SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – San Francisco supervisor Rafael Mandelman said another major San Francisco retailer has made the decision to close earlier due to excessive theft, especially at night.

The Castro Safeway on Market and Church Street was open 24 hours, but that is no longer the case. Signs at the entrance indicate that the new opening times will be from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. from October 24th.

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Many shoppers were surprised to find that the Safeway they use outside of business hours is declining.

“I feel like it’s definitely an inconvenience, not everyone makes it to the grocery store between these hours so it’s a little frustrating, especially for me personally. I like to go shopping later, ”says Chris Rankins, who lives in the Castro.

Mandelman’s precinct includes the Market Street Safeway. He said the company reached out to him to discuss issues with the theft.

“I think, like many retailers, they are seeing increasing property crime and theft from their stores,” Mandelman said. “I think the last 6 months have been kind of off the charts after what they say, as far as the bad development goes. It’s sad, angry and frustrating. “

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Mandelman said he is now working to organize a meeting with Safeway, the San Francisco police and the district attorney.

“It’s an equity problem,” he said. “There are many low-income people, seniors, people with disabilities who rely on these Safeway and other Safeways across town.”

Johnny Denham, who works at night, has to change his routine for now.

“It is better for me to come here after work, shop, and go home,” he said. “Now it’s like I either have to go shopping before work or on my days off, which I don’t really enjoy doing.”

Safeway did not immediately respond to KPIX 5’s request for a comment.

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Mandelman added that Safeway told him that the police rarely arrest someone for a property crime if they make it to the scene.

The post Safeway In Castro Cuts Hours Due To ‘Off The Charts’ Shoplifting; ‘It’s Unhappy, Upsetting And Irritating’ – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Customers walk past products locked in safety cabinets at a Walgreens store scheduled to close in San Francisco, California on October 13, 2021. Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

• Walgreens said it was closing some stores in San Francisco due to an increase in retail thefts.

• Police data obtained from the Chronicle did not show high rates of shoplifting reports in the shops that were closing.

• An expert said people leaving town during the pandemic could harm Walgreens’ business.

Walgreens announced Tuesday that it would close five of its San Francisco locations for “organized retail crime” Saturday.

While the report says the chain experienced retail theft, other factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and store oversaturation were cited as potential factors in the decision to close stores.

Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said retail theft at its San Francisco locations had increased five times the chain’s average in recent months, SFGate reported.

However, the data from the San Francisco Police Department received from the Chronicle contradicts claims made by Walgreens, as one of the stores slated to close since 2018 has only reported 23 shoplifting incidents per month since 2018.

“Organized retail crime remains a challenge for retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to it,” Caruso told SFGate. “To combat this problem, we have increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city over this time to 46 times our chain average to create a safe environment.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed dismissed Walgreens’ reasons for closing the shops.

“They say (shoplifting is) the main reason, but I also think when a place is not generating revenue and when it’s saturated – SF has a lot of Walgreens locations across the city – so I think there are other factors coming into play “she told reporters last week.

The story goes on

Dean Preston, supervisor for San Francisco’s 5th District, which will be affected by a store closure, said the pharmacy chain was “out of the community” and had “long planned to close,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“Weird that some would be so offended that I would suggest that a huge corporate chain shut down retail locations for the very reason they told investors they were going to shut down, rather than the reasons outlined in their external PR are specified, ”said Preston in a tweet on Friday.

In a 2019 filing by the Security and Exchange Commission, Walgreens announced it would launch a Transformational Cost Management Program that would close 200 stores in the US to save $ 1.5 billion annually through 2022 in spending.

A May study published by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom found that 15% of San Francisco residents left and did not return during the pandemic, which the Chronicle says could explain Walgreens’ dwindling customer base in the city.

San Francisco has relatively high rates of property crime, which according to the Chronicle, criminal justice researcher Magnus Lofstrom may be due in part to the Bay Area’s enormous income equality.

Walgreens did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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SAN FRANCISCO – A barrage of masked and hooded shoplifters sprinted downtown getaway cars with armfuls of designer handbags from a Neiman Marcus downtown last week – a scene captured on video that raised fears that thieves’ rings were raiding retail stores.

The incident, which is still under investigation, was just the latest to give a sense of the lawlessness that is rampant in San Francisco stores, where people were caught on record openly wiping products with seemingly no effect.

But city guides are pushing that image back after a mid-year public safety report was released Monday. Police data shows total thefts decreased 9 percent in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2020 when the city was on lockdown and many businesses closed at the start of the pandemic.

San Francisco Police Chief William Scott and the Mayor of London Breed admitted that the total number of violent and property crimes has decreased, although some crimes have increased, including serious assaults, murders and incidents involving guns.

“The statistics contradict the story,” Scott said at a press conference, admitting that some crimes may go unreported.

“Unfortunately, we have received a lot of negative attention when it comes to crime,” added Breed. “What doesn’t attract attention is that if you come to San Francisco and commit a crime, you will be arrested by this department.”

Retail thefts have attracted the most attention on social media due to the series of videos. But San Francisco isn’t the only city grappling with the problem: in Seattle, police last month said they had more than 50 arrests related to coordinated thefts at nine major retailers and grocery stores, as well as in Albuquerque, New Mexico The top of the state, prosecutors, police and wholesalers announced this month a partnership to fight “organized retail crime”.

In recent years, some retail stores have placed not only high-end items but also everyday items like toothpaste and shampoo behind security locks. But chains say even more drastic measures are needed.

Target said earlier this month that six San Francisco locations had closed four hours early after a “significant and alarming increase in theft and security incidents in these stores,” NBC Bay Area reported.

Both CVS and Walgreens say shoplifting in San Francisco outperforms thefts in their stores across the country. In October, California’s attorney general announced the disbanding of a large theft ring in the Bay Area that allegedly stole $ 8 million worth of goods from Target, CVS and Walgreens and then sold them in other countries and washed the proceeds back to the United States became states.

In an interview with NBC News last week, Scott suggested that California Proposition 47, passed by voters in 2014 lowering the penalties for certain non-violent crimes, such as shoplifting and check forgery, is being exploited by those trying to commit theft. The initiative set a $ 950 shoplifting threshold, which is considered a misdemeanor that does not induce law enforcement to arrest, rather than a crime that could result in harsh penalties such as jail time.

“Some people say, ‘Hey, you know, I don’t want to go over $ 950 so let me steal $ 949 worth of property,'” said Scott.

“If it is a crime, our officials can take action,” he added. “But if it’s an offense, that arrest has to be the arrest of a private individual. And that makes a difference because you have to be ready to do it.”

Store workers are often uncomfortable meddling, and some retailers have an increased security presence but with limited results.

“Think of these people in these stores who are witnessing these crimes. They are also affected,” said Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association, a trade group.

connected

She said retailers are doing their best but are concerned that some city guides have been gentler on arrests.

City prosecutor Chesa Boudin, who took office in January 2020 on a progressive platform pledging to fight incarceration rates and support diversion programs, was the focus of a recall following complaints about the city’s rising crime rate.

Rachel Marshall, a prosecutor’s spokeswoman, said in an email Monday that it was serious about destroying “shameless” networks of organized thieves and working with the California Highway Patrol’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force to stop the rings.

Bill, through state law and endorsed by the California Retailers Association, would renew and fund the Organized Retail Crime Task Force through the end of 2025 and focus on “ringleaders and conspirators of these criminal networks, not the low-level petty thief ” focus. One company that was dissolved was valued at $ 50 million.

“The balance here is to provide a level of public safety to ensure consumers don’t get caught in the middle of an ongoing theft by providing law enforcement with adequate resources to resolve organized retail crime before planning a crime series Rep. Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a Democrat representing parts of Los Angeles, said.

Criminal justice experts say if California officials agree that moving away from mass incarceration and toward decriminalizing low-level crime is imperative, then it is important to track down the bosses and co-conspirators rather than focus on the shoplifters themselves who may paid youth and homeless, officials said.

Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine who studied the effects of Proposition 47, noted that the initiative had no impact on most crimes in the course of the year after it was passed and while it was still The whole country had a modest increase in thefts and car thefts, it was too small to draw any significant conclusions.

A similar study in the Journal of Criminal Justice published this month found that Proposition 47 and another related reform bill have successfully helped reduce the number of state prisons and that the increase in crime that the initiatives may be involved in the Los Angeles area were “generally small”.

“Evidence seems to be mounting that Prop 47 is not the culprit, or at least not the main culprit,” said Kubrin, adding that criminal justice reforms have become “a scapegoat” to accuse high crime perceptions.

California, she added, has seen its property and violent crime drop to historic lows in some cases in recent years when the state reformed. However, more research is needed, Kubrin said, to see the impact something like Proposition 47 has on San Francisco and other local communities.

“Nobody cares about big, comprehensive statistics,” she said. “They care what happens in their backyard.”

On Monday, Scott said officials in San Francisco were being deployed to even more crime-ridden neighborhoods. However, he also admitted that it was difficult to recruit new police officers for the city department, which is still short of hundreds of officers in a climate where policing continues to be scrutinized.

“Robbery is one of the categories that police officers play a role in on the street,” he told reporters.

Ambrosio Rodriguez, a criminal defense attorney and former assistant district attorney in Los Angeles, said cities like San Francisco, battling over policing amid appeals amid rising crime rates, are facing the need to see the public at large in relation to smaller, “victimless” individuals is willing to tolerate “Crime over the general quality of life is an issue.

“I think no one is going to have a lot of empathy for Neiman Marcus, but that doesn’t matter,” said Rodriguez. “There are shops there too. So when people stop going to Neiman Marcus and closing the stores in the area, it will have a greater impact on other businesses and the perception of whether a place is safe to visit. “

“The San Franciscans have to choose what to endure,” he added.

Erik Ortiz reported from New York and Jacob Ward from San Francisco.

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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

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Photo on Visualhunt.com

A 22-year-old San Francisco man pleaded not guilty on multiple charges Tuesday after allegedly breaking into a car body shop in Belmont and stealing thousands of dollars in equipment on Sunday and stealing it from a grocery store in town a day later. San Mateo County prosecutors said.

Armani Blanco is charged with burglary, vandalism and shoplifting after his arrest. He is charged with breaking into the Extreme Auto Body Shop on 1300 Old County Road at around 10:20 p.m. Sunday and stealing two computers and two sensor tools totaling about $ 9,600, prosecutors said.

The shop owner discovered the break-in the next day and called the police. The store’s surveillance footage showed Blanco breaking in and stealing the items, prosecutors said.

On Monday, Blanco allegedly stole $ 423 worth of groceries from a Safeway store in Belmont, but was caught by police within minutes.

He remains in custody and is expected to return for a preliminary court hearing on April 27.

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