With shoplifting 'legal,' organized crime has a field day in San Francisco ...and businesses such as drug stores and groceries are fleeing that city

With investors and residents fleeing, organized crime has found itself some big business opportunities in leftwing San Francisco.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

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.”

And more to the point, drug stores, groceries, and small retailers are closing rather than let these organized crime theft rings strip them bare.

According to today's New York Times:

At a board of supervisors hearing last week, representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable.

And yes, the crime was organized:

Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime” and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous.
“We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Dugan said.

I don't like them using the term legal even if it is in quotes.

It actually says:

Shoplifting. The proposition added section 459.5 to create a new misdemeanor offense called “shoplifting,” punishable by up to 6 months in county jail. Shoplifting is defined as “entering a commercial establishment with intent to commit larceny while that establishment is open during regular business hours” where the value of the property does not exceed $950. Any other entry into a commercial establishment with intent to commit larceny is burglary. Any act of shoplifting as defined above must be charged as shoplifting. No person charged with shoplifting may also be charged with burglary or theft of the same property.

Shoplifting in California https://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/Prop47FAQs.pdf

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