SF’s Black Market Thrives Off Retail Theft
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
This kind of naivete is plaguing so many leaders. If only criminals could examine themselves and introspect their actions, then they would understand! It's like people forget that we are still essentially animals, and when the reward of opportunity outweighs the risk of punishment, there is slim chance that the moral mind will prevail. Even slimmer if the person in question does not have a foundation of morality guiding them.
Restore morality and revamp the idea of punishment to actually be a deterrent in the 21st century and these things will go away. Unfortunately we are inundated with weakness to a degree that we consider morality as undefinable and punishment a faux pas. "Punish a criminal? How unacceptable. Who are you to say what is right and wrong?" It seems we'd rather society fray apart into nothing than re-establish any kind of order.
If you disagree with this please let me know why. Most people are raised to believe they are fundamentally good which causes a lot of harm and suffering. Challenging that preconception and learning to do good is the best way to defeat evil and let justice and equality prevail for all in my opinion.
This would be much more effective if we start with crimes of educated, wealthier segments of the population. Starting the "Operation Restore Morality" with the poorest sections of the public is where things come off as hollow.
By the way, the branch of my family that would count as poor are uniformly much more conservative than I am.
This type of article may help you understand:
https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-...
If you're making 6 figures and breaking the law because you're greedy, you should go to jail before the desperate unemployed street kids living one day at a time, risking their lives and freedom to make rent and buy groceries.
Elite corruption is also directly responsible for creating circumstances that foster street crimes.
We live in a society where the rich and elites - the ones running our governments and corporations, are all greedily exploiting and cheating the entire populace. They’re all getting away with it too, with ever increasing wealth gaps and wages that don’t match inflation.
So, when people display such ire for low level petty theft by people with nothing in their lives, and claim they’re the ones “fraying apart society” - I find it hard to take seriously.
You misread. The ones who are letting society come apart are all of us who let ourselves be apathetic enough to be deceived by people who think a total lack of morality is the way to run society.
To the rest of your response, my post could be generalized to any social level. No need to whatabout wage gaps and inflation. Everything I said applies there too: lack of morality and lack of deterring punishment.
this is just a plain old run of the mill conspiracy theory.
reality unfortunately is never black and white, and that’s because modern societies are extremely complex systems:
https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...
So, is it /really/ just the poor crime that creates this culture?
If's funny to say that after admitting that we're animals driven by instinct.
Making morality and punishment a priority won't change a thing when people have to choose between making rent/eating lunch/buying meds or committing crimes. The easiest way to prevent criminality, is feeding people, housing, healthcare, and education on a longer timeline.
Also people tend to underestimate punishment and overestimate rewards, especially desperate people, people everywhere are routinely risking years of jail for a hundred dollars.
Most humans have a morality system to the extent that they'd rather starve to death than engage in cannibalism, for example. It requires more effort, but they can also be socialized to endure reduced access to drugs in exchange for not stealing.
https://sfist.com/2022/07/28/state-ag-refuses-da-jenkins-req...
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/07/regardless-of-what-da-...
Jenkins has recused herself from the SF Mayor's brother murder sentence reduction case. There will be another election in the fall for the SF DA so Jenkins is in electioneering mode this summer as well as cleaning house. Boudin hasn't indicated if he is going to attempt to be campaign to be reelected - he has a lot of local progressive support.
In a sane world Boudin wouldn't have a chance at re-election, but it seems like there are enough anti-Boudin folks who want to run that he may actually have a chance.
However if the choice is between paying extra v/s throwing people in prison Im not ok with the latter.
The victims of shoplifting are other poor people. After all, stores will gladly leave an area and leave other poor people with nowhere to get their goods.
Not sure I follow... this would only be true if shoplifting losses exceeded profits which seems remarkably unlikely to be the case.
Assuming you just don't know, having people filling garbage bags with goods in broad daylight will sink a store.
It's not just the goods stolen, it's the staff that cleans up, it's the anti-shrinkage measures they bring in, it's the safety risk every time something like this happens...
For a long time in an attempt to stay PC, companies refrained from admitting it was a theft problem, but now it's too far gone to pretend:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/15/walgreens-cl...
Even so, I read it. I don't see how it shows what you claim (that the facts on which GP's theory is based are incorrect).
I've read your article and it doesn't actually provide evidence that supports your claim (that those additional costs related to theft are what drove the closure), it just says that Walgreens cited theft as their reason for closing the store. The article even includes a quote from the Mayor contradictory to your point, who suggests Walgreens may have had other reasons for the closure.
“When a place is not generating revenue and when they’re saturated – Walgreens has a lot of Walgreens locations all over the city – I do think there are other factors that come into play,"
Walgreens stated years ago:
"To help combat this retail theft, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment. This is primarily a result of our participation in the city’s 10B program to hire off-duty SFPD officers to have a presence in our stores"
Yet you're juggling semantics to imply somehow theft is causing them to close the stores, but the cost of the theft... somehow doesn't factor in? Do you think they just feel morally bad about the shoplifters?
–
Honestly this is a tired topic. For years Walgreens wouldn't even admit that theft played any role at all because they didn't want to get dragged into local politics, but even they had their breaking point.
You can readily find a million and one talking heads claiming that Walgreens closed because of anything but theft because admitting they closed due to theft is admitting there's a problem when poor people rob "rich corporations"... and some people just hate that idea.
Won't do anything to change the fact that Walgreens themselves have finally admitted the actual cause.
I think it is interesting that you so quickly recognise that the Mayor would have an ulterior motive to shift blame and/or responsibility yet seem unwilling to engage in the possibility that Walgreens would do the same for similar reasons.
The other part is articles like this, that find a way to make it seem like people are especially at risk even though crime is at a historic low.
If retail theft is as endemic as reporting would seem to indicate, I don't know how they could get insurance for 'petty' theft anyway, so a police report isn't likely to be useful. Likely their business insurance has higher deductibles anyway, so it's more useful for major theft or damage, not for smaller claims.
This is differ if you have rare theft of high price items.
1) reporting takes time at the staff level, significant time. Which they have to pay for, compounding the losses. I’ve seen security footage, and in some cases it was literally constant. They’d need full time staff just to call the police and report, assuming the cops would even show up if they did that.
2) they can write off the stolen inventory at 100% anyway, and most of them are self insured against this stuff. ‘Shrinkage’ is a normal business operating cost anyway, it’s the scale of it at some of these locations that is nuts.
3) a number of larger chains just gave up and pulled out of the worse areas, and made very public statements about it and why. [https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/theft-plagued-walgre...]
Anecdotally, I was at a Best Buy in the east bay picking someone up. Not a bad area. And one of the fire alarms went off on an emergency exit and I saw someone dart out with something. The staff member just reset the alarm, sighed, and continued helping me. No attempt to do anything else. I asked what was going on and they said shoplifting, and that it happens all the time.
Last year I was picking up a small generator at a Home Depot in San Jose - not a bad area - and they had to go into a locked area to get it - they said that was because people would load up a cart with generators and tools and just walk out with them. Nothing they could do, and it was a daily occurrence so now they keep things locked up.
Pretty sad frankly.
It has been my understanding that for like at _least_ fifteen, twenty years major retailers have had a "Do not attempt to physically stop shoplifters." policy. The opinions I heard were split on whether it was to protect against an injury suit file by the thief if he were injured during the detention, or having to pay a _ton_ if an employee got seriously injured during the detention. (Source: talking to friends who worked on the floor for major retailers at the start of the century.)
TBH, it smells like both to me.
Anyway, all this is to say that retailers haven't been _physically_ restraining thieves walking out of their stores for quite some time... but that doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they've stopped reporting the thefts. (Indeed, the SF Mayor's Office's crowing about retrieving items from Retail Theft Rings suggests that -at minimum- a subset of the affected retailers _do_ report thefts.)
I'd think HQ would want a police report for missing stock, otherwise they're going to think you took it yourself. It'll be a useless online police report, but you have a # to reference about missing stock XYZ.
The survey of retailers is much more reliable a data point, and it says the exact opposite of what you claim.
It absolutely is, the cops and the DA just choose not to give a shit.
You think insurers offer it? How much do you think it would cost?
They said people will stop reporting crimes because there is no point, and then people will point to the reduction in reported crime as proof that crime is down.
It turns out people stop reporting when they no one will get prosecuted and the cops won't do anything because they know there is no point in arresting criminals.
"Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line."
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/suffer-these-crimes-in...
Guess what happens when you fill in a form online? Maybe it turns in to an entry in a database, but that might be the end of it.
Eh, this part is dubious. They have no duty to protect, and no duty to respond to a crime.
> What is the point of police if they’re ignoring reports?
Lots of people asking this question lately. It's a good one.
"Breed has repeatedly promised to catch the perpetrators and even incentivized residents with up to $100,000 rewards for information leading to arrests."
However, the problem of prioritization by police is exactly that. Police could be doing any number of things; if the outcome of arresting someone is nothing happens, literally any other remaining work, including the kind that could be expanded a lot - e.g. patrolling - becomes higher priority. But ofc Seattle police for example is so under-staffed that they have trouble with 911 calls and sexual assault investigation backlog.
Some first hand examples: The four times my car was stolen, no investigation or arrest, including the one time I even was able to give them the name of one of the people who did it.
Usually they don't explicitly announce these policies because they are unpopular, but every police department has some threshold beyond which they do nothing.
And who ends up paying for it, in the end? Not faceless corporations, I can promise you that.
I recall me and a few co-workers going to eat right next to one of these checkpoints. Open needles, could buy drugs right there at the entrance. The restaurant was nice, a niche pizza place. You could order 20-30 kinds of different meats on a neapolitan style pizza. We walked out of the restaurant to a fully nude woman, giving head to a man. Another nude woman near by and a pimp looking at us. We just turned and walked around them.
This is San Francisco I remember.
Having wandered all over SF Oakland, and the Bay Area generally… It is the most dystopian place I can imagine. It’s a cultural rotten to its core in many ways. Yes, the art, the passion, it’s beautiful. But the people and city have lost the humanity, ironically enough.
People love to vent their hot air and thump their chest at their excited discovery that San Francisco is a grimy city. Guess what. Noted junkie and author Jack Kerouac was complaining about the winos on third street back in the 50s. Claims about the death of San Francisco are generally overrated.
Anecdotally I watched the street sweeper go by my kitchen this morning.
It could also be the case that your accustomed to it? Or perhaps it’s gotten worse?
This restaurant was in the Tenderloin in 2016. Can’t speak to your experiences, but this was a pretty near daily occurrence.
But the 1950s standard of dirty and the 2020s standard of dirty are very different. Disposable heroin needles and piles of plastic garbage simply weren’t a thing, although SF has always had a reputation as rife with opiate usage.
I lived in Portland. I loved the city, but over the span of a couple years, it was obvious seeing the progression of the grime. I lived a bit outside the city where it was nothing but green gardens and blackberry bushes free for the picking, and pockets of downtown had homeless camps. It quickly ramped up to the bushes being full of filthy plastic garbage, crusty addicts planting themselves outside stores all over downtown, lines of tents, and more.
Dirty cities 70 years ago smelled of piss and had smashed glass. Dirty cities today have all that and more. Our standards shifted.
Boiling the frog is more than a little ridiculous when you consider that I was replying to someone who'd claimed gangs have barricaded whole blocks of San Francisco and that this is why the city's lost its humanity.
As for Portland, it too has been dirty and grimy since forever. I think a lot of the Portlandia crowd forget how industrial and rough (and how tolerant of neo nazis) it used to be. To be fair that cult (and the perpetrator of the largest bioterror attack on US soil) wasn't in Multnomah County.
https://www.oregonlive.com/history/2017/06/portland_in_the_1...
I used to take the ferry from Alameda (great place to live btw) to SF every day. Every other day there was a (I presume homeless) woman who would stand at the entrance screaming at people getting off the ferry. On more than one occasion a person would run, and this screaming woman would chase them down the street.
Later I’d often see this homeless woman sleeping in yerba buena gardens. Once caught her doing yoga (I think).
Same ferry terminal, a homeless man was smearing his own poop all over the door to get in. Me and the other passengers just looked at him and then each other. A cop came up and we all looked at her, she said “not my job”. So we all waited watching this guy rolling in his own excrement. Eventually the ferry doors unlocked, but no one went to the ferry until some of the crew opened the door from the inside. We all them walked over / around this homeless man. His excrement on many of our shoes.
So many times…
Let me translate what lettergram mentions:
> ...whole city blocks that were barricaded...
The sidewalks on some blocks in the TL were occupied with tents, chairs containing people, people sitting on the sidewalks, the occasional cluster of "street markets" (aka: combination flea market and stolen-goods-market), and -sometimes- people grilling with charcoal grills.
> ...the gangs ran checkpoints.
This one requires a bit of explanation:
In the heart of the TL, some corners have drug and/or sex salesmen advertising their wares to passersby. Some streets will have clumps of salesmen, and some corners and section of sidewalk will be crowded, simply because a whole lot of folks in the neighborhood socialize outside... so they're hanging out on the sidewalks. (Why not hang out in parks? Because the cops will push them back into the TL so that they don't make tourists, techies, and other such milquetoast folks uncomfortable.)
Never, _ever_ have I run into anything remotely like a "checkpoint". Crowded sidewalks? Sure! Folks doing more than hawking wares at me as I pass by, unimpeded by anything other than folks that are on the sidewalk minding their own damn business? No way.
The crowds and dealers certainly can be intimidating (and were definitely so for me for my first few months in the neighborhood)... but once you figure out that they don't behave like they're portrayed in the movies... that they're disinterested in starting shit and are just out there hanging out and running a business, you treat them like any other salesman hawking his wares.
> we've ceded the Tenderloin to being a known unsafe part of the city
That's its reputation, sure. It is the site of the city's open-air drug and sex markets.
Based on my time in the neighborhood, I've come to the conclusion that the City acknowledges that these sorts of things _will_ be sold, and that it's better to have an arrangement with the sellers and other "market participants" that ensures that everyone works together to prevent the violence that can often happen when such markets are pushed deep underground.
Because these are open-air markets, if the City wished to, they could drive by every day, rolling up dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and customers. I see the patrol cars rolling by on a regular basis, and _everyone_ who has been in the area for more than a few weeks can spot the folks that would be rolled up. They don't... and -as far as I've seen- have no intention of doing so.
I wish i could share this with more folks. The idea that these people are somehow hardened criminals that will knife anyone is such bullshit. They just want to be left alone for the most part.
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/man-dead-after-tenderloi...
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/4-stabbed-in-tenderloin-...
https://www.kron4.com/news/sf-man-stabbed-in-tenderloin-in-c...
Some of the most interesting and informative conversations I've ever had have been with people who held opinions that were as opposed to mine as they could possibly get.
And -in truth- the core of your comment (Folks just want to get on with their lives.) is broadly applicable to _most_ big boogeymen... child snatchers, street thugs, terrorists (domestic or otherwise), etc, etc, etc. In the overwhelming majority of cases, folks simply don't want to start shit, and -when made by Officials- claims to the contrary are nearly always attempts to increase the power and/or wealth of that official and/or their cronies.
The sidewalks on some blocks in the TL were occupied with
tents, chairs containing people, people sitting on the
sidewalks, the occasional cluster of "street markets" (aka:
combination flea market and stolen-goods-market), and -
sometimes- people grilling with charcoal grills.
https://sfist.com/2022/07/27/sfpd-mission-station-doubles-do...
lol, which favela and pizzeria? I can only think of Una Pizza Napoletana being in a slightly sketch spot. Montesacro's on 6th Street, but that's pinsa.
If I was family of the two killed men I would be furious.
Yeah, that's messed up.
But perhaps there is a difference to the way we perceive the world. I'll ask you a question in turn and tell you how I feel.
Imagine there are two hypothetical groups of people. One is a group of people who will punch you for "looking at them funny". The other is every world heavyweight champion. The latter has punched more people in the head than the former. Is the second group (far more punching performed overall) or the first group more preferred by you to walk by at 1 AM at night?
In the spirit of fairness, I will answer my question first. For me, I would actively avoid the first group and not be concerned by the second group.
How about military combat vets who were involved in killing in unspecified circumstances in the civilian world?
> I haven't watched Rambo.
You should. It's a good movie. The later ones (and most especially the most recent one) are dumb action movies, but the original is pretty good.
> One is a group of people who will punch you for "looking at them funny". The other is every world heavyweight champion.
I would trust the first group to act less erratically than the second. It's well-documented fact that getting hit in the head as much as boxers (and pro football players) do fucks you up, and makes you violent and erratic.
>(...)serving in Vietnam when opposing soldiers ambushed and killed his commanding officer. Returning home to San Francisco at age 22 in the early 1970s, he can still recall how the trauma led to a burgeoning heroin addiction that he supported by shoplifting.
He killed the 2 people in 79 and is now 70 years old and in a wheelchair.
What would you propose to do with him instead? And are we denying that he could have benefited from assistance and intervention to deal with that trauma and reintegrate into society? Back to "fuck the vets"?
I’m going to tell him I was framed.