News/Commentary

San Fran Walgreens chains up freezers, says pizza and ice cream being swiped 20 times a day!

July 18, 2023 | | Print Article

It wasn’t the shoplifters getting put under lock and key in San Francisco as unchecked retail theft led stores to chain surprising products, catching the attention of one of the richest men in the world.

“20 times a day?”

About four miles from Twitter headquarters in the City by the Bay, KPIX’s Betty Yu shared footage of the interior of a Walgreens on 16th Avenue and Geary Boulevard where almost every item in the store had been locked away.

According to employees at the location, Yu noted in her post that showed freezer doors chained and entire aisles worth of products behind locked partitions, that the measures were necessary as the store frequently gets its inventory wiped out.

“The Walgreens at 16th/Geary in San Francisco has chained up the freezer section…Workers said normally shoplifters clean out all the pizza and ice cream every night. They’re usually hit 20x a day. The whole store is virtually locked up,” she wrote.

Commenting on the post, one person called out how their Rite Aid had closed because “of excessive loss from theft. [It’s] unfortunate that stores have to go to this extent to keep their stores open. And all bathrooms at stores are either locked or code access only or have a sign that said not working.”

The sheer extent of the crime prompted Twitter owner Elon Musk, whose headquarters is located down the block from another Walgreens, to ask “20 times a day?”

It seemed that no retail store was immune to the criminality as another person posted, “Night time trip to the CVS pharmacy to get medicines, and I witness police car in front called to scene because of thief. Of course many items locked up too like the frozen section!”

Speaking with the Daily Mail, commercial realtor Mark Ritchie pointed to a number of contributing factors and said, “The office market in San Francisco is devastated. It’s had the most severe backlash from Covid and remote work because of how tech-oriented the economy in the Bay Area is.”

“San Francisco is one of the hardest cities to commute into downtown so the remote work crowd, there’s even more resistance,” he added of the city in which San Francisco Police have reported a 12.5 percent increase in robbery through July 16 compared to the same period in 2022.

As previously reported, the policies of leftist prosecutors in progressive havens have led retailers to take similar measures across the country.

In New York City, cans of tuna that cost less than $2 each have been locked in cabinets in stores that essentially require employees to become personal shoppers. Meanwhile in Chicago, a Walgreens store instituted a kiosk system for all but two aisles of products, also leaving it up to the clerks to fulfill customer requests.

“It’s just too much,” a worker at a Safeway in San Francisco told The San Francisco Standard recently of his decision to quit. “Having to bring things to the front was a game change. Every day, it’s like this.”

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2022 retail security survey, the Bay Area came in second for areas hit hardest by theft in the past two years behind Los Angeles. New York City came in third with Houston in fourth.

DONATE TO AMERICAN WIRE

If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to American Wire News to help us fight them.

$10
$15
$25
$50
Other
$
Thank you for your donation!
Kevin Haggerty
Latest posts by Kevin Haggerty (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles