XPost: sac.politics, alt.fan.sean-hannity, free.racist.maxine.waters   
   XPost: alt.journalism.newspapers   
   From: fuck.joe.biden@dns-netz.com   
      
   Among the many problems plaguing San Francisco in recent years,   
   business leaders say one has become so commonplace that   
   residents barely notice it: shoplifting.   
      
   Walgreens says petty theft in the city has gotten so out of   
   control that it’s had to close 17 of its stores. CVS has told   
   its employees not to intervene because the thieves so often   
   attack them, calling San Francisco “one of the epicenters of   
   organized retail crime.”   
      
   “We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted   
   on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Brendan Dugan, head   
   of CVS’ retail crime division, said at a 13 May hearing with   
   city officials, according to a New York Times report.   
      
   Police agree that the stealing has become endemic.   
      
   “The one trend we are seeing is more violence and escalating –   
   and much more bold,” Commander Raj Vaswani of the San Francisco   
   Police Department said at the hearing. “We see a lot of repeat   
   offenders.”   
      
   Even more shocking is the fact that many shoplifters then sell   
   their stolen goods on the street – often not far from the store   
   where they stole them.   
      
   For example, the Walgreens at 30th St and Mission St reported 16   
   shoplifting incidents from November 2020 to February 2021. Just   
   six blocks away, at 24th St and Mission, a city official said he   
   saw Walgreens’ products being sold at an outdoor market.   
      
   “Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,” Ahsha   
   Safaí, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told   
   The New York Times. “I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything   
   like it in this city.”   
      
   Meanwhile, local residents are angry – at the stores. When a   
   Walgreens that had seen 18 stealing incidents in four months   
   announced it was closing, a group of citizens started a petition   
   demanding that it remain open.   
      
   “Walgreens Corp has an annual revenue of around $139.5 billion,”   
   the petitioners wrote. “We think they can afford to keep needed   
   stores like this open.”   
      
   “In the middle of a pandemic and crisis, we cannot allow profit   
   driven greedy Corporations to further traumatize and abandon   
   their responsibility to the community,” one signer of the   
   petition wrote. “Shame on Walgreens.”   
      
   San Francisco has faced a painful set of concurring crises in   
   recent years, including skyrocketing homelessness and an   
   epidemic of drug overdoses. And in 2020, added to all that was   
   the Covid-19 pandemic.   
      
   City officials say all these problems have fueled the rise in   
   shoplifting, but other factors have contributed as well. For one   
   thing, in 2014 California passed a ballot measure called   
   Proposition 47, which deems any nonviolent theft of items worth   
   less than $950 a misdemeanor, not a felony.   
      
   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/san-francisco-   
   shoplifting-walgreens-closing-b1852470.html   
      
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