Due to increasing shoplifting crimes in the city, the Retail chain Target will be closing its stores in San Francisco, California.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento are the three cities among the top 10 in the country, when it comes to organized retail crime, according to the California Retailer’s Association.
Today, it has become one of the most pressing issues in the city, they already viewed the negative impact with stores permanently shutting down or closing early.
Here’s an excerpt from ABC 7 reports:
Target acknowledged San Francisco’s by closing its stores earlier in the day to cut down on shoplifting wherein retail crime is high.
“For more than a month, we’ve been experiencing a significant and alarming rise in theft and security incidents at our San Francisco stores, similar to reports from other retailers in the area,” a Target spokesperson told NBC Bay Area in a statement Friday night. “Target is engaging local law enforcement, elected officials and community partners to address our concerns. With the safety of our guests, team members and communities as our top priority, we’ve temporarily reduced our operating hours in six San Francisco stores.”
Target already closed one of its Bay Area stores in response to the rising theft. The retail chain will close at least five of its locations in San Francisco several hours early – at 6 p.m. instead of 10 p.m, the outlet noted.
Other stores in San Francisco have already responded by closing stores because of the continuous shoplifting, The Daily Wire previously reported.
Walgreens still has 53 locations but already closed 17 locations in San Francisco over the past five years due increase in shoplifting.
Here’s what Jason Cunningham said:
Closing the stores in San Francisco was an “unpopular and difficult decision” but that theft in San Francisco stores was four times the national average, the regional vice president for pharmacy and retail operations in California and Hawaii, told the San Francisco Chronicle in May. Walgreens was spending 35 times more on security guards in San Francisco than anywhere else, he added.
Brendan Dugan, director of organized retail crime and corporate investigations said, CVS has faced a similar problem in the Bay Area, with 42% of its losses in the area coming from 12 stores, which accounted for just 8% of the market share and security guards hired by CVS and Walgreens have been assaulted. The majority of shoplifting incidents at CVS came from opportunists but that professional crime accounted for 85% of dollar losses, he added.
The proposition increased the threshold for thefts to be considered a felony, from $450 to $950, it may not have made a difference to small-dollar opportunistic criminals, it might have helped organized crime. In late May regarding the issue of theft, Dugan and others spoke at a hearing. At that same hearing, grocery chain Safeway provided a statement that said, it had seen “dramatic increases” in shoplifting losses and suggested California’s Proposition 47, passed in 2014, may have caused some of the increase.
According to Chronicle report, “Professional shoplifters can work the system by stealing items under the threshold from one store and hitting several retailers in the same day. To prosecute, the district attorney has pursued aggregated charges for multiple petty theft incidents by the same person, such as a recent case of stolen scooters. Police said a person could also be charged with possession of stolen property worth more than $950.”
The Daily Wire has reported, the city is battling with a wave of “wokeness” that is causing residents to flee. In February, the school board spent hours discussing whether a gay father of a mixed-race daughter was diverse enough for an all-female volunteer group. They ultimately determined he was not. That same school board spent the previous month enduring heavy criticism for deciding to rename numerous public schools based on a historically inaccurate Google Doc, claiming acronyms are a “symptom of white supremacy culture” while replacing one acronym with another, and getting sued by the city itself for failing to develop a plan to return kids to school. Shoplifting is just one of many problems San Francisco is currently facing.
Sources: The Daily Wire, ABC 7, The Daily Wire SF, San Francisco Chronicle