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Instead of closing the Target store in downtown San Francisco, management locked all of the inventory away from thieves. Each and every product on display has to be kept under lock and key or it will spontaneously wander away out the door. Shoplifting is such a pandemic it’s crippling retail across the entire state of California. Other liberal places are feeling the same pain and the whole retail industry is watching close to see how Target’s experiment works.
Whole store locked down
At least one San Francisco Target location locked down “all of its products.” They have no choice, “amid a shoplifting crisis that has crippled retailers in the Golden Gate City.” Video from inside is making the social media rounds, showing “after aisle of toiletries and cosmetics under lock and key.”
For years, it has been common “for stores to lock up small valuable items like razors.” Now, things are so out of control that “heaps of inexpensive large items like mouthwash, shampoo and lotion” are getting swiped. In bulk.
The Mission District store on Folsom Street explains they started using more locked door fronts for their shelves back in October and have been adding more all the time. They finally got the job completed.
So this is what happens when People are lawless, Target in San Francisco!!https://t.co/3F6zVJGZUN
— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_the_Dr) April 21, 2023
They’ve been hit “especially hard hit by a national organized retail crime epidemic.” Thanks to Democrat policies which decriminalized shoplifting, stores are closing their doors and leaving in droves. Walgreens just closed five of their outlets in the city due to theft.
Target doesn’t want to close and leave their customers without the items they need. They also can’t afford to subsidize lawless anarchy. Local patrons understand completely why they need to pay for their merchandise first.
Once the transaction is complete, staff will be happy to open the locked doors and fill the order. According to the National Retail Federation, San Francisco/Oakland is the “second most hard-hit metropolitan area from theft in 2020 and 2021, only behind Los Angeles.”
Body wash and drugs
The Federation also notes that there’s a good reason for the locked shelf strategy. Items “like body wash and over-the-counter medication” are “particularly attractive to shoplifters, who can often sell their stolen wares on the black market to smaller stores.”
Then, steal them again from the mom and pop retailers for personal use later, forcing them out of business, too. New York currently sits in the number 3 slot for retail theft, barely edging out Chicago in 2021, the latest figures available.
It’s such a pandemic that a whopping “seventy-one percent of retailers surveyed by the association said they had seen a ‘substantial‘ or ‘moderate‘ increase in organized retail crime.” That’s because liberals refuse to keep the criminals locked up. The same survey blamed “policies that reduce or eliminate cash bail for non-violent crimes in cities like San Francisco.”
This is what happens when you legalized shoplifting. SHAMEFUL : Iconic Target Store in Mission District to Close Amid Shoplifting Tidal Wave – California Globe https://t.co/a17eYq19ZB via
— TheLeoTerrell (@TheLeoTerrell) October 22, 2021
All the local officials can do is point out that at least they don’t have a bunch of murders. They would probably have more but the zombies on the street are too drugged out. They’re more likely to kill themselves with a hot dose of fentanyl than cause trouble for anyone except the merchants.
Whole Foods Market is another chain forced to close their doors and pull out of the San Francisco market. They couldn’t keep enough of their inventory locked down to survive. Concerns of “crime, safety and high theft” were too huge to ignore.
Meanwhile, the city is hoping to hire some police officers. They had 562 officers turn in their badges so have no chance of stopping “the open-air drug dealing, retail theft, home burglaries, and violence impacting our neighborhoods.” Maybe next year they might have enough cops, Mayor London Breed hopes.
