It wasn’t until just moments ago that I became aware of just how shockingly bad the shoplifting crime wave is — and I’m the former San Francisco resident who can’t seem to stop writing about the city’s long descent into criminality and accompanying economic decline.
Shoplifting has become so rampant over the last few years — and not just in San Francisco — that it’s almost impossible for regular news readers to go more than a day or two without seeing a new video of a criminal or two casually walking out of a major retailer with whatever they want.
Have you seen the latest clip making the rounds? Three “plus-size suspects,” according to the New York Post, loaded up three shopping carts worth of stuff at a Burlington in Sacramento and then loaded up the stolen goods “into a red Dodge Charger as alarms blared in the background.”
The slow-motion audacity is almost thrilling.
Whatever you think of the “Ocean’s 11” remake with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, today’s short film is the exact opposite.
Despite the all-in-the-family vibe of today’s thieves, much of the shoplifting wave isn’t committed by starving Jean Valjeans desperate for a loaf of bread. In San Francisco, organized crime gangs, often operating out of Oakland, have capitalized on the city’s anything-goes attitude towards so-called lifestyle crimes. Their thugs go in to steal high-margin goods that the OC outfits then sell on the black market.
It was literally just yesterday that I shared a CNN report about shoplifting at a San Francisco Walgreens that caught an actual shoplifter on video — one of three thefts that occurred at that store in the 30 minutes the CNN crew was there.
A CNN crew visited the most shoplifted Walgreens in the US. The San Francisco store has to lock up ice cream & other low-value items. During the crew’s time there, they saw three shopliftings. pic.twitter.com/hctrL4Zkw9
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 26, 2023
Sometimes the thieves are drifters like that guy appears to be. Other times they’re somewhat more organized opportunists like the “plus-size” crew in Sacramento. And then you have the OC outfits that are making the big bucks. But whichever kind of criminal you see on the latest video, they all have one thing in common: they know that store employees are usually forbidden from trying to stop them during the act and that Democrat-run cities and states won’t hold them accountable after the fact, so they take advantage.
But the New York Post really buried the lede on their latest report. You have to get all the way to the last sentence to find this hidden anti-gem: “Retail theft in America has skyrocketed to $94 billion — an alarming 90% increase since 2018, according to the National Retail Federation.”
A 90% increase in just a few years, mostly concentrated in cities that had previously enjoyed almost 30 years of declining crime rates. It’s enough to make you wonder if various city halls are getting a cut.
On the plus side, at least we won’t run out of things to watch on the internet.
Recommended: The Five States Sending the Most High Earners to Florida All Have This One Thing in Common
P.S. Don’t miss the “Five O’Clock Somewhere” VIP Gold Live Chat with Stephen Kruiser and Yours Truly at 4 p.m. Eastern on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. There is sometimes a special guest and almost always day-drinking.
You can join the cause (and the cocktails) right here.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member