“The darkest time in our history”: An analysis of news media constructions of liquor theft in Canada’s settler colonial context

Abstract

In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians, and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. This article analyzes recent news media coverage of liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada and the social construction of an ostensibly new crime trend in the city: “brazen” liquor store thefts. We employ a qualitative content analysis of news articles about liquor store theft published in local Winnipeg news media between 2018 and 2020 (n = 147). Drawing on the social constructionist paradigm, and Fishman’s conceptualization of “crime waves,” we argue that the framing of liquor theft via news media reflects longstanding cultural tropes and myths about crime, as well as hinting at but never fully confronting, deeply engrained colonial and racialized stereotypes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ways putative social problems are made intelligible in the media. We demonstrate how “crime waves” are shaped by and shape dominant tropes about crime, safety, and citizenship. We argue that something as mundane as liquor theft reveals much about the historical, colonial and social roots of crime in local and national contexts.

“We have an issue. We have a serious problem. . .This is the darkest time in Winnipeg history. . .” Ron D’Errico, CEO, Impact Security Group (CBC Manitoba, Oct 30, 2019).

“The blatant theft and robberies that we’re witnessing here from the liquor stores, I can’t think of another trend that’s emerged like this during my time as a cop. . . I can’t think of a time when social norms have been ignored so dramatically.” Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) Chief Danny Smyth (Winnipeg Free Press, March 22, 2019).

In September 2018, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what was described as a disturbing new crime trend: the “brazen” theft of alcohol from government-run liquor stores. Reportedly, individuals stormed into these stores, quickly filled their bags with bottles of alcohol, and simply ran away, unimpeded by staff who were instructed not to intervene. While liquor store theft is hardly a new phenomenon, local media framed this crime as possessing an entirely new quality and character. Specifically, media described these thefts in terms that suggested the extent of the issue was at unprecedented levels, while the nature of the phenomenon was framed as increasingly violent, posing a danger not only to liquor store employees, but also to bystanders who occasionally became swept up in these events. Public outrage focused on the brash behavior of the often young and Indigenous perpetrators while also lamenting the passive response of liquor store employees and security guards. News coverage of this otherwise minor property crime intensified through 2019, peaking in November and December 2019 with, at times, nearly daily coverage across several local news outlets.

As primary definers of the crime problem (e.g. Doyle, 2006; Surette, 2007), police were regularly featured in media reports. Police oscillated between chastising the Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation (MLL) for lax security measures, while simultaneously warning of a deepening public danger and the erosion of civility represented by this crime type. During the height of news coverage, police cautioned the public against vigilantism, including photography and citizen arrest practices. Experts on retail, security, and crime prevention were sought by local news media to wax, at times fatalistically, about the state of retail crime in the city. Soon, other authorities, including provincial politicians and the head of the union representing liquor store employees, were making sweeping declarations about the scope of the problem and the need for a province wide, multi-sector “liquor store theft summit” to address the issue. By early 2020, the problem had all but vanished from local media as the world was being upended by the arrival the COVID19 pandemic.

This relatively short and neatly bounded episode in the social history of social problem formation in Winnipeg offers a unique window for studying the construction of crime problems in the media. Drawing on Fishman’s (1978) concept of “crime waves,” we argue that crime waves are not phenomena of the natural world but are instead products of the social world and the activities of various groups, including the media, police and other actors who conceptually link discrete events together as well as to broader social issues (e.g. drugs, violence, crime) that may gather momentum and capture the public imagination. While it is theoretically possible that any type of crime could become framed by media as a “crime wave,” liquor thefts from government stores became the rather unlikely center of a storm of media, public, and political concern. Crime waves, as a particular form of social problem, generate widespread public interest and can quickly exert pressure on authorities for action to stem what is seen as an alarming new trend in crime and security. However, crime waves are political and ideological in that they present accounts of the social world. Describing ideology as arising from “procedures not to know,” Fishman (1978: 531) points out that news media, through interaction with and reliance upon official sources like the police, tend to reproduce prevailing societal assumptions, including how we understand the problem of crime (see e.g. Doyle, 2006). These ideological accounts may in turn generate calls for greater resources for groups like the police or private security, as well as contributing to broader conceptions of the social world and the factors underlying crime. While we do not deny that these crimes were real in their impacts on employees, bystanders, and the general public, we seek to understand how media framing led to a particularly narrow way of understanding the causes and solutions to the issue. This broader ideological effect of crime waves holds great interest to us, as this recent “wave” of liquor store thefts appears to have hit a nerve precisely because it resonated with longstanding cultural tropes about crime and society in Winnipeg—a community riven by racial and social inequality that was described by a national news magazine as “Canada’s most racist city” (MacDonald, 2015).

In the next section, we briefly outline the long history in Canada between alcohol regulation, colonization, and Indigenous peoples. We argue that the present case study must be contextualized in a framework that makes central Canada’s settler colonial foundations. Next, we outline key research on the social construction of crime problems via the news media. This prior work demonstrates how crime problems emerge and evolve in the wake of efforts by authorities and activists to focus attention on particular issues of concern. After briefly describing our method of analysis, we outline the nature and extent of news coverage of liquor theft in Winnipeg, Canada between 2018 and early 2021. We focus on claims forwarded via this news coverage about the causes and consequences of this ostensibly new crime type as well as the solutions implied by the media framing of the issue. We argue that the news media worked in tandem with authorities and interest groups to link crimes involving theft of liquor to other established social problems such a putative crisis of methamphetamine (meth) addiction in the city (Maier et al., 2021). We contend that this particular framing of the issue foreclosed alternative ways of understanding the phenomenon, including the intergenerational effects of colonization, poverty, and social exclusion experienced by Indigenous people in Canada. We further argue that the social construction of liquor theft as a particular variety of social problem had important consequences for directing public policy and the kinds of solutions that became intelligible as a result of the framing of the issue. Lastly, we assert that significant absences or silences in the reporting of the issue hold particular ideological relevance. While discussions about race and crime were widespread on social media during the period of these events, we note a near total absence of news accounts directly taking up these issues. ¹ This is a noteworthy and conspicuous absence in a city and province marked by great racial inequality and overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system (Comack et al., 2013). The simultaneous absence and presence of racialized accounts of this crime further entrenched negative stereotypes (e.g. Vowel, 2017) and worked at a cultural level to maintain the ideological structures of colonialism that undergird the city and Canadian society more broadly.

Criminalizing alcohol in a settler colonial context

Indigenous criminologist Monchalin (2016) critiques the colonial foundations of the criminal justice system in Canada, pointing out that “the challenges facing some Indigenous peoples today—challenges related to poor health, suicide, and substance abuse—can be addressed effectively only by acknowledging the destructive legacies of colonialism and racism” (pp. 158–159). Part of this destructive legacy is reflected in longstanding discriminatory practices of alcohol prohibition for Indigenous peoples, as well as deeply engrained cultural tropes, referred to by Métis author Vowel (2017) as the “foundational stereotype. . . the drunken Indian, hopped up on the White Man’s firewater” (p. 151). According to Lakomäki et al. (2017) there are “intimate interlinkages between alcohol, colonial state-building, and political and cultural constructions of Indigenous status and Native spaces” (p. 1). Historians and Indigenous Studies scholars argue that the role of alcohol in colonialism was complex and often contradictory (Campbell, 2008). Control of alcohol has been a tool of colonial repression since contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples globally (Lakomäki et al., 2017). While the experiences of Indigenous peoples with alcohol and colonialism around the world are unique and varied, there are many commonalities (Campbell, 2008). In general, alcohol went hand-in-hand with colonial expansion and was used to forge economic, political and military alliances, and to facilitate settlement of Indigenous land by newcomers (Campbell, 2008; Thompson and Genosko, 2014). Regulating alcohol was also used in settler colonial contexts to police racialized—and often sexualized—boundaries between settlers and Indigenous peoples (Manwani, 2002; Razack, 2002).

In Canada, laws restricting access to alcohol by Indigenous peoples followed quickly after the transfer of colonial authority to civilian officials in 1830 (Campbell, 2008; Thompson and Genosko, 2014). The prohibition of alcohol for Indigenous peoples was linked the broader objective of assimilation, or “civilization” by colonial authorities (Campbell, 2008; Thompson and Genosko, 2014). Canada’s Indian Act (1876) “consolidated all laws regarding “Indians” and liquor. So, after its passage, nobody (“Indian” or otherwise) was permitted to sell liquor to a status “Indian” (Monchalin, 2016: 116). The Act went further by making it a criminal offense to provide alcohol to anyone “reputed to belong to a particular band, or who follows the Indian mode of life” (Thompson and Genosko, 2014: 174). Well into the mid-20th century, provincial liquor authorities drew on this expansive language to justify “its selective prohibition related to ‘Indian-looking’ people” (Thompson and Genosko, 2014: 176). The Manitoba Liquor Act (1928) required anyone entering a beer parlor to have a “liquor permit,” and specified such permits would not be issued to “any Indian or interdicted person” (McCallum and Perry, 2018: 54). The Manitoba Liquor Act not only laid out the legal parameters for the purchase and consumption of liquor; by defining beer parlors as “public places,” the Act implicitly suggested Indigenous people were not members of the public (Toews, 2005). While some aspects of The Indian Act were relaxed following World War Two, and the landmark Supreme Court decision R. v. Drybones (1969) struck down the discriminatory provision criminalizing Indigenous people for being intoxicated while off reserve, provincial authorities continued to enforce some restrictions which led to further entrenchment of moral imperatives and societal views based on racist tropes (Campbell, 2008). For example, the Report of the Manitoba Liquor Enquiry Commission, released by the Manitoba government in 1955, claimed “Indigenous people inherently lacked the capacity to manage liquor” (McCallum and Perry, 2018: 54). Moreover, provincial liquor authorities maintained bureaucratic practices that restricted Indigenous peoples from purchasing alcohol in government stores through the 1980s. Ontario, for example, maintained an interdiction list of “chronic and troublesome alcoholics forbidden to buy or possess alcohol” from the 1930s to 1990 (Valverde, 2004: 567). Valverde (2004) wryly notes that “only a legacy of internal Canadian colonialism can explain the otherwise bizarre practice of dubbing the liquor board’s official list of alcoholics as “the Indian list” (p. 567).

This brief discussion of Canada’s colonial policies related to alcohol reveal “a mechanism designed to separate First Nations people from whites culturally and physically” (Valverde, 2004: 568). The cultural effects of this history reverberate today in stereotypes surrounding Indigenous peoples. For Vowel (2017), the stereotype is prevalent and extremely damaging for Indigenous people: “alcohol has absolutely been weaponized against Indigenous peoples in Canada, and the history of this weaponization stretches back to contact” (Vowel, 2017: 152). Counter to the cultural stereotype of the “drunken Indian,” Vowel points out that in fact, early European colonists “demonstrated excessive drinking and violence, so much so that alcohol consumption among early settlers was considered a serious problem by colonial authorities” (p. 155). Consequently, Indigenous peoples have been exposed to abuse and sexual violence—“a horrifically common part of colonial expansion”—since European contact. Vowel draws a straight line from early colonization to the present day, arguing that alcohol remains a key way that “violence is enacted and continues to be experienced” (p. 155). Efforts by colonial authorities and the Canadian settler colonial state to restrict alcohol among Indigenous peoples led to further social problems, often feeding a “booming and unhealthy underground trade” (Vowel, 2017: 156). Vowel (2017) sums up this dark and violent colonial history intertwined with alcohol:

. . .alcohol has been weaponized against Indigenous peoples. First, it was deliberately introduced into our communities in highly destructive and violent ways by settlers. After that, it was banned on the pretext that Indigenous peoples were too racially weak to have a healthy relationship with alcohol. This bloomed into a widespread belief that alcohol abuse is an inherent trait of Indigenous peoples (whether cultural or genetic, it doesn’t seem to matter), despite the fact that alcohol abuse is just as (if not more) widespread in settler populations. The use of alcohol among Indigenous peoples led to children being removed from the home, rations and annuities being withheld, and even imprisonment. These kinds of consequences remained in place in Indian Act legislation up until the 1980s and, it can be argued, are still in play, particularly when it comes to the removal of children from the home. (Vowel, 2017: 156)

This cultural backdrop of colonialism anchors the present analysis of liquor store theft in the second decade of the 21st century. Cultural tropes about Indigenous peoples and alcohol percolate beneath the thin veneer of Canadian multiculturalism and tolerance. We argue that the recent mediated liquor theft “crime wave” exposes the continuing violence of colonialism in Canada. However, rather than directly confronting this colonial legacy, local media framed the issue in different ways, foreclosing the possibility for actions or policies that might address ongoing colonial violence in Canada or take up the recommendations of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

The social construction of crime

Social constructionism views knowledge about the social and natural worlds as the outcome of a complex set of interactions between individuals, social groups, and institutions (Best, 1987, 1990, 1999; Jenkins, 1994a, 1994b; Kohm, 2020; Surette, 2007, 2015). This approach has been used to analyze the emergence of new social problems and the discovery of so-called “new crimes” (Best, 1999), including road rage (Best and Furedi, 2001), methamphetamine (Jenkins, 1994a), child abuse (Best, 1987, 1990), copy-cat crime (Surette, 2015), online exploitation of children (Kohm, 2020), and scrap metal theft (Kohm and Walby, 2020). Social constructionist analyses often focus on the lifespan of a social problem, analyzing how social knowledge about issues evolves over time through stages such as recognition, diffusion consolidation, and reification (Roberts and Indermaur, 2005: 303).

The media plays a central role in the production of social knowledge as both a claims filter and an arena within which assertions about reality are forwarded, debated, debunked, and/or eventually accepted as the dominant construction of the social issue (Doyle, 2006; Surette, 2007). At the same time, the news media itself works to construct the nature of the problem or issue through the selection of sources as well as the particular “angle” chosen for news reports; as Valverde (2006: 35) put it, “the story will inevitably be told from a particular perspective, with a certain slant.” This does not mean that news stories are always slanted in the wrong direction, but simply to acknowledge that news stories do not include all possible perspectives on issues. The way a story is told can have real social effects in terms of how the issue or problem is presented and the actions that are made intelligible as a result.

Another important consideration of social constructionism pertains to the ways groups and institutions vie for control over the definition of social problems to advance their agendas and interests (e.g. Spector and Kitsuse, 1977). For Best (1987: 101), the object of most constructionist analyses is “the social organization of claims-making” revealing both the interests of groups who assert claims and attempt to steer public policy (see also Jenkins, 1994b). The rhetoric claims-makers use to advance their views of social problems is equally important in order to understand how they persuade others of their interpretation of reality in order to direct public policy (Best, 1987).

Social constructionism has been explored further under the banner of moral panic, which is deemed to occur when a society exhibits an irrational and disproportionate reaction to the discovery or (re)emergence of a social problem that is viewed as an existential threat to societal interests and values (Cohen, 2002; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994). For Garland (2008), a fundamental yet often overlooked aspect of the moral panic premise is that the immediate object of the panic merely points to a deeper, sublimated fear that is represented by the actions or features of the event in question. In other words, “the deviant conduct in question is somehow symptomatic” and reflects “the displaced politics of group relations and status competition” (p. 11). Hall et al. (1978) used the framework to examine the emergence of a new racialized crime type in media, mugging, but connected these accounts to broader social and economic shifts in Britain, revealing how the moral panic around mugging was strategically used by British elites to deflect attention away from a systematic economic crisis and construct a consensus around the law and order state. Analyzing the emergence of social problems and their construction via the news media can therefore yield important insights about broader social values and the interests of specific groups, as well as hinting at deeper anxieties that may be normally hidden from view, but may be brought into focus when new social issues and crime fears play out in dramatic fashion in local news.

Methods

The temporally bounded nature of news coverage of liquor theft in Winnipeg lends itself to a qualitative case study of the social construction of a “crime wave” in local media. While we found reports of liquor store thefts in a few other Canadian cities during this period, the issue appeared to be largely localized and centered on Winnipeg. Therefore, we focused our attention on the local Winnipeg print and online news media. We conducted keyword searches of local news media outlet websites (CBC Manitoba, Global News Winnipeg, CTV News Winnipeg, Winnipeg Free Press, and Winnipeg Sun), using terms including “liquor store,” “liquor mart,” “liquor theft,” and “liquor store robbery” in the period spanning January 2018 to January 2021. We repeated the search in the ProQuest Canadian Newsstream Database to ensure complete coverage. Once extraneous, duplicate and irrelevant items were removed, our search yielded 147 news items from January 25, 2018 to January 18, 2021. Items included short news briefs, feature length articles, editorials, and op-ed pieces. A qualitative, thematic, and grounded approach was used to analyze and organize the data (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Corbin and Strauss, 1990). Following an initial review of a small subset of news items, several prominent concepts and themes were identified collaboratively between the authors and used as a basis to code the full sample. Our coding was guided by the literature on the social construction of social problems. Each article was assessed and coded based on the overall framing of the individual incident and whether or not it was presented as part of a wider issue or trend. We also coded specific claims made by sources as well as any linkages to other social issues such as drug use and poverty. We also noted the presence of disaster language (e.g. crisis, epidemic, disaster), a sign suggesting a possible moral panic (Cohen, 2002). As well, articles were coded for store location, source affiliation, gender, race, and age of suspects. Coding of the full sample was carried out by the authors and a graduate student research assistant, and a high rate of intercoder reliability was observed.

The discovery of a new crime problem: Brazen theft

The vast majority (92.4%) of news articles appeared between September 2018 and December of 2019. Through most of 2018, liquor store thefts were largely absent in local news coverage. However, this changed starting on August 31, 2018, with 25 articles on liquor store theft appearing in the news in a span of less than 2 months, signaling that a putative new crime type had emerged. Just more than 17% of all news items on liquor store theft in our sample appeared during this short period in the fall of 2018. This represents the earliest phase of the lifespan of the social problem, or the “recognition” stage (Roberts and Indermaur, 2005: 303). Fishman (1978: 540) explains that during the initial phase of a “crime wave,” media tend to “report crime incidents as instances of their theme-becoming-a-wave.” Indeed, news accounts during this early period emphasized the large extent of the issue, expressed in terms of the total number of incidents as well as the dollar amount of stolen alcohol. In one of the earliest news reports from this “recognition” period, Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) media spokesperson Constable Jay Murray claimed a youth who had been charged after two thefts from Winnipeg Liquor Mart stores was likely responsible for 23 additional incidents where “copious amounts of liquor” were stolen and estimated to be worth more than $11,000 (CBC Manitoba, Aug 31, 2018). Less than 2 weeks later, a report in the Winnipeg Sun (Sept 11, 2018) reported a “significant spike in theft” from liquor stores, after two men were charged in connection with 130 incidents. A WPS spokesperson characterized rates of theft in 2018 as a “significant rise” by comparison with the previous year. In the same story, the WPS spokesperson also claimed that the problem was unique to liquor stores as “We haven’t seen significant increases like this with other types of retail businesses” (Winnipeg Sun, Sept 11, 2018).

Many news reports during this “recognition” period provided few details other than the number of incidents and individuals charged, and a dollar amount attributed to the thefts. However, several items highlighted the unique features of these crimes. In various ways, news accounts ascribed a quality to these events that could be best summed up by the term “brazen.” Individuals involved in these thefts were described in ways that suggested a lack of fear and a boldness in their actions. Reports described how these typically young thieves simply walked into stores, filled their bags with alcohol, and walked out, confident that employees would not intervene because of a corporate non-intervention policy. Early in the “recognition” stage, Michelle Gawronsky, President of the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union (MGGEU) became established as a key claims-maker. She claimed that the rash of liquor store thefts was simultaneously old but also new in its nature:

It’s very, very concerning [but] it’s not anything new. It’s now come to light. . . But we’re really alarmed by the brazen nature of the recent robberies. Now people are just walking in, helping themselves and walking out . . . and our members almost feel like they’ve got a bigger target on their back because people are doing it even more. (CBC Manitoba, Sept 18, 2018)

The use of the term robbery in the above quote connotes a greater sense of danger than the more legally accurate term theft. In Canadian law, a robbery refers to theft with a weapon, an assault, or a specific threat of violence. However, the scenario described in the above quote does not appear to contain any threat or use of violence. To describe these incidents as a new form of shoplifting, for example, would not rhetorically establish the serious nature of these events, nor would it place the wellbeing of Liquor Mart employees on the public agenda, a clear interest of the MGGEU. In addition to the police and the MGGEU, the government run Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation (MLL) was another prominent claims-maker. The MLL also claimed that a new type of crime was afoot—one more dangerous and unpredictable than ever before—, but also stood strong to defend its non-intervention policy, stating that:

No price is worth anyone being seriously hurt over a bottle of spirits [. . .]. What we have been experiencing recently has been a completely different type of scenario. These criminals are brazen and dangerous when confronted. (CBC Manitoba, Sept 18, 2018)

In quantitative terms, the issue was couched as a large and growing concern with police arrest statistics as well as monetary losses presented as evidence of the concerning scope of the issue. Simultaneously, liquor store thefts were established as qualitatively different from traditional robberies or thefts—as brazen and more dangerous. For example, the MGGEU Union president suggested workers now have “a bigger target on their back” (CBC Manitoba, Sept 18, 2018). The media reported only a few claims that countered this construction of the scope of the issue, such as one report stating that “The value of thefts from government-run liquor stores in Manitoba is higher than in neighbouring Saskatchewan, but well below the overall national retail average” (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept 20, 2018).

An important strategy of claims-making is the use of linkages to other established social problems: “Linkage involves the association of the subject of the social construction effort with other previously constructed issues” (Surette, 2007: 37). The connection of an emerging crime type with a more widely accepted social problem raises the level of public concern for the new issue and increases the likelihood of that new social problem being placed on the public policy agenda. Yet, for this emerging crime type of brazen liquor store thefts, linkages were infrequent in news reports. In one early report, an anonymous MLL employee even disputed the connection between addiction and liquor store theft:

Most of the time this isn’t people coming in and stealing a bottle to feed an addiction. It’s a group of people, a lot of them teenagers, coming in and grabbing 24 bottle of Grey Goose [vodka] off the shelves and walking out. (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept 17, 2018)

Conversely, in early 2019, an article about the sentencing of an Indigenous man for thefts from two liquor stores in 2018 emphasized his addiction to alcohol, while hinting at, but never explicitly identifying, other social factors that might underlie his criminal behavior. The man was a resident of a remote Indigenous community who had been evacuated to Winnipeg because of forest fires. His lawyer argued that his actions were spurred by addiction to alcohol: “These weren’t offences for gain but because he has an illness. He has a serious untreated substance-abuse issue” (Winnipeg Free Press, Jan 8, 2019). The news report noted that the reserve community was dry (meaning no alcohol is allowed); however, when the man was relocated to Winnipeg, he found “alcohol is about on every corner” (Winnipeg Free Press, Jan 8, 2019). This particular news report was one of only a few to specifically identify an individual by their racialized status. Yet, while the court heard about the man’s disadvantaged social context, his addiction to alcohol was the only factor deemed relevant in his sentencing. The court and news reporting on this man’s situation were silent about the impact of other issues, such as the impact of colonization on this individual or his community as a whole, and the longstanding and fraught relationship between Indigenous people and alcohol in Canada (Vowel, 2017). At the time of writing, there are dozens of remote Indigenous communities in Manitoba that lack basic infrastructure for health, education, and even clean drinking water. In the summer of 2021, hundreds of residents of these communities had yet again been forced to relocated to Winnipeg while forest fires threatened their home communities (Petz, 2021). Housed in inner-city hotels and makeshift shelters, this displaced population is viewed by locals as a potential threat given their idleness and status as interlopers in the city. For some communities destroyed by fires, floods, or other natural disasters, temporary relocation to Winnipeg has become practically a permanent status. While these broader factors may have contributed to the actions of this one man, no such linkages were evident in the news coverage of the issue.

A handful of news items during this early phase drew connections to organized crime. It was reported that the new rash of thefts was different from previous crimes in that “Police believe many of the thieves are selling the stolen liquor online, indicating the problem is a more organized criminal effort than traditional shoplifting” (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept 13, 2018). This linkage was echoed by a local grocery store proprietor who claimed similar problems were plaguing his retail establishment (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept 25, 2018). However, this linkage was never fully established, and seemed to fade away quickly. In contrast, the public and media seemed primed to accept a linkage to drug addiction and this new breed of liquor store crimes. A link to methamphetamine use in particular was first clearly asserted by the MGGEU President in September of 2018.

“With the opioid addiction, with the meth that’s out there . . . violence is starting to trump up everywhere—whether liquor stores, hospitals, correction facilities—it’s just getting worse and worse” (CBC Manitoba, Sept 18, 2018)

Overall, 14 news items discussed potential linkages to drug addiction, most frequently methamphetamines or opioids. Thirteen news items discussed poverty or other forms of social marginalization as potentially linked to liquor thefts, while one news item contained claims about a link to the broader breakdown of social norms and values. A further eight articles made less clearly articulated claims about linkages including to alcoholism and unspecified “societal issues.” As a rhetorical strategy of claims-making, efforts to link established social problems with newly formed crime types are most effective where there is an existing consensus about the preexisting social problem (Kohm, 2020). Thus, claims about a breakdown of moral values or the social effects of poverty and alcoholism in Indigenous communities appeared less persuasive than claims about an existing crisis of methamphetamine use. While only a small number of news items made links to methamphetamine use, these claims were more persuasive, were not disputed by counter claims, and did not fade away as quickly as other, less well-established linkages (e.g. organized crime). Indeed, the brazen and unpredictable framing of this new crime type fit within a pre-established frame of understanding about meth addiction and crime that has become ascendant in local news coverage as a growing issue of concern that is linked to increased violence and disorder (Maier et al., 2021).

In sum, during the Fall of 2018, a spate of news items quickly inserted a new crime type into the public consciousness: brazen liquor store thefts. The crimes were framed as new, volatile, organized, and likely fueled by a growing “crisis” of meth addiction gripping the city. At the same time, police were quick to cast blame on government owned MLL for having lax security protocols that seemingly invited this new form of crime. During one news conference, police stated that the onus is on businesses to reduce thefts: “Prevention, rather than just reactive policing, will likely be a key component to alleviating this problem” (Winnipeg Sun, Sept 11, 2018). The apparent lack of intervention by store security even prompted Winnipeg’s largest newspaper to lament in an editorial that “at Winnipeg liquor stores, criminal actions seldom have consequences” (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept 15, 2018). During the next phase of the social construction of the crime wave, security provision and crime prevention became increasingly central to discourse in local media. Media accounts focused less on establishing the existence and scope of a new crime type, and moved to consider potential solutions involving situational approaches, aspects of the formal justice system, and indeed broader societal level interventions and summits.

Diffusion of a new crime type and the search for solutions

Following a surge of coverage in early fall of 2018, there were no reports of liquor store thefts in November and December 2018. However, the first half of 2019 marked a new phase in the construction of brazen liquor store thefts in Winnipeg media. During this period, news reports about liquor theft appeared regularly in local media, but because the novelty of the crime had waned (see Jewkes, 2004 on crime news values), reports were steady but overall, less frequent, only appearing when some new threshold was met for newsworthiness. For example, the first article to appear in January 2019 was about the sentencing of a 37-year-old man charged after he walked into “numerous Winnipeg Liquor Marts and brazenly left without paying for bottles of alcohol” (Winnipeg Free Press, Jan 8, 2019). The man was sentenced to 7 months in jail. In the same article, the MGGEU President advocated a new situational crime prevention strategy that would see the government run liquor provider turn the clocks back to the 1960s when alcohol was only available over the counter:

The union for Liquor Mart workers has since suggested the safest way of dealing with thieves may be to go back to the system where customers had to go to an employee at a counter, order booze, and have the product brought to them from a secure area. (Winnipeg Free Press, Jan 8, 2019)

This suggestion, and others involving situational crime prevention strategies, became a dominant theme in the middle phase of the construction of the liquor store theft problem. Nostalgia for an earlier era of retail alcohol sales proved to be a popular idea that featured regularly in media accounts throughout 2019. One reporter even searched local newspaper archives for news items from the late 1960s when Manitoba moved away from the over-the-counter model and began to introduce modern retail liquor stores. Ironically, the article noted that a Provincial Magistrate warned in 1967 that doing so might lead to a “wave of liquor shoplifting” (CBC Manitoba, Nov 02, 2019). The CBC article also quoted a local historian who commented on the historical stigmatization of alcohol and pointed out that Manitoba’s prohibition on alcohol sales lasted from 1916 to 1923, longer than the national ban from 1918 to 1920. This historical context was unusual in local media coverage of crime and hinted at deeper societal anxiety about alcohol consumption more generally. Absent from this historical account, however, was yet again any mention about the longstanding ban of alcohol sales to Indigenous peoples in Canada, enshrined in The Indian Act (Monchalin, 2016; see also Campbell, 2008). The nostalgia for a return to earlier modes of liquor sales in Winnipeg neatly elides the official racism of past government policies with present racialized patterns of policing Indigenous peoples in a province marked by deeply engrained racial inequalities in the justice system including the massive over-incarceration of Indigenous peoples in jails and prisons.

In the early months of 2019, newspaper reports focused on both the formal consequences of thefts in the criminal courts as well as new in-house security initiatives announced by MLL. One local news outlet published an in-depth feature that followed three individuals charged with liquor thefts through the court process. While the article did not explicitly refer to the racialized status of the accused, most local Winnipeg readers could easily deduce the clues that placed these offenders outside of the middle class, white majority. One 18-year-old man was “connected to Lake St. Martin but lives in Winnipeg’s North End” (CBC Manitoba, Feb 11, 2019). Lake St. Martin is an Indigenous community that was forced to evacuate to Winnipeg after massive flooding in 2011; Winnipeg’s North End is one of the poorest areas of the city. Lake St. Martin was destroyed, and many evacuees remained displaced from their homes for years after they were forced to re-locate to urban Winnipeg. This information coded the young man as an Indigenous offender, as well as an outsider to the community. The other two young men were described as being products of dysfunctional families and the child welfare system (Both were wards of Child and Family Services.). Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and extreme poverty were also attributed to these young men. Despite these contextual factors, the judge in one case was quoted at length, admonishing the accused who claimed to be influenced by bad environment:

That’s a bunch of bullshit. . . You’re not led astray by some faceless, nameless bad people. You’re just a bad kid yourself. . . Don’t think that somehow I buy all that baloney that someone else is leading you astray, or that somehow you’re just a young man who can turn it all around. I hope you do. (CBC Manitoba, Feb 11, 2019)

Reports like this from the vantage point of the criminal courts, albeit rare, afforded the greatest opportunity to consider the contextual factors behind this surge of crime. However, the racialized and colonial contexts of individuals featured in these reports was again left almost entirely unstated by the media.

In the present example, the actions of the young man from Lake St. Martin can only be fully appreciated as the outcome of a long project of colonial subjugation, neglect, and violence at the hands of the Canadian state. This Indigenous community was devastated by a man-made flood caused by infrastructure designed to send waters away from Winnipeg north into Lake Manitoba. Yet the flood was merely a continuation of a long historical process and this community, already suffering from poverty and lack of basic infrastructure, was simply the latest causality of colonial policies of displacement and assimilation. Like other Indigenous communities in Manitoba, Lake St. Martin exists beyond the view of white middle class city-dwellers who continue to reap the benefits of settler colonialism. Reframing liquor thefts in Winnipeg as the actions of “bad kids” rather than bad environment, is simply another institutionalized denial of Canada’s colonial racist underpinnings.

Given the media’s general silence about social and historical factors underlying crime, it is no surprise that the most common type of solution to liquor store thefts discussed in local news accounts was a range of in-house security provisions focused mainly on target hardening and opportunity reduction strategies. Just over half of the news items in our sample (50.1%) described these sorts of situational, in-house remedies. In contrast, only 12.3% of the articles discussed broader punishments in the formal criminal justice system, such as harsher penalties. Even fewer discussed social programs targeting root causes (2.7%) or multi-sector dialog and political action (7.5%).

Remedies described during this period focused on a handful of initiatives of the MLL. For example, in February 2019, it was reported that MLL was hiring special duty WPS constables to supplement security in stores. A Winnipeg Police Union spokesperson praised the move stating “having a police officer that is specially trained and has all the tools at their disposal is likely a very good deterrent for this type of situation” (CBC Manitoba, Feb 10, 2019). Special duty constables function as an extension of the store’s in-house security, and are paid directly by the MLL. Another initiative discussed at length in media reports was the installation of controlled entrances at stores, where security guards would only grant access to customers after capturing an image of their photo identification. Despite a few expressions of concern about how the crown corporation would use and store personal information captured in mandatory ID checks and their use of facial recognition technology (Winnipeg Free Press, July 25, 2019), media reports were generally welcoming of such initiatives. Other initiatives announced in the media at this time included bottle locks, improved electronic surveillance, and the removal of high cost items from publicly accessible store shelves. One news report announced that “In-store surveillance monitors, bottle locks, alarmed shelves, and so called ‘mantraps’ will soon be part of the average booze run in Winnipeg” (Winnipeg Free Press, April 22, 2019). By late May 2019, the local media was reporting a significant drop in the number of brazen liquor store thefts and crediting the new security measures with the positive change. According to one report

theft and robbery incidents have dropped 23 per cent since it implemented new initiatives in March to curb stealing from its liquor stores [. . .]. There has also been a 55 per cent drop in the cost to Manitoba Liquor Marts of bottle theft, and a 20 per cent increase in the number of arrests. (CBC Manitoba, May 30, 2019)

This middle period of the social construction of a new troubling crime type was characterized by a normalization of news coverage around these events, and a shift to discussions of solutions to the problem, nearly all of which were technical and situational. The continued construction of the problem as one of rational choice and opportunity over social disadvantage and institutionalized racism was seemingly affirmed by the early positive results of the new security interventions.

Consolidation and the culmination of fears

The final stage in the lifespan of the construction of brazen liquor store thefts occurred near the end of 2019 and swirled around one particularly violent and unusual crime that occurred November 20, 2019 in a Liquor Mart in the Tyndall Park area of Winnipeg. After the apparent success of a host of new security initiatives implemented by MLL, there were only two news reports of liquor store crimes between June and August 2019. However, after this period of calm, media reports started to increase again in September, reaching a peak of 49 news items in November 2019 alone, nearly all centered on a violent crime spree that began at a Liquor Mart and continued to several adjacent locations in a strip mall in a northeastern suburb of Winnipeg. This single incident embodied the sum of all fears about this crime type. It included unprovoked violence and assault of several employees as well as threats of violence directed at several bystanders in the parking lot of the store. The assailant, a 15-year-old Indigenous male, was described as in a “meth fueled frenzy” and “completely out of control.” Subsequent news reports of his criminal trial alleged that the young man had gang affiliations. A Liquor Mart employee, seriously injured and hospitalized after the event, become an outspoken voice for the MGGEU demanding political action and a province wide, multi-stakeholder summit on liquor thefts. Even the then Premier of Manitoba, Brian Pallister, weighed in with harsh words for liquor store thieves who were “contemplating robbing a liquor store,” stating that “We are going to find you” (WFP, Nov 22, 2019).

Throughout this final stage in the social construction of brazen liquor store thefts, the MLL and MGGEU were still calling for tighter in-house security, but the Tyndall Park events had raised the stakes well beyond technical, situational crime prevention, and demanded a broader political solution to address what appeared to be a symptom of society unraveling at the seams. For MGGEU president, Michelle Gawronsky, the events at Tyndall Park signaled a much larger problem that the province had to deal with: “We need to acknowledge and recognize that we are in a Manitoba crisis” (WFP, Nov 26, 2019).

However, well before the November 20 Tyndall Park incident, there were many indications that the new security measures were not working to suppress liquor store thefts. In fact, there was a surge of news stories about liquor theft beginning in late September 2019. There were 31 local news stories between September 24, 2019 and November 19, 2019, just prior to the high-profile event. Indeed, it was nearly a month prior to this inciting incident that retail and security experts were expressing alarm at the situation in Winnipeg’s liquor marts, describing it as “the darkest time in Winnipeg history for any type of security activity” (CBC Manitoba, Oct 30, 2019).

The event in question is described as follows in one local news report:

In a video obtained by CBC News, two people with their faces partly covered can be seen in the store. One pushes a security guard and shouts at a female employee before rushing at her and punching her, dropping her to the floor.

She then crawls to the safety of an office and closes the door.

The suspect, who police have since identified as a 15-year-old boy, then begins yelling and gesturing at another female employee, standing behind the counter. He walks over, punches her in the head.

She is the one knocked unconscious and later rushed to hospital in critical condition, police said. Sources have told CBC News she suffered a seizure in the attack.

The boy is then seen fighting with a man before the two, struggling with one another, move out of view.

[. . .]

The boy pushed his way into another business, demanded money from everyone inside and then punched a woman in the face police said.

[. . .]

Once he was outside of the mall, the boy confronted a woman inside a vehicle with her daughter. He threatened them and tried to carjack the vehicle but was unsuccessful, police said.

The boy then targeted two females and tried to steal their purses, threatening to hit them with a liquor bottle while they lay on the ground.

“Just to make sure you understand, they were cowering on the ground in front of this suspect,” [police spokesperson] Carver said.

At that point, several people in the area intervened and held the suspect for police.

The boy, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, has been charged with 19 offences, including uttering threats to cause death. The other two males have not yet been located. (CBC Manitoba, Nov 21, 2019)

The dramatic events of that day played out in the local media again and again in the coming days and weeks. One of the victims of the attack posted an emotional video statement on social media, chastising the MLL for not doing more to protect employees from attacks. But whereas blame in the “recognition” phase rested solely on the MLL, various actors were now pointing to the failings and inaction of government. As one provincial politician said in response to the Tyndall Park events, “It seems the government has waited until somebody got hurt before they decided to implement new security measures” (CBC, Nov 27, 2019). Not surprisingly, the Tyndall Park robbery soon become fodder for political posturing at the Manitoba Provincial Legislature. Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister used the event to talk tough about crime and to state his conservative philosophy about criminal responsibility.

“I come from a poor background, but I didn’t choose to engage in criminal activity. Stop making the false assertion that someone who is poor has an excuse for stealing from people: they don’t. Stop making the false assertion that people who have come from poor backgrounds – like many, many Manitobans who would never hurt anyone else have – somehow that some of those people have an excuse to beat up somebody else. [It’s] just a phony excuse, and we’ve got to start treating it as that.” (WFP, Nov 22, 2019).

Setting aside Pallister’s bluster, his focus on economic class, rather than race is telling and continues the silence surrounding Canada’s colonial history intertwined with liquor regulation. Even before the Tyndall Part incident, the MGGEU was demanding a province-wide, multi-stakeholder summit to discuss liquor store theft. This violent incident and the support of one of the victims of the attack gave this movement new impetus. MGGEU President Michelle Gawronsky declared “This crisis is bigger than Liquor Marts. This is a Manitoba crisis that calls for urgent provincial leadership. . .We’re at the point now where we need to do something” (CBC News, November 21, 2019). She also called for an “urgent summit of law enforcement, addictions and social services, public and private retailers, unions, and the provincial government. It’s going to take all of us working together to get this crisis under control” (CTV Manitoba, November 20, 2019). Notably absent from this list of stakeholders were any Indigenous organizations who may have a particular stake in an issue disproportionately impacting their communities. Rather than engaging with Indigenous leaders and organizations and other community-based groups to guide the development of responses to the issue, the Provincial government quickly announced the formation of a new “process” to deal with liquor thefts called Operation Safe Streets, comprised of law enforcement officials and MLL representatives, as well as the designation of a Crown Attorney who would exclusively prosecute these crimes (Winnipeg Free Press, Nov 29, 2019). Additionally, the Retail Council of Canada convened a roundtable of security and industry experts to discuss retail theft in Manitoba in January 2020 (Winnipeg Sun, Dec 30, 2019). In short, the discussion of solutions to the problem had moved well past situational, in-house opportunity reduction measures, and entered a new phase of exploring larger, multi-sectoral solutions to a “crisis” that was deemed to be province wide, if not of national importance. It was reported that Premier Pallister planned to raise this issue with Canada’s Prime Minster Justin Trudeau (Winnipeg Sun, Nov 21, 2019).

Absences and endings

Following the huge surge of media reports and political jockeying at the end of 2019, coverage of liquor store crime all but stopped in the early part of 2020, even prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first 3 months of 2020 there were only five reports in local media about liquor store crimes, and only three more reports in the remaining 9 months of 2020. Just as soon as the crisis seemed to be reaching new heights of social and political importance, it was clearly over. As Cohen (2002) remarked about moral panics, they often begin and end without warning, and while some live on in infamy, others fade into historical obscurity. But as Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994: 292) clarified, moral panics, regardless of their time span, leave “traces” that change the fabric and dynamics of social life, or “that prepare us for later panics.” The experience of entering a liquor store in Winnipeg today, compared to 2 years ago, is notably different. Customers are required to present their ID in a “controlled entrance” before being admitted to the store; minors are no longer permitted to accompany an adult into the store. Changes to law and policy often bring moral panics to an end as they signal that “something has been done” to deal with the immediate issue and purported threat (Rohloff and Wright, 2010: 407). The actual ending of this “crime wave” and moral panic around liquor store theft, as we show below, is more complex, however, and can only be understood within the context of Canada’s legacy and existing structures of the regulation and deprivation of Indigenous people.

Crime waves, such as the purportedly new crime of brazen liquor store thefts in Winnipeg, are not facts of the natural world, they are social constructions, as noted at the onset of this paper. And if we accept that socially constructed social problems are deliberate creations of social actors and institutions, why are some sustained and why do others fade away? If social problem construction reflects the values and interests of claims-makers, why do some problems or crime waves become reified and institutionalized over time while others suddenly disappear? In the present case, we argue that the panic over brazen liquor store crime revealed a troubling breach between the thin veneer of inclusive, multicultural Canadian society, and the dark recesses of its settler colonial foundations. At a time when the then highest elected official in Manitoba was making inflammatory public statements claiming that colonization was undertaken with only the best of intentions (Gowriluk, 2021) and when Indigenous activists were demanding reparations and concrete steps toward decolonization in the face of ongoing conditions of material and cultural inequality in Canadian society, it may well be that liquor thefts truly did reflect a crisis of provincial or national importance. The long legacy of material deprivation, subjugation, and criminalization of Indigenous people may well have been at the heart of much public anxiety about brazen liquor store thefts in Winnipeg. Social media discussions about the issue exposed and reflected a sense of anxiety about waning white privilege and outrage that Indigenous people would feel entitled to steal liquor from a multibillion-dollar crown corporation. The few cases of liquor theft prosecuted and covered by local media revealed the shameful legacy of failed policies of genocide, displacement, and assimilation as well as the ongoing social-psychological effects of colonialism on the young Indigenous people who fill the criminal court dockets, prisons, and jails of Manitoba. If indeed this putative new crime was a crisis, it may not have been a crisis that suited white, middle class, suburban Winnipeggers, and therefore it was quickly forgotten, part of a longstanding pattern of historical denial about Canada’s settler colonial atrocities (e.g. Cohen, 2001).

The actual ending of the story of the social construction of “brazen” liquor store theft in Winnipeg is anything but a quiet, uneventful fading of interest or attention. It is a violent and tragic yet sadly not unfamiliar end that is revealing of the shameful histories and ongoing structures of colonialism and the unequal treatment of Indigenous people. On April 8, 2020, a WPS officer shot Eishia Hudson, a 16-year-old Indigenous girl, following an alleged group theft at a liquor store in the southeast Winnipeg middle class suburb of Sage Creek. Police were called to the store, and started chasing the vehicle Hudson was driving, which crashed at a nearby intersection shortly after. Police shot her twice after she tried to reverse the car. Hudson died shortly after in hospital. Her death led to public outrage and protest against police brutality and violence targeted at Indigenous and racialized people (CBC, June 20, 2020; see also e.g. Southern Chiefs Organization Inc [SCO], 2021). Indigenous leaders, activists, and allies organized and participated in rallies, public protests, and vigils in Winnipeg and other cities across Canada to address the problem of systemic racism in Canadian policing, and the use of excessive and illegitimate force against Indigenous people in particular. Though ruled a homicide by Manitoba’s Chief Medical Examiner, the Independent Investigations Unit (IIU), —the body in charge of investigating all serious incidents involving police in Manitoba—, ultimately determined the officer who killed Hudson would not face any charges, resulting in further outrage, hurt, and disappointment at the decision and its implications for Indigenous people’s justice, safety, and wellbeing (see e.g. Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, 2021). As Grand Chief Alan Dumas writes:

“What began as a tragedy, is now an even dimmer situation [. . .]. First Nations continue to find no safety, security or confidence in the Winnipeg Police Service, Manitoba Justice, and the so-called Independent Investigations Unit.”

In 2021, a full inquest into Hudson’s death was called by the Chief Medical Examiner, the hearings for which are just starting in February 2022. The inquest into Hudson’s death is evidence of Indigenous people and Hudson’s family advocating for and persisting to have a comprehensive and independent inquest into her killing.

Hudson’s death is a sadly familiar story for Indigenous communities who have suffered violence and harm at the hands of police and other colonial institutions, especially in Prairie Canada (see also Marcoux, 2020). Hudson’s death needs to be understood within the particular context of the social construction of liquor store theft and in particular the heightened and intense concern around the so-called “brazen” behavior of young Indigenous offenders. Media, and politics, however, were silent about how heightened attention to the issue for the past 18 months had created a climate of intense concern in which police ultimately acted to use lethal force against an Indigenous teenage girl accused of shoplifting liquor. While mainstream media did report on Hudson’s death, including on the protests and vigils in honor of Hudson (e.g. Frew, 2020), media coverage remained silent on the issue of how liquor store theft concerns, as a social issue imbued with racial and anti-Indigenous stereotypes, might have created the pretext to the tragic events of April 8, 2020. Hudson’s death is a sad and deeply troubling reality that marks the end of this relatively short-lived period of liquor store theft—a story that starts with concern over monetary losses and stolen bottles of liquor and ends with the death of an Indigenous young woman. Recognizing Hudson’s killing as the ending of the story of liquor store theft in Winnipeg is a sad reality of ongoing systemic racism against Indigenous people, as it is an uncomfortable truth that marks the end of this short-lived episode of a seemingly mundane crime.