(PJ Media) 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
