Emergency calls from shuttered San Francisco Whole Foods topped 560 in 13 mos

The crime and chaos San Francisco’s flagship Whole Foods Market faced before finally throwing in the towel and announcing its closure were far worse than one might imagine.

Over a 13-month period, 568 emergency calls were made, reporting everything from threatened employees to food fights to people trying to “defecate on the floor,” according to The New York Times.

One 911 call, the report reveals, announced the return of the “male w/machete.”

Another stated, “Another security guard was just assaulted.”

“A man with a four-inch knife attacked several security guards, then sprayed store employees with foam from a fire extinguisher, according to a third,” The Times reported.

And it gets worse.

A 30-year-old man was found dead in the bathroom from a fentanyl and methamphetamine overdose last September.

The high-end, trendy store selected the “gritty” city location for its proximity to workers and other professionals at tech companies such as Twitter. It was meant to be part of a long-term downtown redevelopment plan, but “the store fell victim to a grinding decline in the city’s center that began with the pandemic and could continue for years as companies vacate offices because of remote work,” according to The Times.

“When Whole Foods announced in mid-April that it was closing the store, citing the safety of its employees, many in San Francisco saw it as a representation of some of the city’s most intractable problems: property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins, an entrenched network of dealers selling fentanyl and other illicit drugs and people suffering from untreated mental illness wandering the streets,” the outlet reported.

With the tech industry’s love of working from home, there is a 26% vacancy rate among downtown offices, and “activity in San Francisco’s downtown remains at roughly a third of prepandemic levels — lower than in about 50 other major cities.”

Meanwhile, thieves were lifting armfuls of alcohol. The store couldn’t even keep shopping hand baskets around for paying customers. Like the booze, 300 of them went walking out the door.

In its 13-month run, at least 14 people were arrested. Charges included grand theft and battery.

According to police Chief Bill Scott, plainclothes officers were deployed to the location to try and improve the situation, but the results weren’t enough to keep the store open.

Rising crime in the city has forced officials to raise the pay for police by 10% in a desperate attempt to make up for a 562 officer shortfall, BizPac Review reported in April. The move is expected to cost San Franciscans $166.5 million over three years.

Governor Gavin Newsom even made an unannounced trip to the Tenderloin, considered ground zero for San Francisco’s drug and homeless crisis.

The progressive policies pushed by woke politicians have failed so miserably, Newsom decided to call in the National Guard and California Highway Patrol in a decidedly unprogressive bid to rid San Francisco of its devastating fentanyl problem.

The area saw a 40% surge in fatal overdoses from January through March, BizPac Review reported.

“We’re taking action,” Newsom stated. “Through this new collaborative partnership, we are providing more law enforcement resources and personnel to crack down on crime linked to the fentanyl crisis, holding the poison peddlers accountable, and increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco.”

 

Melissa Fine

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