San Francisco Target store locks its entire product range behind security glass
A Target store in San Francisco has locked its entire product range behind security glass as crime in the city spirals out of control.
A video posted on TikTok on April 20 shows all of the items in the store locked away from customers.
According to geotagged imagery, some products at the store on Folsom Street were behind glass since at least October of last year, WNCT reported.
The city's residents continue to battle soaring crime, brought to light recently with the murder of Cash App CEO Bob Lee and the brutal broad daylight attack on the city's former fire commissioner.
Industry groups have noted that there is an issue with theft, with the National Retail Federation saying that organized retail crime is setting stores back around $100 billion a year, according to a 2022 survey.
According to geotagged imagery, some products at the store on Folsom Street were behind glass since at least October of last year, WNCT reported
Stimson suggested that San Francisco's crime stats are even worse than the numbers suggest
In 2021, retailers saw a 27 per cent increase in theft carried out by organized criminal rings, the survey found. To tackle the issue, they invested more money in safety and security measures to protect employees, customers and merchandise.
Earlier this month, it was announced that Whole Foods is temporarily shutting one of its flagship stores in San Francisco just a year after it opened, citing concerns that crime in the area is endangering its staff. It followed Walgreens shutting down some of its San Francisco stores in 2021 due to theft.
A Whole Foods spokesperson said the company shut the 65,000-square-foot grocery store at Trinity Place in San Francisco's Mid-Market neighborhood 'to ensure the safety' of the store's team members.
The spokesperson said the move was a 'difficult decision,' noting that the store will only close temporarily and that all of the staff members will be transferred to nearby locations for a period.
The flagship store opened March 10, 2022, with the company calling its design as an homage to 'classic San Francisco'.
The location sold more than 3,700 local products from Northern California, including produce from nearby farms and hundreds of wines from local vineyards, according to the company.
Whole Foods did not state the specific reasons for shutting down the store.
The San Francisco Standard, an independent newspaper, reported that Whole Foods highlighted nearby crime and drug use as reasons for suspending operations, according to a City Hall source.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey, who represents the district, wrote on Twitter that he was 'incredibly disappointed but sadly unsurprised by the temporary closure of Mid-Market's Whole Foods'.
He said the neighborhood's problems with retail theft and drug-related crime are visible, noting the 'adjacent drug markets' and 'the many safety issues related to them' as well-known issues in the area.
Dorsey also said he is proposing a charter amendment, 'The San Francisco Police Department Full Staffing Act,' to fully staff the city's police force within five years.
'Whole Foods' closure — together with many other safety-related challenges we've seen recently — is Exhibit A as to why San Francisco can no longer afford not to solve our police understaffing crisis,' he wrote on Twitter.
A Whole Foods spokesperson said the company shut the 65,000-square-foot grocery store at Trinity Place in San Francisco's Mid-Market neighborhood 'to ensure the safety' of the store's team members
Democratic lawmaker Matt Dorsey announced he is introducing legislation to fully restore the police force within five years
In October 2021, Walgreens said it would close five more stores in San Francisco because of organized retail theft.
SFGATE reported that Walgreens had closed at least 10 stores in the city since the start of 2019.
'Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average' despite large increases in security, Walgreens spokesperson Phil Caruso said.
Violent crimes in San Francisco, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, reached a high in 2013 with 7,164 violent crimes, according to California Department of Justice data.
But they have tapered off significantly in the past couple of years. San Francisco now falls in the lower middle of the pack when compared with several cities of a similar population, according to data from the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association.
San Francisco recorded 56 homicides each in 2022 and 2021, an increase of more than 36 per cent from 2019, when there were 41 homicides, according to police department data.
In March, San Francisco Mayor London Breed asked the Board of Supervisors to approve a $27 million budget supplemental to fund police overtime citywide.
The money would also go toward recruiting more officers and adding more prosecutors as well as extending the city's Ambassador program.
Breed was among the politicians in major cities that called for leaders to divert funds from police in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, only to reverse course the following year.
'Crime is worse than the data shows,' ex-San Francisco prosecutor Charles Stimson told Fox News this month. 'People do not report these crimes because when you have a DA who's pro-criminal and not going to enforce the law, the cops aren't going to go out and arrest somebody when they know the case is going to be no papered.'
Stimson points the finger at former DA George Gascon, who served in office between 2011 and 2019, as being the city's first problem.
Former San Francisco prosecutor Charles 'Cully' Stimson said that the police are reluctant to make arrests because they know the current 'pro-criminal' district attorney will not prosecute
He says that it was between 2015 and 2016 when San Francisco's crime problem really took hold due to Gascon's controversial policies.
'Those policies include not prosecuting any misdemeanors, watering down most felonies to misdemeanors, not asking for long prison sentences even for people who are convicted of the worst crimes, never asking for bail,' Stimson said.
Citing Department of Justice data, Stimson said that when Gascon took office, there were an average of 151 rapes per year. By 2019, the number exploded to 346 per year.
'You always know with rape … the number of people actually raped is much higher than the number of people who report that they were raped,' Stimson added.
Aggravated assaults were also up from 2,300 per year to around 2,600 during Gascon's tenure.
Stimson also pointed to both Gascon and ousted DA Chesa Boudin's policies of not prosecuting retail thefts.
'You've seen the videos of people just engaging in the five-finger discount, walking into Target, walking into Nordstrom Rack … and just walking out during daylight with $950 worth of stuff. They refused to prosecute any of that,' he said.
Stimson went to raise other issues plaguing San Francisco, including its status as a sanctuary city, the rise of defund the police movements and major retailers including Whole Foods and Walgreens fleeing because the criminality.
Ultimately, Stimson was hopeful, saying that more arrests are occurring and tent encampments where crimes are occurring are being shuttered.
'But it's still a sanctuary city, so illegal aliens, who represent a good percentage of people who have been arrested, they aren't being turned over to ICE even after they're convicted,' he reluctantly admitted.
San Francisco Police Officers Association's vice president, Lieutenant Tracy McCray, has said the neighborhood where Cash App founder Bob Lee was murdered has already witnessed at least 12 homicides this year alone.
The city's Southern and Tenderloin Districts which have experienced rising crime rates this year have seen four stabbing incidents in the last week alone, including Lee's.
'We are short staffed so just our presence in patrolling is severely lacking right now. To see a certain uptick in crime is to be expected but I think we are now at a precipice where we could go one way or the other,' McCray said.
Lee, 43, was stabbed several times in the chest as he walked in the city's Rincon Hill neighborhood at 2:35am, which is located in the Southern District, close to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
McCray says the police force is understaffed and the entire neighborhood is now at a tipping point.
Earlier this month, San Francisco was rocked by the brutal killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee, pictured
A day later, San Francisco's former fire commissioner was brutally attacked with a metal crowbar just steps away from his mother's front door.
Disturbing cell phone footage shows a man wandering the nearby area with a metal crowbar in hand - though police have yet to confirm he is the attacker.
Don Carmignani, 53, was left fighting for his life in hospital after the horrifying beating on April 5.
Friends close to the victim allege he was targeted by a 'group of homeless people' as he was leaving his mother's home just outside the city's Marina District.
Carmignani - who served as a fire commissioner in 2013 - was reportedly slashed with a knife as well as having his skull fractured by the pipe.
His family has since decided to flee the city, friends have said. Carmignani is expected to make a full recovery.
Boudin had been the target of a multimillion-dollar recall campaign by residents who say San Francisco has become an increasingly unsafe place to live.
Source: Daily Mail
