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San Francisco Safeway cuts hours, allegedly attributable to ‘off the charts’ theft

Another major retailer in San Francisco is cutting its hours due to what one city official called “increasing” theft in the shop.

The Safeway located in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, standing on Market and Church, was a longstanding, 24-hour fixture in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood.

But as of last week, the store’s hours have been cut back to 6 am to 9 pm, the earliest closing time of the 15 Safeway markets in the city – most of which shut at 11 pm or midnight.

A Safeway spokesperson told Hoodline, which first broke the news, that the cutbacks are “due to an increasing amount of theft at the store.” Earlier this year, the company reportedly grappled with high rates of grocery carts being stolen from storefronts.

District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told KPIX and Hoodline that the shutdown is part of a larger trend in retail theft.

“I think the last six months from what they say has been sort of off the charts in terms of how bad it’s been,” he told KPIX. “It’s sad, upsetting and frustrating.”

And while retail theft has historically been a troubling issue in San Francisco, and has gained national media attention as of late – especially following a viral video shared by KGO’s Lyanne Melendez of an ongoing theft at a Walgreens, followed by multiple local Walgreens closing down – it is worth drawing scrutiny into these company’s claims.

Follow-up investigations by SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle have contended that retail theft was likely not the lone factor contributing to those shutdowns.

And in the Walgreens case, publicly available data does not wholly align with the company’s claim. (It is worth noting, however, that retail theft often goes unreported, as Mandelman told KPIX, and that 2017 FBI data found that San Francisco had the highest rate of property crimes per capita.)

From April 1 to October 24 this year, 1,658 larceny thefts were reported in San Francisco Police Department’s Mission District in 2021, according to the police department’s crime dashboard. That number is higher than in 2020, when 1,361 larceny thefts were reported in the same timeframe. But it is significantly lower than in 2019 – the last pre-pandemic year – when 2,585 larceny thefts were reported in the same timeframe.

The company did not make its retail theft incident data publicly available; Safeway did not respond to a request for comment from SFGATE.

But no matter the cause, neighborhood customers who shop during late hours either due to necessity or convenience will have less options for grocery shopping.

Mandelman told KPIX and Hoodline that he is planning a meeting with San Francisco police and the District Attorney’s Office over theft at the Market St. Safeway.

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