Mayors and city councils may not have the foggiest idea of how to reverse the property crime wave destroying America’s cities, but a few retailers are trying out a foggy solution to the retail theft crisis.

FOG OF WAR: Stores are turning to the disorienting tactic to curb shoplifting. https://t.co/y1ECjrFmP8 pic.twitter.com/iifoXsUWpJ

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 5, 2023

A disorienting and blinding fog connected to a store’s alarm is a relatively new security measure to stop would-be thieves as organized retail crime spirals out of control.

The technology, which was created by DensityUSA, is already in use in several countries in the European Union and Australia but is becoming more prevalent in the U.S., said Mike Egel, president of DensityUSA.

Stores lost an estimated $86.6 billion to retail theft in 2022, and projections indicate that amount may reach $115 billion in 2025, according to Capital One Shopping Research.

“I think the COVID-19 pandemic tore the social and economic fabric of America,” Egel told Fox News Digital. “Pre-pandemic, crime was on the decline. But when the nation shut down and the economy stepped backwards, common sense went to an all-time low. And sadly, crime rose and continues to grow.”

Once again I have to add that it wasn’t the pandemic that caused the disastrous decline in social trust and norms; it was the public policies that our so-called “leaders” implemented to shut down society, and the idiotic response to the George Floyd riots.

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that public health officials encouraging criminal destruction of property and politicians bowing down to criminals would lead to a huge spike in crime. It wasn’t just predictable–it was loudly and frequently predicted by people who are not insane.

Now we are faced with a breakdown of society, the closure of retail and grocery stores, and the mass exodus of police from the Blue cities. Why risk your life in order to arrest a criminal who will be back on the street in hours or days?

So we get “solutions” like this–stores turn to systems that have a surface appeal, or are even rational in the current environment but are symptoms of a deeply dysfunctional society.

“After seeing the rise in crime across the United States and billions of dollars lost to intrusions, including burglaries, riots and looting, we partnered with our colleagues in the European Union to bring Density Global to the U.S. as DensityUSA,” Egel said.

“The system can be used in all retail settings, from clothing stores and pharmacies to cannabis stores, from convenience stores to gun shops.”

No society will ever be crime-free, and I can see the appeal of having a system like this to deter break-ins. But as a practical matter, no retailer is going to trigger a system like this more than once, perhaps, to prevent shoplifting. Can you imagine being in a Walgreens and having the place fog up because somebody is stealing razor blades?

It would make more sense to move to a civilized place than have to deal with something like this on a regular basis.

The problem is social norms more than anything else. Even police are only a necessary stopgap intended to catch and punish the few people in a well-running society who refuse to abide by the prevailing norms. The vast majority of people don’t engage in criminal behavior because they have been raised to believe doing so is abhorrent.

Far too many people no longer believe that. They have been taught they live in a corrupt society that is holding them back, that property is theirs for the taking, and that nobody will punish them for doing so. That is the actual official position of many of our politicians and district attorneys and of far too many MSM commentators.

It’s all well and good that businesspeople are taking matters into their own hands, but the only long-term solution is retaking the cultural heights of our society and re-establishing the power of social norms.

Can that happen? Not with the current crop of public school teachers, politicians, academics, and MSM folks. This is one of the main reasons Americans are going through the “Big sort,” where people are choosing to live in Red states or Blue states according to their values–and why the Red states are gaining population while Blue states are losing people.

I am not optimistic that things won’t get much worse before they get better. Rudy Giuliani–the younger, saner version of Rudy–proved it was possible to retake a city. So there is hope.

But will it happen in my lifetime? I have doubts.