?

Ever wonder why?

Walmart, by design, is in crappy neighborhoods (it's also in nice neighborhoods too). It's within walking distance of the projects, or just a short bus ride away. It does this on purpose.

Companies should do as much as they can to keep their properties in order before leaning on police, said Charles Fishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, a book about the retailer’s growth and social impact. He equated Walmart’s high volume of calls to the parents of a misbehaving 11-year-old who call 911 every time their child acts out.

You know, I really can't believe I'm defending Walmart here, but fuck Charles Fishman. Every company deserves to prosecute thieves. If you steal, you deserve everything that you get. This is one of the worst analogies I've ever read, and I'm frankly disappointed in you three for including it in your article.

The different between the two situations is that one is dealing with people who are actually breaking the law, and the other isn't. And the fact that you can't tell the difference makes me question both your integrity and your honesty.

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Next, I'm going to take Eli to task for bad data analysis.

In most cases, the Walmart stores were larger than the Targets. The Times accounted for the size difference by calculating the number of calls for every 10,000 square feet of store space. Even then, the Walmarts averaged more than three times the calls, producing about 30 per 10,000 square feet compared with only about nine at Target.

Dude, this is some deceptive shit, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

If you're going to try to do a meaningful comparison, you have to use either traffic numbers (how many people enter the store) or transaction numbers (how many people check out). Trying to compare one store to another based on square footage is deceptive at best.

---

Finally, I want to address this nonsense:

Responding to Walmart has become so routine that officers show up without even being called. They drive slowly through the parking lot or stop to write unrelated reports. Other times they go inside and walk the aisles, or just buy a soda.

For patrol officers, these unsolicited visits to Walmarts are an easy decision, said Scott, the former Lauderhill police chief.

“Look, I either get called there later, or I go there now and prevent things,” he said.

The Times found more than 6,200 of these visits, on top of the other 16,800 calls.

Garafano, the former Walmart employee in Brandon, said he sometimes saw sheriff's patrol cars parked near the supercenter on East Brandon Boulevard, even when nothing was happening.

“It was almost like they were kind of just waiting to get a call,” he said.

Look, I know you're trying to push a narrative, and I appreciate that, but had you actually talked to a current patrol officer you'd learn why LEOs LOVE Walmart parking lots:

• They're clean
• They're huge
• They're well-lit
• They're almost always centrally located
• They always have great cell phone coverage

Why does this matter?

Because when I'm between calls and can get some paperwork done, this is PRECISELY the kind of place I want to stop and do it.

I can see around me, so no one can sneak up behind me and kill me.

I can get to anywhere I need to be in relatively little time.

And the cell modem in my trunk has a great connection to the network, so my computer system works right.

---

All in all, not a bad article, but you got lazy, and that disappoints me.

First, I want you to know that I am grateful that you took the time to read the article and reply with some excellent questions. I'm going to try to address your concerns point-by-point.

First, I'm going to assume that a percentage of the sales tax collected in these locations goes back to the city and county governments to fund these departments, so looking at property tax alone is misleading.

While it's true that at least some sales tax makes its way back to city coffers, there are a couple reasons we didn't include it in our comparisons. The major reason: Florida law exempts sales tax figures from FOIA so we just couldn't get that data. We tried, and if we had been able to, you can bet we would have included that in the story.

Second, technically sales tax is a tax on consumers, not businesses. Walmart is not paying a sales tax on items they sell, the people who buy them are. So you could make the argument that Walmart is a generator of sales tax but I don't think that argument holds water. If people weren't buying goods from Walmart, they would be buying them from somewhere else. You could probably even go so far as to say that cities would be generating more in sales tax revenue from stores that sell the same goods as Walmart but at a higher price.

And second, I'm not sure I'm wild about the assertion that you should only be able to utilize police resources in line with your contribution to the local government via property and sales tax. Do poor people not deserve police protection from petty crime because they don't pay much in tax?

That wasn't ever the assertion. The tax comparisons were only one metric we used in exploring a very complicated issue. In reality, and we talk about this in the article, there are things that police can do to limit the number of resources they are spending on policing at Walmart just as there are ways Walmart can be less of a burden on police. There's a give and a take there but ultimately Walmart has nearly infinitely more resources than your average police department.

Dude, this is some deceptive shit, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

If you're going to try to do a meaningful comparison, you have to use either traffic numbers (how many people enter the store) or transaction numbers (how many people check out). Trying to compare one store to another based on square footage is deceptive at best.

I would have loved to make comparisons based on traffic numbers at individual stores. Unfortunately, neither Walmart nor Target was able to provide us with specifics. If you happen to have connections and want to put us in touch I would gladly take a look at those numbers.

Look, I know you're trying to push a narrative, and I appreciate that, but had you actually talked to a current patrol officer you'd learn why LEOs LOVE Walmart parking lots:

• They're clean
• They're huge
• They're well-lit
• They're almost always centrally located
• They always have great cell phone coverage

That's an interesting take and I'll take your word for it that it has some effect on an LEO's decision to spend time there. I will tell you that we spent A LOT of time talking with LEOs and doing ride alongs. We have officers outright telling us they were made to do roll call in Walmart parking lots as a deterrent. They told us they were told to make frequent trips to Walmarts to prevent crime.

I don't blame you for this but I think it's pretty easy to read the article and not realize how much work actually went into the reporting here. I have been working on this project for the better part of 9 months and Zack and Laura began working on it before I did. This story would not have published if we didn't think we had exhaustively pursued every avenue we could. Think about it, after working on a project for nearly a year, what's the harm in holding it for another month if we thought we could make it better?

Again, thank you for you thoughtful questions and for taking the time to read the story. I hope you will share it with your LEO colleagues and get their opinions on it as well.

I'm not sure that you can draw conclusions from the data provieded. That is the main problem with 'big data'. There are two types of statistics drawn from big data: inferential and predictive. I don't think we can draw a causal relationship between calls for service and Walmart, but we can perhaps predict that future calls for service will come from Walmart. What raw data did you get from the various law enforcement agencies, and do you have it in a repository so that others may analyze the data?

I totally get what you're saying about drawing conclusions from big, messy data. We ended up gathering about 30k police call records to Walmart as PDFs (never again). We also have another 300k calls from agencies that gave us all CFS. Of the 30k to Walmart we very deliberately took care not to double count calls (say someone gets popped for shoplifting and it turns out they have a warrant -- in most CAD systems, that's two calls) which led to us publishing the less sensational, but more accurate, 16,800 calls number.

But anyway, more onto your point, I think you're right, we couldn't have run the story if we had just analyzed police calls to Walmart. A huge part of the story was getting the context for our numbers - How often are police at similar retailers? How much of a city's tax base is paid by Walmart? Why is it that people steal from Walmart so often but not Target? It's the whole package that makes the data reliable, not just the data itself.

Why is it that people steal from Walmart so often but not Target? It's the whole package that makes the data reliable, not just the data itself.

Was this ever answered?

We discussed some reasons in the article, but when it comes down to it, there's no singular reason.

Do you ever read the comment section?

Occasionally but it's different there than say reddit. People in the comment sections on our site don't want a discussion, they just want to share an opinion. Redditors otoh tend to favor a discussion.

First off, great job. However, I think there is an interesting angle your story overlooks. In describing how Wal Mart creates a disproportionate burden on taxpayers by failing, vis-a-vis other similar businesses, to secure their stores, you seem to make the implicit argument that Wal Mart is being unjustly enriched at the expense of taxpayers. But given Wal Mart's "razor thin margins," which you acknowledge, isn't it equally true that the expense borne by taxpayers operates as a subsidy for low income shoppers? I.e., if Wal Mart had to internalize the expense of security, rather than externalize it onto taxpayers, wouldn't Wal Mart have to raise their prices, and wouldn't the net effect be to make things tougher on poor people?

That's a good question and a really interesting way to frame it!

I guess all I can say to that is that we are talking about a company here that makes 15 billion in annual profits. Why do companies that make less take more preventative measures? What would happen if every retailer called police at similar rates proportional to their size? And it is certain that even with their strict policies in place people still get away with shoplifting from Walmart. If they put more preventative measures in place that deterred more people from even attempting to shoplift, wouldn't that be better for them too? Maybe, maybe not. This is just speculation but I have a feeling that Walmart has analyzed the hell out of this and just decided it was cheaper for them to call police rather than deal with it themselves.

Thanks for taking the time to read the article and to ask such an insightful question!

Can this be credited to a lack of store security? Is Walmart shorting their security because they know the police will handle it?

It's a big, complicated issue but uniformed security plays a role in the equation.

Not sure if this is common or not, but in Denver the Police have a cop stationed in the Walmart. There's a large sign when you come in, that says something like, "We here at Walmart are proud to join forces with the Police Department. An officer is stationed on site." or something like that, and normally, there's a police officer standing there. This is definitely at three Walmarts in the Denver area that I've seen.

Is this common in other places? Does Tampa do this at all? (Sorry if I missed it in the article, it's pretty beefy and I haven't read through it all yet.)

Not that I'm aware of in Tampa but Zack talked to a police department in NH that had a police substation in their Walmart.

Lifelong Tampa Bay resident...how do you feel about the Tribune being bought out and what does it do for competition in the Bay area?

It's a sad thing to see an institution of journalism no longer able to support itself. It sucks to see so many talented folks lose their jobs. As for competition in the literal sense of competing papers, it clearly changes the game. As for competition in the sense of competing viewpoints, I think that the Times is up to the challenge.

Since this is true for my area, are the lesser priced things the most stolen things?(Ex: a coke)

We found that far more people were charged with petit theft than grand theft. In Florida the difference between petit and grand theft is the $300 mark.

"Many individual supercenters attracted more calls than the much larger WestShore Plaza mall." -- do you believe this is because the mall has it's own security and the supercenters do not? -- The real question here... do you believe this is a local/regional problem or a national corporate policy issue?

I see the article mentioned there were 53 Walmart locations. But were the calls spread pretty evenly across the supercenters?

Edit: I just want to say what an amazingly well done article this is! Wow.

I do believe that mall cops are part of reason.

As to your second question, here's the result of a query I just ran on the database we built. I should preface this by saying, I am not 100% certain that this is every supercenter in the area but it is at least most of them.

County	Agency	Location	Number of calls
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	2701 E Fletcher Ave Tampa FL 33612	937
pinellas	Pinellas Park Police Department	8001 Us Highway 19 N Pinellas Park FL 33781	712
hillsborough	Tampa Police Department	1505 N Dale Mabry Hwy Tampa FL 33607	697
pinellas	Pinellas County Sheriff Office	3801 Tampa Rd Oldsmar FL 34677	658
pasco	Pasco County Sheriff Office	12610 Us Highway 19 Hudson FL 34667	647
hillsborough	Plant City Police Department	2602 James L Redman Pkwy Plant City FL 33566	623
pinellas	St Petersburg Police Department	201 34Th St N St Petersburg FL 33713	586
pasco	Zephyrhills Police Department	7631 Gall Blvd Zephyrhills FL 33541	566
hernando	Hernando County Sheriff Office	13300 Cortez Blvd Brooksville FL 34613	563
hillsborough	Tampa Police Department	19910 Bruce B Downs Blvd Tampa FL 33647	531
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	11110 Causeway Blvd Brandon FL 33511	519
hernando	Hernando County Sheriff Office	1485 Commercial Way Spring Hill FL 34606	517
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	9205 Gibsonton Dr Gibsonton FL 33534	513
hernando	Brooksville Police Department	7305 Broad St Brooksville FL 34601	487
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	8220 N Dale Mabry Hwy Tampa FL 33614	482
pasco	Port Richey Police Department	8701 Us Highway 19 Port Richey FL 34668	459
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	6192 Gunn Hwy Tampa FL 33625	447
pinellas	Largo Police Department	2677 Roosevelt Boulevard Largo FL 33760	428
pinellas	St Petersburg Police Department	3501 34Th St S St Petersburg FL 33711	428
pasco	Pasco County Sheriff Office	8745 State Road 54 New Port Richey FL 34655	405
pinellas	Clearwater Police Department	23106 Us Highway 19 N Clearwater FL 33765	392
hillsborough	Hillsborough County Sheriff Office	4928 State Road 674 Wimauma FL 33598	386
pinellas	Pinellas County Sheriff Office	35404 Us Highway 19 N Palm Harbor FL 34684	274
hillsborough	Tampa Police Department	4302 W Gandy Blvd Tampa FL 33611	214
pasco	Pasco County Sheriff Office	1575 Land O Lakes Blvd Lutz FL 33549	202
pinellas	Tarpon Springs Police Department	41232 Us Hwy 19 N Tarpon Springs FL 34689	192
pinellas	Pinellas County Sheriff Office	10237 Bay Pines Blvd St Petersburg FL 33708	173
pasco	Pasco County Sheriff Office	28500 State Road 54 Wesley Chapel FL 33543	111
pinellas	Largo Police Department	990 Missouri Ave N Largo FL 33770	91
pasco	Pasco County Sheriff Office	7631 Gall Blvd Zephyrhills FL 33541	5

* These numbers exclude directed patrols and calls we deemed should be excluded according to our About the reporting section in the article.

The story was great, and the presentation fun and interesting. I saw it shared around and it by the fact that you are here, it must have been something a viral hit. In the era of adblockers, does a viral news story like that earn enough ad revenue for editors to allow you more leeway investigating similar long form stories, or is this just a one-off that is unlikely to lead to more indepth investigative stories?

Thank you for the kind words and for sharing the story! It certainly has gotten some attention, very humbling and exciting to see that kind of affirmation on something we've been working on for nearly a year now.

As to adblockers, and speaking specifically about this project, there weren't any ads on the page. Well, there was one in front of the video but adblocker would not have affected that. As to what other newsrooms are doing, there are ways to detect adblockers and then do something else. I know of a few newsrooms that will detect adblock and pull some fancy magic to inject ads into interstitials on the site.

As for doing more investigations, the Tampa Bay Times has always put a heavy emphasis on watchdog journalism. Those decisions never come down to "Are we going to make money on the story?" but rather "Is this an important story that needs to be told?". So no, I don't think we'll ever stop doing this kind of reporting because it's not profitable - there are other ways to make money and support important journalism.

Do you feel like that if someone got robbed, that it's their own fault because they left their door unlocked? That's how I felt after reading your article.

To expand on your analogy, probably not the first time. But if someone left their doors open all day and called police twice an hour, then yes, some of the blame certainly is on them.

How did the graphics happen? They are freaking amazing. I'm computer challenged (except when it comes to certain websites [you know what I mean]) so I have no idea how any of that stuff works but can you tell how the graphics go from idea to fruition?

Thank you so much for the kind words!

We were tossing around a few ideas for the intro graphic and settled on the idea of creating a police dispatch computer with the calls just flowing in. The aesthetic was totally influenced by the Fallout 4 computer terminals ;)

Once we had the idea for the intro, it just seemed appropriate to do the rest of the graphics in a similar style. Big shoutout to Martin Frobisher for taking my crappy d3 code and polishing it til it shone!

Does anyone have the full estimated total costs for these dispatches for actual police needed calls and less than needed calls? Like cost of fuel for dispatch, wages for calls, cost of processing, etc. Just curious for the Data

No, it's not really possible to track an offender through the legal system and assign a cost for everything. See Laura's comment.

Did you ever do a comparison of WalMart vs. Other stores in town? A side by side with police calls per every 1000 customers vs. the town gas station or a grocery store?

Yup, there's a whole section in the article comparing police response to Walmart vs Target. You should check it out! www.tampabay.com/walmartcops

I've worked for Walmart. As regular employees, we are not allowed to interact in any way with a customer that we find to be stealing. We are told to tell our mangers about it,and then the manager contacts the in-store asset protection. By the time that AP is able to find the customer on camera and verify that they are stealing, it is often too late and the customer is put of the door. This is anecdotal, but one of our in-store security guards was fired for grabbing and holding a shoplifter that walked out the door with a TV.

If you do it fast enough and can get off the property before police arrive, you can take a TV and a computer right off the shelf, put it in a basket, and walk our the door, because nobody is allowed to stop you.

Do you feel like one solution might be more in-store security that are allowed to detain shoplifters? Anecdotally again, we have third party guards on the night shift that have tacked and detained shoplifters several times, and it seems to be working fairly well.

That's a certainly a possible solution. Another is just to approach a person you saw shoplifting and tell them to put it back rather than standing invisibly behind a shelf/computer monitor. I have a hunch that most people would rather put it back than go to jail. There are definitely other solutions and we explored many of them in our article.