Shoplifting in San Francisco Out Of Control

Can someone explain why these stores are remaining open at all?

The human race needs to reclaim San Francisco!

There’s a Datalounger who fully supports the shoplifting.

This isn't confined to San Francisco. Organized crime gangs are targeting businesses in cities across the country, recruiting shoplifters to steal for them. This is partly due to the law of unintended consequences, as exemplified by the pressure by the far left to stop arresting and charging people with petty crimes. In cities that agreed to cut back on that, the shoplifting is booming.

I was at a suburban Target waiting to check out when the lady in line ahead of me exclaimed, "That guy just went out the door without paying!" The cashier nodded. The customer: "Well, aren't you going to do something about it?" Cashier: "We're not allowed to anymore." She then told that the day before a couple of teenagers came into the store, went back to Electronics, picked up a big-screen tv each, and walked right out.

My next stop was at a neighborhood CVS. To my surprise, about a third of the shelves in the store had locked glass doors. You had to ask a clerk to unlock the cases just to get bars of soap and deodorant and other basic goods. The store didn't used to be like that, but the theft rate has skyrocketed.

People were allowed to loot all last summer and cities like NYC decided to not prosecute. These kind of far left actions are encouraging criminals. Why wouldn’t it!

That is what you get R4 for living in a dung hole.

I just noticed last week that the soap and shampoo aisle at my local CVS is now under lock and key. And I don’t live in a dangerous neighborhood! I live in one of the nicer ZIP codes in Brooklyn, but we do have some low-income housing, which expanded along the River last year.

The same riff raff is out along the River now, setting off illegal fireworks, and they’ll keep at it until about 4am.

R5=Caitlin Jenner

Just another day in the disintegration of America.

People were allowed to loot all last summer and cities like NYC decided to not prosecute. These kind of far left actions are encouraging criminals. Why wouldn’t it!

—Anonymous

That's right! Antifa invented shoplifting last summer! Shoplifting never existed until the Loony Left encouraged stealing by organizing protests against police brutality and white supremacy.

It's just a cycle isn't it? Gays move to slums and catalyze gentrification. Then wealthy straight kids use their daddy's money to move in, followed by the wealthy wanna-be-hip older straights. All of which are attracted by the tastefulness of the neighborhood and its businesses. Then city officials see the neighborhood as a lucrative asset and further expedite it into an ultra pricy district. Gays are pushed out and their cafe's and bars are replaced by Starbucks and CVS pharmacies. City officials appease corporate interests, and corporate values a la "wokeness" and it devolves into the situation in SF.

[quote] The same riff raff is out along the River now, setting off illegal fireworks, and they’ll keep at it until about 4am.

Replying to myself here: they were still setting fireworks off at 4:15am. I couldn’t get my dog to go out to pee at all last night. I stayed up as late as I could, hoping the mongoloids on the River would have the sense to wrap it up at some point.

[quote] Just another day in the disintegration of America.

No, most of America doesn’t allow criminals to take over. It’s the big cities (e.g, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, San Francisco) that are disintegrating from their political leadership.

Target closing stores in early due to crime in San Francisco

They're now going after Neiman Marcus. San Francisco better do something because all decent stores will either raise their prices too high or close altogether.

R15 How much higher can Needless Markup get?

Neiman Marcus already filed for bankruptcy protection. I bet they close all San Francisco stores.

OP trolling from his trailer in Mound La.

yes, that video was shocking...

they should put dye packs in bags, remove at cashier when purchasing...

[quote] Can someone explain why these stores are remaining open at all?

Profits.

As I rolled my cart full of free electronics past the checkout aisles at Target, a few of the employees had the nerve to give me side eye! I called corporate and lodged a complaint.

If people were give a stable, good paying wage across the board, this wouldn’t be happening. $7.25 here in Louisiana doesn't cover rent.

Louisiana doesn’t have this many people looting its stores and getting away with it.

You know what? When I worked minimum wage jobs, I ate pasta, eggs, and lentils. I didn’t supplement my income by stealing.

R24 did you have any children to support? Or have any substantial medical bills? Or tax bills that you couldn’t afford?

R25, aren't there food stamps for that?

Minimum wage in San Francisco is $16.32 an hour.

R27 lol yes as of last week.

R26 no - kids need more than food to survive.

No, r25. But I grew up poor. My mother baked bread every Saturday. She sewed our clothes. We had a small city garden in the yard for tomatoes. We didn’t steal.

Good for you R30 but not everyone’s mother is at home all the time cooking and sewing. The garden sounds like a great facility - which a lot of other people wouldn’t have.

R29, be honest, most of the people stealing are addicts / sociopaths and not hard-done by parents trying to do the best they can. A parent in jail isn't worth much.

I went to Walgreens to pick up 4 prescriptions and the pharmacist had the audacity to expect me to pay for them! I grabbed that bag and hightailed it out of there.

Is "shoplifting/police" in San Francisco the new "feces everywhere" right wing meme?

Who wrote the article in OP? It seems like it's cut and pasted from Target's press release with some of the text saying "we closed early" etc.

OP is the SFO/LA /CA IS THE LIBERAL HELL MOUTH troll. At least four threads a week. 80% of the posts are Trumptard replying to himself.

No r31, she had a full time job. But you do what you have to, legally, in order to make ends meet. Even in our darkest days, we didn’t resort to theft. Evidently, you have never been poor. Had you been, you would understand why this is an excuse.

R37 out of interest was this in a time when the cost of housing relative to wages was much lower than it is today? In a way that enabled families like yours not to resort to theft to survive?

Blacks have a criminality problem, which the Left refuses to acknowledge and instead makes excuses for.

Poor people are well taken care of in NYC. They live in subsidized housing where they pay only 1/3 of the very low rent. They get great medical care via Medicaid, which is accepted at all the big hospitals. Zero copays as well.

In fact NYC is giving away prepared meals to anyone who shows up at the dozens of nutrition centers around the city. Anyone. Not just students. And all the Episcopal churches serve lunches and dinners on various days, and this is high quality food as well.

[quote] This isn't confined to San Francisco. Organized crime gangs are targeting businesses in cities across the country, recruiting shoplifters to steal for them.

Riiiiiiiiight.

I, too grew up poor and when I was on my own and still poor, I never once stole anything. I ate a lot of Ramen noodles 35 cents a package at the time. I ate soups and eggs and pasta. I also gained a lot of weight eating that much processed food which is why it cracks me up when people ask why poor people are fat. You really don't have a lot of choices when you're poor.

And when I was catching shoplifters for a living, the majority of the people shoplifting were white, older women in their 50's to 60's. We would sometimes have criminal gangs like this come in and hit us with grab and runs but it was maybe once per year. We did have a Jamaican gang of women who would layer clothing in the fitting rooms and walk out. Those were always hard to catch because those Jamaican women are fearless. This was back in the early 90's so I'm not surprised this stuff is still going on. I once chased a guy who grabbed a half of a rounder of jeans and ran out to the waiting get away car. His feet were dangling out of the car and I was holding his legs while a woman was trying to drive. Finally had to let go but he dropped most of the merchandise he took.

All of the far Left idiots on here making excuses for criminality. Typical.

These idiots aren’t stealing bread.

When you can eat purses and Tide pods, then I'll give these crimes a pass.

R45 you can’t pay your electricity bills with fruit and vegetables. Cant you comprehend that stealing those items is for resale to get access to some cash?

To win the war on crime, you have to hit back, hard. The only thing thugs will respond to is force. You have to make them live to regret it.

I comprehend stealing for resale to get cash. Do you really think the proceeds are going to rent and legitimate bills? If so, I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

Yeah, I don't think these guys are stealing to make ends meet.

I’m sure some of them are. You’re just showing your mistrust of people experiencing poverty and how you think they’re necessarily bad people, it’s capitalist propaganda prejudice. Have fun with it.

[Quote]Cant you comprehend that stealing those items is for resale to get access to some cash?

FFS. 160 grocery carts were stolen to get cash to pay the electricity? Entire palates of Tide are known to disappear from stores loading docks. This isn't a new pandemic feed your family phenomenon.

I hope if the criminal defenders on this thread ever start their own business, they'll greet these shoplifters and thieves with open arms.

Welcome to Biden's America.

R51 le sigh yes but this thread is about shoplifting. It’s literally in the title. Shoplifting is an in-store small time type of action whereas the things you’re describing don’t really qualify as that. Look up the definition. Stealing 160 trolleys at once is not shoplifting,

I wonder if this lady's predicament had to do with strained household finances or maaaybe meth? Or both?

Remember on Good Times when Wilona had to sit in a changing room and watch for women stealing clothes and that woman from Two & A Half Men was her manager?

R53 oh, fuck off, this is a city-level issue, nothing to do with Biden.

R50 like it or not, we live in a capitalist country. It was a choice made a long time ago, not by me. If you don't like it, work to change it.

The cops have been saying this since the riots last year: It's not poor people. It's not looters. This is organized crime activity. It's gangs that are recruiting people to steal from stores. The gangs have warehouses full of merchandise they're reselling online.

Here in the Twin Cities it became glaringly obvious when the cops shared metro maps of the looting with the media. The targets were all on the main drags, or near freeway exits. Few or none of the neighborhood stores that weren't quickly and easily gotten to via car were hit. This was true even out in the suburbs, miles away from the protests. The police said it was organized crime gangs that seized the opportunities to work under the cover of the protests to hit their (planned) targets.

If the cops aren't blaming poverty and rioters, this isn't a left-vs-right argument, this is what the people who work crimes recognized as happening.

I won't take a car into the City and park it. I now ride public transportation (BART-which is having its own problems) into SF and try and use the over-bloated MUNI system. I leave the city before 8 PM as there are areas that are a combat zone.

R54 - if you google tide theft phenomenon, you will discover that the majority of thefts occur inside the store and in portable amounts that don't require a truck. Do you really believe that the majority of these shoplifters resell Tide to cover basic living expenses as some posters imply?

These people are probably stealing so they can boost, or resell the stolen items on the street, for less than the retail price. This is not a new practice.

Some people do it to get by and others boost as a hustle to support their habits. The latter is more common.

R61 jesus he said “entire palettes of tide pods” that’s what I was responding to my god the commentary is rly low quality these days.

[quote]jesus he said “entire palettes of tide pods” that’s what I was responding to my god

Jesus did not say that.

[quote]People were allowed to loot all last summer and cities like NYC decided to not prosecute.

Really? I live in NYC and I was unaware of any large scale "looting"?

r65 = Helen Keller lives!

I said that the lawlessness that started last summer would descend into every facet of life. Do people think that it can be contained to just a few things or places?

There was no reason that authorities and community leaders couldn't come together back then to insist that the protests stay peaceful and involve no law breaking. But noooo. They couldn't find any leadership to do that. So that was not done. And when some tried to speak up and against the lawlessness. The destruction and the lack of respect for some order (which inevitably leads to violence against people) they were accused of being racist and right wing and Trumpers. Puleeze! And do not even try to suggest that it was all mostly peaceful. You do not need the rot to be everywhere all the time to destroy the whole apple. You just need to see that it is possible to get away with and slowly but surely it infests the whole of the society.

People can see that the police were becoming hesitant to enforce the law and that they weren't getting backed up by their local officials when that was needed. This is the result. People think they can break whatever law they want and they can get away with it. That descends into decent behavior being forsaken as well.

Shoplifting is just one of the symptoms. But the brazenness tells you all you need to know. Next time they kick your head in and and waltz on their way as they take your car. Or they'll kill you.

It might be one thing if they were ignoring petty crimes to go after the murders and serious crimes that keep increasing but they aren't.

I don't want to her any bitching when these stores refuse to operate in certain areas and take their jobs, their taxes and their merchandise with them.

Where are those Rooftop Koreans when you need them?

[quote]People can see that the police were becoming hesitant to enforce the law and that they weren't getting backed up by their local officials when that was needed. This is the result. People think they can break whatever law they want and they can get away with it. That descends into decent behavior being forsaken as well.

This is bullshit. The cops need retraining so they aren't treating civilians - whom they serve - as targets. This isn't just a "lefties are wimps and mean to cops" problem. The cops were escalating their reactions to people and outright shooting them on the street. They needed to be reigned in.

American society as a whole, however, has become too divided, complacent, and lazy, and it's not going to end well for anyone. Many are bored and disaffected and want to be the star of the movie.

I used to love going to San Francisco.

Not anymore.

I'm Oh, Dearing myself for the use of "reigned" above.

R70 a tragedy in two parts! Loved the surprise ending.

Queen Cops are not going to be reigned in. How dare you even suggest it?

Welcome to Biden's America.

—have fun!

Kamala Harris invented shoplifting last year and had it inserted into the Democratic platform! I was on the Zoom meeting and saw all of it!

R65, Videos in Chicago were clear on what was really going on. I saw rental trucks and other vehicles pulling up to loot places.

If you've ever wondered how so many people are selling name-brand goods online (from tvs all the way down to health and beauty aids) for substantially less than your local drugstore or Target charges, this is where much of it comes from.

Remember the old phrase for hot merchandise - "fell off the back of the truck"? Nowadays they're stealing it from stores and accumulating large enough quantities to sell to people who then resell it in their own little storefronts and/or online.

And yeah, the idea that we should stop arresting and prosecuting people for petty crime has contributed to this, because it makes shoplifting an effective business model when it is managed by organized crime.

Now do rural areas of blight, meth, domestic violence and corruption.

I think a weekend thread series on the collapse of rural America is in order.

R76, well spotted. It's like the difference between those small weed growers and sellers and the crews and cartels which traffic weed. One can be relatively harmless and the other can destroy neighborhoods and lead to a rash of murders.

R76 fascinating research.

Did you identify a problem with this though? Reselling washing powder online is hardly a major societal evil, even if it is stolen. I’m getting a 5.5 on the hysteria-meter from you.

SHOOT TO KILL

Busted!

I was wondering why stuff on ebay is considerably cheaper than what you would pay in a store. It didn't make sense.

A BIKE. Why didn't I think of that?

R79, the retailers are closing stores because of the high theft rates. That means neighborhoods are losing access to goods. That's a quality of life problem, not just a crime problem.

And the California legislature has now passed a law that reestablishes the crime of organized retail theft. From the article:

Prosecutors can again seek to charge the crime as either a misdemeanor or a felony. It applies to those who work with others to steal merchandise either from brick-and-mortar stores or online, with the intent to sell or return the merchandise.

The legislation also applies to someone who works with others to receive stolen merchandise, those who steal for others as part of an organized theft ring or people who do the recruiting or organizing for the theft ring.

State lawmakers first acted after retailers and law enforcement complained that punishments for such property crimes had been reduced under a voter-approved ballot initiative in 2014 called Proposition 47.

The new law’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, said in a legislative analysis that the goal was “to ensure we targeted sophisticated crime rings that took advantage of loopholes in state law as opposed to theft for personal use simply because someone was hungry.”

R84 you crack me up. Shopping at CVS isn’t a human right, or an urban social facility. You’re so commercialized you’re confusing retail with something like oh I don’t know, access to clean water or proper housing. Real quality of life issues. Get a clue.