Posted on 05/16/2021 8:14:23 AM PDT by karpov
For years, John Susoeff walked from his home two blocks to the Walgreens at Bush and Larkin streets — to pick up prescriptions for himself and for less mobile neighbors, to get a new phone card, and to snag senior discounts the first Tuesday of the month.
That changed in March when the Walgreens, ravaged by shoplifting, closed. Susoeff, 77, who sometimes uses a cane, now goes six blocks for medication and other necessities.
“It’s terrible,” he said. On his last visit before the store closed, even beef jerky was behind lock and key. A CVS nearby shuttered in 2019, with similar reports of rampant shoplifting.
“I don’t blame them for closing,” Susoeff said.
Last year, burglaries increased in most San Francisco neighborhoods. Shoplifting decreased under pandemic lockdown and dropped slightly the year before, but incidents are often underreported and have become more violent and brazen, police said.
Retailers attributed a majority of losses to professional thieves instead of opportunistic shoplifters who may be driven by poverty, with one CVS leader calling San Francisco a hub of organized retail crime. Losses have shuttered drugstores providing vital services, even more critical during the pandemic as some stores give out vaccines.
“This has been out of control,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who held a hearing Thursday with retailers, police, the district attorney and probation departments. “People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly. We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sfchronicle.com ...
Vote Democrat!
San Frandetroit
No sympathy for these cretins who time after time vote for Rat bastards and then complain about the results.
Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, “We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.”
How about arresting and locking the thieves up? Duh.
Big city DA’s are not prosecuting career criminals.
Team biden is importing members of the cartels and MS-13 and placing them all over the country.
Libs want to defund the police and disarm honest citizens.
This will not end well.
Didn’t they make theft under $900 not a crime in SF?
This is not just happening in San Francisco, either. A Walgreens at what should be a prime location off I-17 on Glendale Ave. in Phoenix, Az closed almost two years ago because of shoplifters coming in from the Greyhound bus station across the street. I visited before the close and asked why they were closing, and that was the answer I was given.
> We have to come up with solutions. <
This would work: Eliminate all self-service at those stores. Instead, you walk up to a window. You tell the clerk what you want. The clerk gets your order. You pay the clerk and walk away. Shoplifting is no longer even possible.
On second thought, that will not work. Someone will sue because you’re doing that in Neighborhood A, but not in Neighborhood B.
Anyone who still supports the Democrat Party has a criminal heart.
Yep, and it’s a damned shame. The situation is made worse by leftist DAs and prosecutors (often elected with Soros money) who’ve announced that there’ll be no prosecution or punishment many “petty crimes,” and “affordable bail” for serious crimes. When Kim “Crimesha” Foxx in Cook County (i.e., Chicago) raised the shoplifting “free pass” limit to something like $1,000, the internet exploded with videos of blacks brazenly stealing armloads of merchandise from local stores. And there are countless cases of rapists, robbers and murderers being freed on “affordable bail” or home monitoring who immediately go out and commit the same crimes (or worse) again.
“It’s terrible,” he said. On his last visit before the store closed, even beef jerky was behind lock and key.
Lightweight and high value. Thieves probably resell it to an Amazon seller.
“This has been out of control,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who held a hearing Thursday with retailers, police, the district attorney and probation departments. “People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly. We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.”
Every time I visit Phoenix it reminds me more and more of SoCal. It’s basically LA east these days.
This would work: Eliminate all self-service at those stores. Instead, you walk up to a window. You tell the clerk what you want. The clerk gets your order. You pay the clerk and walk away. Shoplifting is no longer even possible.
—
Funny but that was the way it was before supermarkets.
You gave a clerk a list they gather the items, you pay, then you get your stuff.
I suspect this is one more reason why businesses are promoting on-line shopping.
Organized crime? In San Francisco? I agree with that. I just who is organizing this crime?
San Francisco city officials. Their crime friendly laws are directly responsible for these daily occurrences of shoplifting.
During the riots in NYC last year, I saw videos of bicycle gangs loading up SUVS that would pull up and drive off.
The SUVs had all dark windows and no license plates.
Pretty well organized, the bicyclists would act as lookout, I suppose then give some signal, they’d smash & grab & load, then takeoff for a few minutes, then regroup down the block aways.
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