After too long working in retail, which I left over 20 years ago, this is true. The repercussions of an injured employee or “customer” (insert thief here), are much larger than the loss of merchandise, which is insured. Now, assume you stop and prosecute. The employee will be required to attend the trial, which will be postponed at least once, after the employee has shown up as required. Then when the trial actually occurs, it includes many cases, which requires the employee to wait in attendance, maybe all day. Finally the time arrives, the employee provides one or two sentences about the incident, and the case is bound over to the Grand Jury. The company is paying him for all of this time. Now, if someone is injured, well now you’ve got lawsuits over injury, possibly death, how you have violated this piece of scum’s rights, etc.
It stinks, but this is common policy, even though my opinion is that the employee was a hero! My money is on him getting his job back.