Estes

Shoplifting incidents that escalate are sometimes referred to as Estes robberies, after a legal standard that dates to the early 1980s, when a man named Curtis Estes tried to walk out of a Sears store in Vallejo wearing a down vest and corduroy coat he hadn’t paid for.

When confronted by an armed security guard in the parking lot, Estes pulled a knife out and threatened to kill the guard, before eventually surrendering.

Estes was convicted of felony robbery, which was upheld under appeal with the court ruling that “a store employee may be a victim of a robbery even though he does not own the property taken.”

In the decades since, law enforcement has used the Estes robbery standard to charge shoplifters with robbery even if they didn’t have weapons.

Of the top 10 locations citywide for Estes robberies, the majority occurred at WSS, a Southern California chain formerly known as Warehouse Shoe Sale.