Chef Aaron London made the sudden, shocking announcement Thursday that he’s shutting down his popular Michelin-star restaurant AL’s Place after seven years. London has won plenty of recognition for the restaurant, including a notable “best new restaurant in the country” nod from Bon Appetit in the year of its opening. And rather than the closure decision being brought on by a rent hike or lack of customers — London says the restaurant is fine — the chef told the San Francisco Chronicle he wants to spend more time with his partner and 1-year-old daughter.

“If I was fine just burning myself to a crisp, that’s one thing. But now there are other people in my life that need me to not be burnt to a crisp, that need me to be around,” London told the news outlet. “Ultimately I’ve made the decision to recraft my professional life around family rather than family life around the professional.” The restaurant’s last day will be August 28.

Scott Weiner tells you where to go (in San Francisco)

Axios approached State Senator Scott Weiner to discuss where he would go in the city for his “best day ever” and he shouts out a number of his favorite places to eat and drink. Among them are Castro Tarts for pancakes, Dinosaurs for the roasted pork sandwich, and bars like Powerhouse and Oasis. Read more here.

The St. Ignatius v Sunset Mercantile drama continues

Look, it’s a lot to recap, but if you’ve been following along with the Sunset farmer’s market argument discussions with St. Ignatius school, the latest development is that the school is now saying it’s not them who went back on their word over the new agreement, it’s Sunset Mercantile. The most recent finger pointing is cataloged over at SFGATE.

Sacramento Bakery closes after a year in business

Sacramento’s Mud Pie Stand Bakery announced it will be permanently closing in an Instagram post to customers Thursday. The business owners called the closure a “necessary decision” but acknowledged the ending does feel devastating. The owners said rising food costs, supply chain issues, and little foot traffic have been tough, and they’re completely getting out of the food industry for health, family, and financial reasons. The shop opened in June 2021 and the last day is September 17, or until product runs out.

Of course sad to see you go

In more sad Sacramento news, the Sacramento Bee covers the cancellation of the offal-centric festival, Have An Offal Day, which was initially set to happen this upcoming Sunday. The festival features chef-driven plates made from various organ meats, but ticket sales were much slower than expected, so organizers instead decided to cancel with no plans to bring the event back in the future.

Go do things this weekend

Fogus or not, there are a number of things happening this weekend in the Bay Area as the summer begins winding its way down to Labor Day. Two things we’ve been chatting about at Eater SF are this Sunday’s Lumpia Lands at District Six (as covered by KQED), plus the Tea & Others x Telescope Coffee collab happening Saturday and Sunday. At the Tea & Others shop in Lower Haight, order a seasonal dessert set of pluot-rose trifle paired with oolong tea (with a pluot compote) for $15.

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April 29, 2022

After more than 60 years in business, a barber in San Francisco’s Sunset District will be closing up shop for the final time on Saturday.

Ralph Catalano has made a living at the corner of 18th Avenue and Irving Street since 1961, one haircut at a time.

“When I first started here, if I was making $100 a week it was a big deal,” he said. “I was doing 12 hours a day. I would start at 7:00 in the morning and work until 7:00 at night, 5 days a week. So, I did a lot of haircuts.”

CBS Local Digital Media personalizes the global reach of CBS-owned and operated television and radio stations with a local perspective.

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Laguna Honda Hospital is a facility with a rich history of scandal and mismanagement. For it to now be facing an existential crisis over a series of comparatively minor violations feels a bit like Al Capone going to prison over tax evasion.

But Capone did indeed go to the slammer — you can buy the commemorative t-shirt at Pier 39. And, as mind-boggling as it may be, the 700-odd vulnerable patients here may be out on their ears before year’s end if the hospital fails to meet the latest terms imposed by the federal government. If Laguna Honda comes up short in a top-to-bottom recertification process, it could lose Medicare and Medi-Cal funding in four to six months’ time.

This would blow a roughly $20 million a month hole in the city’s budget and open up the real possibility of patients being transferred hundreds if not thousands of miles away — or, tragically, to the curb and immediate homelessness. A high percentage of Laguna Honda’s patients exhibit behaviors that would’ve led to them being screened out of almost any other nursing facility, and it’s unrealistic to expect beds to be found for them.

“They would probably have to soak up a bed at General Hospital until they ended up in jail, or a bed comes up in a locked facility for people who are criminally insane,” sums up Dr. Teresa Palmer, a geriatrician who worked at Laguna Honda from 1989 to 2004.

This assessment is as harsh as it sounds. The fate of both this city and its most vulnerable populations are not in a solid place right now.

Laguna Honda, seen in 1926. Photo courtesy of OpenSFHistory.org

You may have missed the existential crisis unfolding at this 156-year-old institution. It’s easy to. Laguna Honda shelters the people society is most eager to overlook: The frail elderly and — increasingly — mentally ill and/or drug-addicted younger patients. This is a combustible and counterintuitive mix, and plays no small role in the fix Laguna Honda now finds itself in.

“There are a huge number of men here between ages 50 and 70,” says Palmer. At most nursing homes, she continues, you’d be more likely to find “a majority of ladies in their 80s.”

Between 1999 and 2021, the percentage of women at Laguna Honda dropped from 56 percent to 37 percent.

The problems at Laguna Honda, like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, have come gradually then suddenly. As would bankruptcy, so to speak, if federal funding is yanked.

Laguna Honda was founded in 1866 as an almshouse for geriatric Gold Rush forty-niners. We could start this story then. Or we could start it in 1999, when voters approved a $299 million bond to “save” the hospital. Or in 2006, when a licensing survey noted that the younger, more ambulatory patients flowing into Laguna Honda were toting drugs, alcohol, loaded firearms, and abusing the elders — staff even futilely erected signs reading “no hitting.”

Or we could start in 2019, when Laguna Honda staff took demeaning, nude photos of incapacitated patients and doped them up with non-prescribed medication (the first of several lawsuits settled last year for $800,000).

Nursing Director: “Our team have exhausted most options in helping eliminate or minimize the contraband and illicit substances into the unit.” … (Resident 2) voluntarily handed the burnt aluminum foil, plastic pen body case burned on one end and a cigarette lighter that he’s holding. … Resident even stated “they know I’m doing this.”

California Department of Public Health Survey of Laguna Honda Hospital, March 28, 2022

But, instead, we’ll start in July 2021, when two of the younger, more ambulatory patients here purportedly wandered off campus, wandered back on with methamphetamine and fentanyl, and suffered non-fatal overdoses.

The hospital reported the overdoses to regulators — to not do so would be unthinkable following the 2019 scandals that led to $780,000 in fines and a slew of lawsuits. And this triggered a concatenation of regulatory procedures that led to where we are today and put the hospital at the brink.

Laguna Honda, on multiple subsequent occasions, did not meet inspectors’ expectations on its “termination revisit survey.” In April, inspectors found 27 different violations. Some of these were not insignificant — incomplete patient assessments or staff wearing improper or inadequate PPE around patients. Other assessments seemed to be more of the ticky-tack variety: medicated shampoo without a prescription, medicated creams and lotions in patient rooms, “three open plastic bags were hanging (unattended) in a dirty hamper.”

These are the infractions that triggered the feds to last month broach the possibility of yanking funding. Laguna Honda announced this month that it now must go through the rigmarole of working to demonstrate that it could relocate all of its residents as a condition to continue receiving government funding. It will receive that funding while it works to recertify and avoid relocating anyone. It’s a Kafkaesque turn of events. Laguna Honda has so much to answer for going back through the years — but it’s the medicated shampoo et al. that was noted on this most recent report.

Adding to the surreal nature of these proceedings, the federal agency currently calling the shots, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is responsible for overseeing all the truly horrific, for-profit, deathtrap nursing homes you saw on 60 minutes. There is no universe in which Laguna Honda compares to these charnel houses, and the overseers’ Inspector Javert-like focus on this public hospital is hard to explain. As is any “solution” that might result in the dispersal of its residents.

Laguna Honda Hospital. Photo by Christopher Michel.

“I don’t know why they are being so harsh,” says Dr. Derek Kerr, a 21-year physician at Laguna Honda who has since turned into a whistleblower and critic of the facility. “Laguna Honda is always judged harshly. If you have one violation in a 700-bed unit that is as bad as one violation in a 15-bed nursing home. They don’t take into account the denominator.”

And while 27 violations sounds like a lot, says Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus at UC San Francisco, Laguna Honda is seven times the size of an average nursing home facility. And, she continues, the average number of violations recorded on such an inspection is eight — meaning Laguna Honda had about half what you’d expect, per capita.

“California has had extremely poor enforcement of nursing homes, and has some of the worst nursing homes in the country. And that has gone on for years,” says Harrington. “Laguna Honda had some deficiencies, and I am not excusing the deficiencies. But the [overseers’] behavior in this case is inexplicable. They have let other facilities go for years … awful, for-profit facilities where really terrible things are going on.”

Multiple emails to CMS officials have not yet been returned.

Harrington has studied nursing homes and regulation for 40 years. And she is at a loss to explain what is going on here: “I can’t think of any case like this before.”

Laguna Honda in 1875. Photo courtesy of OpenSFHistory.org

There is nothing like a threat from outside to cement allegiances inside. So, at noon on Wednesday, Mayor London Breed and the SEIU 1021 — who maintain a Ralph Wolf-and-Sam Sheepdog relationship — will both appear at a rally to save this hospital.

Government officials across San Francisco described CMS as rigid and intractable. Former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is now the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs CMS. But, city officials say, he may be trying extra hard not to be seen as playing favorites.

CMS, city officials say, intransigently insists that its procedures are proscribed and must be done by the book, come what may. And you know the mayor’s office has been bending their ears, as has the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi — and, if need be, every California politician there is will join the queue.

What a predicament: At last San Francisco has run into a situation in which it can’t just have his political mommy and daddy make some calls and get it out of his longstanding ineptitude. The process, at least thus far, seems to be politically impenetrable. How unfortunate, then, that this appears to be a process devoid of common sense or empathy in which, ostensibly for the patients’ own safety, hundreds of them may be jettisoned to parts unknown or pushed to the street.

That’s just plain stupid.

Maybe that will come up at the rally tomorrow. It’s doubtful, however, the city officials will examine their own role in this fine mess. But we can. So let’s go back to that bond measure in 1999.

“Laguna Honda had some deficiencies, and I am not excusing the deficiencies. But the [overseers’] behavior in this case is inexplicable. They have let other facilities go for years … awful, for-profit facilities where really terrible things are going on.”

Charlene Harrington, UCSF professor emeritus

Voters, you may recall, agreed to go into $299 million in bonded debt to build a new, 1,200-bed facility. They were promised that this would house the city’s frail elders.

But that didn’t happen. The price tag ballooned by hundreds of millions of dollars and the capacity of the hospital was reduced by hundreds of beds. And, top it off, the city began transferring younger, mentally ill and/or substance addicted patients into the hospital.

So yes, we paid more, got less, and the hospital is not exclusively serving the elderly population that voters were enticed to pony up and help.

As noted earlier, this situation is longstanding. By 2004, Palmer left Laguna Honda, in large part because she felt the influx of “out-of-control” mentally ill and/or substance abuse addicts was unsafe. “They are deforming the hospital to accommodate an antisocial minority,” says Kerr, who was forced out in 2010.

There is no scenario in which crippling and defunding Laguna Honda and ejecting its patients is in anybody’s best interests — and, Palmer still describes it as “a better nursing home than most” and a place where she would’ve put her own mother.

The city must do all it can to fend off this doomsday scenario, and a consulting firm with an expertise in re-certification has already been hired.

But the city must also address the untenable situation of commingling the frail elderly and ambulatory mentally ill and/or addicts. In 1999, you’ll recall, 56 percent of Laguna Honda’s residents were female — and the average age was 76. By 2021, only 37 percent of the residents were women. And while patients’ average age wasn’t disclosed in ’21, it had dropped to 64 by 2013.

A state Department of Public Health survey from March, 2022 obtained by Kerr and shared with Mission Local notes staff observing residents overtly smoking drugs off aluminum foil and seeing little they could do to prevent this.

“Our team have exhausted most options in helping eliminate or minimize the contraband and illicit substances,” a nursing director is quoted as saying. The patient in question surrendered his burnt aluminum foil, plastic pen and lighter. “They know I’m doing this,” he said.

This city has chosen to serve populations nobody else would. But it has chosen to do so in a manner that has proven to be unworkable and led to the current crisis.

San Francisco owes it to itself and Laguna Honda’s residents to solve this crisis. But also to ponder its own role in it. And make things right. Gradually then suddenly.

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In closing arguments in Sonoma County court Tuesday, prosecutors began their last attempt to convince the jury that two North Bay men worked together to violently kidnap and rape a San Francisco woman waiting for a rideshare in 2018.

Defense attorneys, though, countered that the woman’s drunken state, inconsistent statements and lapses in memory were enough to call her reliability into question — and cast doubt on the accusations made against their clients.

Fredi Lopez-Flores, 37, of Novato, and Christian Quintero, 27, of Sonoma, sat side-by-side as they listened on Tuesday to Deputy District Attorney Matthew Hubley’s closing arguments. The pair have been using headphones to listen as interpreters convey court testimony to them in Spanish.

They are each charged with six crimes in connection with the early morning assault on April 14, 2018, including kidnapping, robbery and multiple counts related to rape. They could each be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors have built their case around DNA evidence, the police investigation and the emotional testimony of Jane Doe, as the accuser has been referred to in court. All of that together, prosecutors believe, proves that the men abducted, beat and raped the woman, who had been waiting for transportation to get back to her Richmond District home.

On Tuesday, they showed the jury a final piece of evidence — an assemblage of surveillance footage reconstructing the path of Lopez-Flores’ Dodge Magnum as it traveled from San Francisco to Sonoma.

“Even though you have an important decision ahead of you, this case will never truly be your case. This case belongs to Jane Doe,” Hubley told jurors. “It’s hard to watch Jane Doe’s testimony and not feel she at least blames herself in part in some way. You as members of the jury have an incredible opportunity to help Jane Doe understand, ‘This is not your fault.’ ”

Nicholas Sandler, Quintero’s attorney, focused on the inconsistencies in Jane Doe’s memory of the incident.

He reminded the jury that she first told police the Uber driver had raped her and then, three times, she failed to identify the two defendants in photo lineups.

Gabriel Quinnan, Lopez-Flores’ lawyer also focused on contradictions in the woman’s statements to police and in her court testimony about having “blacked out” that night.

He reiterated his client’s tearful testimony that he did not intervene in Quintero’s violence because the man had threatened him with a gun

Quinnan also rehashed the results of DNA analysis on sperm samples left on the woman’s body and found on the interior of her clothes, which showed that they were a much greater match to Quintero than Lopez-Flores.

“We do not contest the broad-brush strokes,” Quinnan said. “It was clear she was raped. It was clear she was beaten. It was clear she was left on the streets of Sonoma.”

But, the specifics of the incident are not clear, and that is enough to acquit Lopez-Flores, Quinnan argued.

“Fredi is no hero in this story,” he said. “But it is absolutely the law that we are not required by law to be a hero.”

Also on Tuesday, Judge Christopher Honigsberg instructed jury members on how they are to reach their verdict.

In order to find the men guilty on any of the counts, the jury must believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the men intentionally committed these crimes.

Prosecutors will address the jury Wednesday morning before it convenes for deliberation.

You can reach Staff Writer Emily Wilder at 707-521-5337 or emily.wilder@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @vv1lder.

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After 33 years on San Francisco’s Valencia Street, late-night New York-style pizza restaurant Arinell Pizza is in danger of closing.

“We’ll be closing soon if we don’t get an increase in business,” said owner Ron Demirdjian. “The pandemic, of course, destroyed the business.”

Upon realizing there was no true New York-style pizza available in the Bay Area when he first moved here in the ’70s, Demirdjian opened his first Arinell’s location in Berkeley in 1975, followed by the San Francisco location in 1989. He explained that while the Berkeley location is doing alright, a combination of factors put the Valencia Street location in dire straits.

For one, Arinell is running low on Paycheck Protection Program funds.

“The only reason we’re even in business is because of the Paycheck Protection Program, otherwise I would have been long gone,” Demirdjian said. “So without PPP, there is no Arinell. Now, we’re running low on the PPP.”

The restaurant has also experienced staffing issues, with three cooks moving out of California in the past month. Arinell has also yet to see a significant return from the Valencia Street bar-hopping crowd that used to sustain his business. His restaurant used to stay open until 2 am on Fridays and Saturdays to fuel late-night customers, but now Arinell closes at 11 pm on the weekends.

“Arinell at Valencia did an incredible business when the bars were hopping,” Demirdjian said. “We basically fed drunks Friday and Saturday … now, people are not packing up bars. There may be a bit of business, but for us, it’s brutal.”

Arinell Pizza, located at 509 Valencia St. in San Francisco, was a popular late-night bite for weekend crowds. Now, it’s future is uncertain.

Adam S. via Yelp

He also theorized that because Valencia Street has become more of a sit-down dining destination in the past few years, people are no longer choosing to snag a slice to walk around with between bars. He estimated that business is down to 30 or 40% of what it was pre-pandemic.

“The slice mentality has basically disappeared,” he said. “The business model has been destroyed, essentially.”

In addition, Demirdjian explained, that when he bought the Valencia Street location in 1989, he received a hardship waiver due to a bathroom located in a closet that would have been too costly to bring up to code. He says that would not be acceptable today if he tried to sell the place, so it’s essentially impossible business to sell.

“I have to keep one of these businesses alive, and the one in Berkeley is in much better shape,” he said. “…I can’t just sell [the Valencia Street location], which I’d love to, but that’s not possible. So it’s either I keep the business going or I shut it down.”

Arinell is known not only for its hot New York slices, but also for employing its fair share of local musicians over the years. Demirdjian said he likes hiring “rockers” because they’re artists, which means “they dig putting out some good food.”

For those who love the Valencia Street eatery, time is ticking. Demirdjian did not have an exact timeline for a possible closure, but it’s definitely getting down to the wire.

“If we get some more business, we’ve got a chance,” Demirdjian said. “But the way it is now, it’s not sustainable.”

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Alioto’s, the quintessential Fisherman’s Wharf seafood spot with a giant number 8 on its facade commemorating the fish stall that Sicilian immigrant Nunzio Alioto Sr. once ran nearby, is giving up the ghost after temporarily closing two years ago.

We all kind of knew that not all of tourist-centric Fisherman’s Wharf was likely to make it through a two-year pandemic. But now we learn that a big casualty is Alioto’s, the almost-100-year-old, stalwart restaurant at 8 Fisherman’s Wharf. The restaurant has been dark since March 2020.

The SF Business Times broke the news, after the restaurant’s landlord, the Port of San Francisco, revealed they had struck a deal to let Alioto’s out of its lease, which still had over 14 years on it. That was a 66-year lease that was signed back in 1970, by the way.

“The loss of Alioto’s — a renowned Fisherman’s Wharf icon — is heartbreaking for the Port and the generations of San Franciscans and tourists that have enjoyed the Alioto’s dining experience,” said Randy Quezada, the Port’s director of communications, in a statement. “Their contribution to the port and the city will not soon be forgotten.”

Alioto’s, sometimes called Alioto’s No. 8 because of the sign, life began as a fish stood in 1925, later moving to Stall #8 at the wharf and slowly growing into a full-fledged restaurant by 1938. Nunzio Alioto Sr., the proprietor, died in 1933, but the business was taken on by his children, including a daughter, Rose, who was instrumental in the restaurant’s expansion. A son-in-law of the elder Nunzio Alioto, Nunzio A. Alioto, married another daughter, Antoinette, and worked at Alioto’s Restaurant nearly until his death at age 88 in 2001. He was a “distant relation” of former SF Supervisor and mayoral candidate Angela Alioto, whose father Joseph was mayor of San Francisco in the 1960s.

As the Business Times notes, assuming that the lease termination agreement gets approved, this will avoid the messier fate of another longtime Wharf restaurant, Castagnola’s. The port south Castagnola’s in September after it ceased paying rent and did not seek any rent-relief program help either. Back in 2020, the port agreed to forgive rent for around 200 of its tenants, and was only requiring that restaurants pay a percentage of their monthly sales, as per existing agreements.

Thankfully, other Wharf stalwarts Scoma’s and The Franciscan are still hanging on and are back open.

Photo via Facebook

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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) – The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Friday announced the closure of the commercial Dungeness crab fishery for a large portion of the state’s coast due to recent entanglements involving humpback whales.

The commercial Dungeness crab fishery between the Mendocino-Sonoma County line to the US-Mexico border is set to close at noon on April 8, CDFW officials said.

READ MORE: No March Miracle: Bay Area, California Remains In Drought As End Of Rainy Season Arrives

The closure is being implemented due to two recent incidents in which humpback whales became entangled with ropes from commercial crab traps — one happening in San Mateo County and another in the Monterey Bay.

Commercial Dungeness crab season traditionally starts in mid-November, however, in recent years the seasons have been continually delayed due to either domoic acid or concerns for whales. This year, the commercial season began on Dec. 29

“The past few seasons have been difficult for fishing families, communities and businesses, but it is imperative that we strike the right balance between protecting humpback whales and providing fishing opportunity,” CDFW director Charlton Bonham said in a statement.

The non-profit organization Center for Biological Diversity applauded the state’s move and called for a transition to commercial traps that don’t use ropes.

READ MORE: Plans Revealed For New Town Center, 2,400 Homes On Former Vallco Mall Site In Cupertino

“We’re glad to see this closure protect whales from crab gear off California’s coast, but recent entanglements show that California has to do more to protect these animals,” said Catherine Kilduff, attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity’s Oceans program.

“Humpback whales migrate hundreds of miles to Monterey Bay, and state officials should protect every single one while they’re feeding there. It’s time to get serious about moving to ropeless gear that keeps whales safe off the California coast,” she said.

CDWF officials are asking fishermen and boaters to keep an eye out for entangled whales and report them immediately to 1-877-SOS-WHALE or to contact the US Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16.

More information can be found at https://wildlife.ca.gov.

MORE NEWS: Contra Costa DA: Antioch, Pittsburg Police Officers Under Investigation For ‘Crimes Of Moral Turpitude’

© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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CVS Health will begin closing a number of stores across the country next month, including six in San Francisco, as part of a shift to focus on digital services.

The company announced in November that it would close around 900 US locations from spring 2022, but some of the closings will begin in January, a CVS spokesman confirmed.

“We made the tough business decision to close six CVS pharmacy locations in San Francisco in January 2022,” the company said in a statement. “All prescriptions are broadcast to nearby CVS pharmacy locations, many of which are half a mile or less from the closing location, to ensure that patients continue to have uninterrupted access to the services. All employees are offered comparable roles at these other CVS locations. “

The six CVS Pharmacy San Francisco locations that will close in January are as follows, along with the close date and location where the prescriptions will be transferred:

• 581 Market St. Closing January 7th, moving to 601 Mission St.
• 2025 Van Ness Ave. closes January 8th and moves to 2675 Geary Blvd.
• 731 Market St. Closing January 15, relocating to 789 Mission St.
• 351 California St. Closing January 15, relocating to 601 Mission St.
• 500 Pine St. Closing January 21, relocating to 601 Mission St.
• 400 Sutter St. Closes January 22nd, relocates to 1059 Hyde St.

After the closure, CVS will have 15 locations in the city. It also offers prescription home delivery through CVS.com and the CVS Pharmacy app, the company said.

“Maintaining access to pharmacy services in underserved communities is an important factor that we consider when making decisions about shop closings,” the company statement said. “Other factors include local market dynamics, population shifts, the store density of a community, and ensuring that there are other geographic access points to meet the needs of the community.”

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IIn mid-October, Walgreens announced the impending closure of five of its San Francisco stores. “Retail theft” has risen to an unsustainable level despite increased investments in security, the chain said. It was time to give up.

In the months leading up to the announcement, viral videos of outrageous shoplifting attempts at Walgreens locations around town – including one that appeared to show a man riding out of a store on his bike with a garbage bag filled with stolen items – had it taking center stage followed a heated national debate about fears of a pandemic-induced “crime wave”.

To critics of the San Francisco leadership, the closings seemed to confirm a narrative long held by people outside of the city and, increasingly, by those inside: that San Francisco is a lawless place where officials operate to the detriment of local businesses Turn a blind eye to crime. Political leaders, including Mayor London Breed, pointed at Walgreens. “When a place is not generating revenue and when it’s saturated – Walgreens has many Walgreens locations across the city – I think other factors come into play,” Breed told reporters.

The Walgreens Excelsior District site three weeks before its closure. Photo: Boris Zharkov / The Guardian

But neighborhood officials and lawyers for people trapped in the legal system paint a more complex picture of Walgreen’s role in San Francisco and the city’s struggles with shoplifting in recent years.

They described Walgreens stores as important places where San Franciscans can get basic groceries at a reasonable price and pick up last minute medicines and other essentials. “We have seniors, working families and long-term customers and I think it will be extremely disruptive, especially for older people who are more pattern-based,” Ahsha Safai said of the closings.

Safai represents the Excelsior District, just outside the historic Latino Mission District, on the San Francisco Board of Directors. The neighborhood’s Walgreens, which closed on November 11, were on a busy section of Mission Street, surrounded by clothing stores, banks, and local restaurants. On a Tuesday afternoon in the weeks leading up to the closure, the shop was bustling with seniors picking up items and residents waiting to be called to the pharmacy counter.

Many shoppers get off the nearby bus routes to get to the Walgreens, making it a convenient stop in a busy area where parking can be abysmal, Safai said. Pedestrian traffic from nearby stores feeds the Walgreens and vice versa, making the drugstore an important part of the neighborhood’s retail ecosystem.

Safai said he worked with police and community organizations to fight retail crime in his neighborhood. “There must be consequences for the most monstrous. People need to know that they can’t go into the store with a garbage bag, ”he said.

“But we’re not going to lock ourselves out of this problem,” he warned. “We have to steer people on the right path.”

“Walgreens were indispensable”

Gina Mullins’ father has worked for Walgreens for more than 40 years, first in the Mission District and then in the East Bay. She remembers going to company picnics as a child and, because of her family’s long history, chose the company to shop at a Walgreens instead of CVS. “Walgreens is a big, big part of my life. It sounds cheesy, but it fed my family. “

Mullins now lives in East Bay seeing her local Walgreens showing telltale signs of theft concerns. More and more items were locked behind plexiglass, she said, and some shelves were consistently empty. While she’s frustrated with the wait it takes to get a store clerk to unlock the products, she doesn’t judge those stolen from the store out of necessity. “I understand hard times, don’t judge anyone. Do what you have to do to support your family. “

Before moving over the Bay Bridge, Mullins worked in public housing near the Walgreens location on Cesar Chavez Street in the Mission District. There she got the flu vaccinations for her four children and bought basic food for the kitchen at lower prices than her local grocery chain. The site is slated to close on November 17th.

“This Walgreens was essential to at least my family,” said Mullins of the Mission District location. “It’s closer than Safeway, has more items than the corner shop, and has a pharmacy attached. It was a staple, so seeing them shut down in neighborhoods that really need them is heartbreaking. “

Mullens works for the Pretrial Diversion Project in San Francisco, a nonprofit that seeks to get people accused of shoplifting and other petty crimes out of jail. The program helps participants keep track of court appearances and orders, and connects them to employment, addiction and other services that can deter them from bringing a new charge. Mullins oversees the employees and works with the groups that provide services to the nonprofit’s customers.

David Mauroff fears high-profile incidents are masking the decline in property crimes reported in 2020. Photo: Boris Zharkov / The Guardian

The organization’s CEO David Mauroff said there was no denying that people were stealing from drug stores, clothing stores, and cars. Mauroff, like many San Franciscans, has a connection with the Walgreens. “I don’t know how many times we ran here to get cold medicine because our child couldn’t sleep,” he said of the chain’s location in Excelsior.

Mauroff saw people steal shoplifting in his local shop. However, he fears high-profile incidents will mask the city’s 2020 drop in property crime. And while he didn’t see an increase in customers for the organization, he has found that the theft hotspots in San Francisco have changed over time as the pandemic progressed.

“There are fewer tourists and fewer people who drive to work – that’s where break-ins used to take place. But because of Covid, people had to find another destination, and unfortunately that turned into Walgreens and other retail stores.

“We do not allow ourselves to be driven by hysteria”

Crime data is complex and often incomplete, and a full picture of what happened in the city during the pandemic still emerges. San Francisco has long had higher levels of property crime than other California cities, but recent data suggests that while some categories of crime have increased while others have decreased.

Theft, the category that shoplifting falls under, appears to have declined from 2019 to 2020, which is lowering the overall rate of real estate crime, according to the San Francisco Police Department’s crime dashboard. Crimes like rape and robbery also fell in 2020, according to an analysis of the latest FBI data from the San Francisco Chronicle. Murders, car thefts, and break-ins increased according to the same FBI data.

The decline in shoplifting appears to continue in 2021. In 2020, according to the San Francisco District Attorney, 12,266 incidents and about 380 arrests were reported for the crime. By the end of October 2021, around 200 people had been arrested for theft or theft that year and there were 9,221 reports. By the end of September last year there had already been 9,558 reports.

Regardless of any discrepancies between perception, data, and lived experience, people breaking into cars near tourist spots like Fisherman’s Wharf and viral videos like the one documenting a man riding his bike out of a Walgreens forced the officers to join one Reaction.

At the end of September 2021, the mayor, together with the San Francisco Police Chief, presented the organized investigation and deterrence strategy for retail theft. The initiative will expand the city’s retail crime rate from two to five officials. The new hires will coordinate with other law enforcement agencies, including the California Highway Police and off-duty officers hired by companies under the city’s 10B program as private security. The city will also triple the number of unarmed community ambassadors from eight to 25.

Mauroff, the CEO of the Pre-Trial Program, said that while the police have a role to play in deterring and combating shoplifting, they are working to find solutions that are not just police-led, but rather the rehabilitative needs of individuals and racial differences taken into account in the criminal justice system.

He noted that during the pandemic lockdown, therapeutic services such as anger management courses, which had previously been found to be helpful, were only available remotely, which is what they are for most of the diversion program’s customers, especially those in the unsafe Living conditions, making it largely inaccessible.

“We mustn’t let ourselves be driven by hysteria so that we can find solutions,” said Mauroff.

The Excelsior District location was closed on November 11th. Photo: Boris Zharkov / The Guardian

Charles Ryan, a case manager with the Pretrial Diversion Project, argued that big companies like Walgreens also had a role to play.

Ryan lives in a community in San Francisco that has already gone through a Walgreens shutdown held responsible for “rampant” theft. In the summer of 2019, Walgreens closed its store in Bayview Hunters Point, a historically black working-class neighborhood near San Francisco Bay.

Ryan said he saw shoplifting in the store but complained that he saw no management efforts to make the drugstore a respected part of the community – for example, educating their staff on implicit biases and keeping the location clean. Black customers are being followed by employees in the store who believed they had come to steal, he said.

“They didn’t have a manager to get the line on how to deal with people who came in,” Ryan said. “Nobody was there to do the high pressure wash and keep it clean, so people said, ‘We just go in and take what we want. They don’t treat us right and have never done anything for the neighborhood. ‘

“Closing the other locations is bad because they are closing some in neighborhoods where people would have to walk around town to get what they need,” he continued. “They’re only closing it because some people stole.”

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Walgreens Boots Alliance recently announced that it will close five stores in San Francisco because the company says it was “organized retail theft.” Theft in the Bay Area has risen to five times the national average for Walgreens stores in recent months, the company said, a statistic that has made national headlines and sparked discussions about shoplifting in the city.

San Francisco city officials, journalists and criminal law experts have denied this claim, raising questions about why Walgreens decided to close its stores. San Francisco Mayor London Breed dismissed Walgreens’ claim, saying the real reason could be that the stores are not generating enough revenue and the city is “saturated” with Walgreens outlets.

Walgreens said increased investments in security measures to combat shoplifting have proven costly. “To combat this retail theft, we’ve increased our investment in security measures in stores across town to 46 times our chain average to create a safer environment. This is primarily due to our participation in the city’s 10B program to recruit off-duty SFPD officials for a presence in our stores, ”said Phil Caruso, a Walgreens spokesman, in an email to Quartz. (10-B is a program that enables businesses and events to recruit off-duty San Francisco Police officers for overtime pay.)

In the statement, Caruso points out that the main concern is “organized retail crime,” where professional thieves steal goods for resale on digital marketplaces. In July, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill to reinstate a task force dedicated to combating organized retail theft rings.

City administration is skeptical

Some of the skepticism from San Francisco officials and the public came from Walgreens’ 2019 SEC filing, which reveals a plan to close at least 200 stores in the U.S. as part of a cost-cutting initiative. The drugstore chain lost $ 1.7 billion during the Covid-19 lockdowns and is likely to slowly recover.

“So is Walgreens closing stores for theft or because of a pre-existing business plan to reduce costs and increase profits by consolidating stores and moving customers to online purchases?” San Francisco manager Dean Preston tweeted.

Additionally, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Walgreens stores that are closing had only seven reported shoplifting incidents this year, and the five stores that are slated to close had an average of fewer than two reported shoplifting incidents per month. Many items in Walgreens – including toothpaste, shampoo, and allergy medication – are kept locked up so an employee has to unlock the cabinet for the customer. The Chronicle also reported that despite media reports, the number of reported shoplifting incidents is falling.

What is Prop 47?

Some observers attribute the Walgreens closure to Proposition 47, a 2014 referendum that aimed to reduce some felony to misdemeanor. The move was welcomed by advocates of the criminal justice system as a way to curb incarceration for lower-level crimes or “crimes of survival” often committed by the unhodged or living in poverty. However, a common misconception is that Proposition 47 prevents the arrest and prosecution of those who commit retail theft. The referendum classified the theft of property up to $ 950 as a misdemeanor only, not a crime. Retailers tried unsuccessfully to reset Proposition 47 in 2020.

Criminal law researchers argue that a better approach to curbing retail theft is to diagnose the real problems. “Prop 47 is believed to be responsible for these thefts,” says Charis Kubrin, professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California at Irvine. “So many other things are happening at the same time along with Prop 47. We have a pandemic, we have a recession and increasing poverty, inequality and unemployment. We have mobility, people traveling in and out of San Francisco, which affects traffic, and people shopping at Walgreens. “

There are also criminal justice advocates that this Walgreens-sponsored narrative will spark efforts to recall progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and hamper criminal justice reform in the city. “What you have are people who support policies or develop strategies that are not based on what the data shows, but based on fear of crime, moral panic and the politicization of that policy,” said Kubrin.

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