Suffolk County, New York Police on Tuesday arrested a 34 year-old man wanted in connection to two major jewelry thefts at Walmart locations on Long Island, 1010 WINS reports in an article that somehow seems to repeat the same error again and again. It says the man, Jonathan Sunderland, managed to steal $16,000 worth of Walmart jewelry at the Islandia, New York location on September 26, and then again take $25,000 worth of the jewelry from the Centereach, New York location on November 6th without explaining how the fuck anyone could carry at least 10 or 15 tons of jewelry out of a Walmart on their own without arousing suspicion from staff or other customers.
Or maybe it’s a typo and it was $160 and $250 worth of jewelry. That’s still a lot, but it’s manageable for a person to carry. But not only do they make the same error twice, they add it up with a more realistic $3,000 electronics theft from another location to arrive at $44,000 in value.
Something’s not on the level here. Arresting a guy for stealing $41,000 worth of jewelry from Walmart is like arresting him for stealing a billion dollars in cash from an ATM. It’s just not actually there to take. And even if our skepticism is misplaced and Walmart at some point in the last few years did start carrying jewelry that’s like okay, maybe if you didn’t know it was from Walmart it would be alright, so what? Is a jury still going to buy it, even if they clearly see the guy on video shoving the pieces into his backpack? Fuck no. Prosecutors should just stick to the $3,000 worth of electronics, feel lucky he stole enough of that shit to nail him on a felony.