‘Rampant crime has become a regular part of life’: CNN reporter witnesses 3 thefts in 30 minutes at a San Francisco Walgreens — here’s why retailers say they’re fleeing the Bay Area

America’s most-robbed Walgreens was the victim of at least three thefts within 30 minutes in July, according to CNN Senior National Correspondent Kyung Lah — one of the latest examples of brazen crime at the location.

The thefts were witnessed during the filming of a televised report at the Walgreens in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood. According to Lah, Walgreens has identified this location as having the “highest theft rate” — hit more than a dozen times a day — of the pharmacy chain’s nearly 9,000 U.S. stores.

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Shoplifting had become so bad in the Bay Area store that staff resorted to securing certain items with padlocks and chains. But they were ordered by corporate to remove them “because of the negative messaging,” Lah said.

Still, many other products at this location, including ketchup and mustard, remain locked behind plastic casings.

Other stories across the city have also resorted to locking up more products like cosmetics, frozen food and even coffee.

San Francisco resident Richie Greenberg, who toured the Richmond Walgreens with Lah, described what he felt after previously seeing the chained-up items.

“This was bizarre, something I’d never seen before,” he said. “This is just more icing on the cake. Telling us that rampant crime has become a regular part of life.”

A retail exodus

Several retail giants — including Nordstrom, H&M, Marshall’s, Gap, Banana Republic, Anthropologie and Office Depot — have announced they’re pulling the plug on some San Francisco locations.

When Whole Foods announced in mid-April that it was temporarily closing its store at Trinity Place in the city’s Tenderloin District, a spokesperson for the grocer expressed concerns about “the safety of our team members” due to criminal activity near the store.

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These issues, while significant in San Francisco, are not isolated to the Bay Area.

According to a study by the National Retail Federation, organized retail crime and theft are growing in both scope and complexity across the U.S.

To combat this, Home Depot CEO Ted Decker announced in June that the home improvement company would be “investing in more security guards” to protect the safety of its employees and customers. This sadly follows the deaths of two Home Depot employees during theft incidents.

Concern for commercial real estate

Many cities have seen retail store closures in recent months. Insider recently reported that as many as 2,373 major retail stores are set to close this year across the U.S — not all down to crime, but some due to dwindling foot traffic in the age of online shopping and economic factors like rising interest rates.

These trends are causing headaches for commercial real estate investors, since they present more challenges for the already shaky and debt-ridden sector.

In particular, office real estate is under immense strain due to the rise in remote and hybrid work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising borrowing costs are also squeezing property owners and complicating real estate financing.

In recent months, high-profile investors — including Elon Musk — have sounded the alarm about a potential market crash.

Real estate investing expert Patrick Carroll said the commercial real estate market is tumbling toward a crash that could be as devastating as the 2008 crisis.

“The party’s over, unfortunately,” he said. “The office market’s going to be destroyed, hotels are going to be destroyed — it’s going to be ugly.”

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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

The post CNN reporter witnesses 3 thefts in half-hour at a San Francisco Walgreens — this is why retailers say they’re fleeing the Bay Space appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO – From car break-ins to shoplifting, much has been said about property crime in San Francisco. For one set of victims, theft doesn’t just come with a cost, it’s making it difficult to work.

“Remodel,” contractor Dan McCann explained as he walked through a home under renovation in Oakland. “Total interior. Addition, front and back.”

From full remodels in the Oakland Hills, to foundation replacements in San Francisco.

“One section at a time,” he said of another project in Haight-Ashbury. “So the house doesn’t fall down.”

McCann is a city native who built his contracting business from scratch, now employing teams of workers on various sites. For all of the complexities that come with running jobs around the bay, his work in San Francisco has presented one particular challenge.

Contractor Dan McCann works on a home in San Francisco. Following multiple thefts, McCann has taken on the task of finding his stolen tools.

CBS

“We usually bring the tools home, but one day we left everything here,” McCann told KPIX 5. “Maybe somebody was staking us out. They broke the lock off, let themselves in. Three jackhammers, a concrete saw. A bunch of smaller items. It came out to about $14,000 worth of equipment.”

“The ladder isn’t on it, no pipe racks,” plumber Tony Campos said of his work van.

Campos is another victim, even though he tries to keep his van as inconspicuous as possible.

Had a couple jobs like Dan’s where we had all of our equipment, all of our plumbing gear, all of our tools stolen,” Campos said of his experience with thieves. “I’ve had one of my cars broken into, in my garage, everything taken from that.”

“This is the third time I’ve been hit pretty big,” McCann added.

The third time convinced him to take on another job, tracking down his stolen property, and he said it wasn’t that hard to find: A resale website and a seller who may not be the thief, but has thousands of items for sale.

“This is the guy who tried to sell me my stuff back,” McCann said, pointing to an online profile. “You can see here, 2,600 items sold on OfferUp. So I met up with him.”

Zeroing in on the saw he recognized, McCann set up a parking lot meeting in which he confronted the seller. They demanded proof of a serial number, which he produced the following day.

“Gave him the serial number the next day,” McCann said. “He told me I made a fake receipt and he wouldn’t meet up with me. Told me to call the cops and have them come deal with it. The cops want me to find him again before they do anything about it. So that what a frustrating thing.”

Police say they cannot comment, as they now have several ongoing investigations into the fencing of stolen property. They encourage everyone to record serial numbers, and put distinct markings on tools in case they do go up for sale. This is a frequent, and costly problem.

“Not only in money and what those tools cost us, but in time,” Campos said of his experiences.

“Missing a day at work, or missing a couple days of work because we have no tools could be a big problem for most of my workers,” McCann said for his crew.

Not one to quit on a job, McCann now has a private investigator working to build a case that he hopes to pass on to police. A mission borne out of frustration.

“These burglaries are devastating to contractors, like myself,” McCann said. “These criminals have made a business off of stealing the livelihood of honest people. Hopefully we can start catching these guys.”

Wilson Walker

Wilson Walker joined KPIX 5 in July 2007. After 10 years producing newscasts, Wilson became a Multimedia Journalist (MMJ) in 2012, meaning he shoots, writes and edits all of his own stories.

The post After a number of thefts, San Francisco contractor takes on discovering stolen instruments appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO – From car break-ins to shoplifting, much has been said about property crime in San Francisco. For one set of victims, theft doesn’t just come with a cost, it’s making it difficult to work.

“Remodel,” contractor Dan McCann explained as he walked through a home under renovation in Oakland. “Total interior. Addition, front and back.”

From full remodels in the Oakland Hills, to foundation replacements in San Francisco.

“One section at a time,” he said of another project in Haight-Ashbury. “So the house doesn’t fall down.”

McCann is a city native who built his contracting business from scratch, now employing teams of workers on various sites. For all of the complexities that come with running jobs around the bay, his work in San Francisco has presented one particular challenge.

Contractor Dan McCann works on a home in San Francisco. Following multiple thefts, McCann has taken on the task of finding his stolen tools.

CBS

“We usually bring the tools home, but one day we left everything here,” McCann told KPIX 5. “Maybe somebody was staking us out. They broke the lock off, let themselves in. Three jackhammers, a concrete saw. A bunch of smaller items. It came out to about $14,000 worth of equipment.”

“The ladder isn’t on it, no pipe racks,” plumber Tony Campos said of his work van.

Campos is another victim, even though he tries to keep his van as inconspicuous as possible.

Had a couple jobs like Dan’s where we had all of our equipment, all of our plumbing gear, all of our tools stolen,” Campos said of his experience with thieves. “I’ve had one of my cars broken into, in my garage, everything taken from that.”

“This is the third time I’ve been hit pretty big,” McCann added.

The third time convinced him to take on another job, tracking down his stolen property, and he said it wasn’t that hard to find: A resale website and a seller who may not be the thief, but has thousands of items for sale.

“This is the guy who tried to sell me my stuff back,” McCann said, pointing to an online profile. “You can see here, 2,600 items sold on OfferUp. So I met up with him.”

Zeroing in on the saw he recognized, McCann set up a parking lot meeting in which he confronted the seller. They demanded proof of a serial number, which he produced the following day.

“Gave him the serial number the next day,” McCann said. “He told me I made a fake receipt and he wouldn’t meet up with me. Told me to call the cops and have them come deal with it. The cops want me to find him again before they do anything about it. So that what a frustrating thing.”

Police say they cannot comment, as they now have several ongoing investigations into the fencing of stolen property. They encourage everyone to record serial numbers, and put distinct markings on tools in case they do go up for sale. This is a frequent, and costly problem.

“Not only in money and what those tools cost us, but in time,” Campos said of his experiences.

“Missing a day at work, or missing a couple days of work because we have no tools could be a big problem for most of my workers,” McCann said for his crew.

Not one to quit on a job, McCann now has a private investigator working to build a case that he hopes to pass on to police. A mission borne out of frustration.

“These burglaries are devastating to contractors, like myself,” McCann said. “These criminals have made a business off of stealing the livelihood of honest people. Hopefully we can start catching these guys.”

Wilson Walker

Wilson Walker joined KPIX 5 in July of 2007. His television career started at WSOC-TV in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1999. There, he covered the departure of the Charlotte Hornets, The Rae Carruth case, and the devastating East Coast Ice Storm of 2002. He also spent three years in Sacramento with KCRA, covering California politics, the Hamid & Umer Hyat terrorism trial, and the Sacramento arena debate.

The post After a number of thefts, San Francisco contractor takes on discovering stolen instruments appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Photo on Visualhunt.com

A passing defendant, charged with multiple thefts of automobiles and electronics in San Mateo, South San Francisco and Burlingame, pleaded not appealing two crimes and one misdemeanor on Monday and received five years in state prison, the San Mateo County District Attorney said .

Matthew Garcia is accused of stealing a Mercedes-Benz ML320 in San Mateo in March 2019, $ 16 worth of goods from a grocery store in South San Francisco in November 2019, and a bag of electronics from a hotel in Burlingame in 2020 announced the prosecutors. He was arrested in Daly City in April 2019 after police noticed the Mercedes-Benz he was driving had different license plates on the front and back, prosecutors said.

The post Man accused of a number of thefts in San Mateo, South San Francisco and Burlingame pleads no contest | Native Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

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 fallen, while some crime, including aggravated assaults, murders and incidents involving guns, has increased.

“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 examined Proposition 47 and its public safety implications, found that the initiative had no nationwide impact on most crimes during the year after it was passed and the incidence of thefts and car thefts, while increasing modestly, was too few 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.

The post After San Francisco shoplifting video goes viral, officers argue thefts aren’t rampant appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

According to multiple reports, Target, Walgreens, and CVS locations in the San Francisco area have changed their hours to close earlier or to close stores altogether after a series of thefts.

At least six Target stores in the Bay Area have adjusted their hours to close at 6 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. According to a statement by a Target spokesman to KNTV, “we have been experiencing a significant and alarming increase for more than a month”. in the event of theft and security incidents in our branches in San Francisco. “

“Since the safety of our guests, team members and communities is our top priority, we have temporarily reduced our operating hours,” the statement continues.

It’s not just Target stores, Walgreens has decided to close locations due to the increase in thefts and security incidents, KGO said.

A security guard told the guard that there wasn’t much he could do to stop a shoplifter who was determined and had a knife or a gun.

“I have no intention of being stabbed to death for anything worth $ 60,” the guard told KGO.

Leaders believe the crimes are organized and have asked police and prosecutors to come up with solutions to help companies stay open and customers stay safe.

“These are people who are being recruited, organized, and resold, and San Francisco suffers,” said Ahsha Safai, San Francisco supervisor.

We lost the flagship Gap in Union Square – if we don’t address organized retail crime, I fear many other stores will close. https://t.co/y1e3v5Dtip

– Ahsha Safai 安世輝 (hsAhsha_Safai) July 6, 2021

Residents and leaders are concerned that the increase in thefts will result in more stores closing for good and moving to other locations outside of town.

The post San Francisco shops altering hours after ‘alarming’ rise in thefts, safety incidents appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

According to multiple reports, Target, Walgreens, and CVS locations in the San Francisco area have changed their hours to close earlier or to close stores altogether after a series of thefts.

At least six Target stores in the Bay Area have adjusted their hours to close at 6 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. According to a statement by a Target spokesman to KNTV, “we have been experiencing a significant and alarming increase for more than a month”. in the event of theft and security incidents in our branches in San Francisco. “

“Since the safety of our guests, team members and communities is our top priority, we have temporarily reduced our operating hours,” the statement continues.

It’s not just Target stores, Walgreens has decided to close locations due to the increase in thefts and security incidents, KGO said.

A security guard told the guard that there wasn’t much he could do to stop a shoplifter who was determined and had a knife or a gun.

“I have no intention of being stabbed to death for anything worth $ 60,” the guard told KGO.

Leaders believe the crimes are organized and have asked police and prosecutors to come up with solutions to help companies stay open and customers stay safe.

“These are people who are being recruited, organized, and resold, and San Francisco suffers,” said Ahsha Safai, San Francisco supervisor.

We lost the flagship Gap in Union Square – if we don’t address organized retail crime, I fear many other stores will close. https://t.co/y1e3v5Dtip

– Ahsha Safai 安世輝 (hsAhsha_Safai) July 6, 2021

Residents and leaders are concerned that the increase in thefts will result in more stores closing for good and moving to other locations outside of town.

The post San Francisco shops altering hours after ‘alarming’ rise in thefts, safety incidents appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.