Good Morning.
Shortly after moving to San Francisco in 2016, I went to a Walgreens in North Beach to buy an electric toothbrush.
When I paid for it, a man came into the store, grabbed a handful of beef jerky, and went out. I looked over at a clerk who shrugged. Then I went to Safeway next door to do some shopping and saw a man stuffing three bottles of wine into a backpack and casually walking to the exit. He packed some snacks on the way out. I asked the Safeway clerk about the thefts.
“I’m new to San Francisco,” I said. “Is it optional to pay for things here?”
Five years later, the San Francisco shoplifting epidemic has only gotten worse.
At a board hearing last week, Walgreens officials said the thefts at its San Francisco stores were four times the chain’s national average and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of the thefts made the store unsustainable .
Brendan Dugan, director of retail crime at CVS Health, called San Francisco “one of the epicentres of organized retail crime” and said staff had been instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because the encounters had become too dangerous.
“We have had regular incidents in San Francisco where our security officers have been attacked,” said Dugan.
Retail executives and police stressed the role of organized crime in the thefts. And they told the overseers that Proposition 47, the 2014 election that reclassified nonviolent theft as a crime if the stolen property is worth less than $ 950, encouraged thieves.
“The only trend we’re seeing is more violence and escalation – and much bolder,” said Commander Raj Vaswani, investigative director for the San Francisco Police Department. “We see a lot of repeat offenders.”
San Francisco suffered in many ways during the pandemic. The city has had twice as many fatal drug overdoses as coronavirus deaths. Legions of homeless people lined the sidewalks during the lockdowns. But last week’s hearing focused on something far more prosaic: One of America’s richest cities is struggling with sticky fingers.
The hearing failed to answer a crucial question: Why San Francisco? If part of the problem is due to a change in California law, why aren’t other cities in the state seeing similar increases in shoplifting?
On Thursday I called Ahsha Safaí, the board member who organized the hearing.
We talked about the thefts we had witnessed in town and the street thief markets where steaks, bicycles and other stolen goods are fenced off. Safaí said he recently stopped to inspect one of these markets at 24th and Mission.
“Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding, ”Safaí said. “I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.”
In San Francisco he spoke of what he called a laissez-faire attitude.
“It has become part of the landscape,” he said of thefts. “People say, ‘Oh, well, that just happens.'”
Thieves “obviously choose locations based on the consequences,” Safaí said. “If there are no consequences for your actions, then invite the behavior. Over and over. “
We still have to know that today
Compiled by Jonathan Wolfe
