I used to live near this store. It was not a pleasant experience to shop there unless you enjoy watching drug addicts threaten security for stopping them for stealing or having them cut in line in front of you.
At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
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Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#12I used to live near this store. It was not a pleasant experience to shop there unless you enjoy watching drug addicts threaten security for stopping them for stealing or having them cut in line in front of you.
Why do people in SF just put up with this? If it were anywhere else in the country I’d think mayor would be ousted by someone who’d clean up the city.
And I’m not talking about homelessness in general. New York has plenty but at least it’s somewhat under control. No companies are leaving or putting these sorts of barriers in place because of it.
Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#13There's a target store I've gone to that is sort of taken over by homeless. They are all over outside. They walk in with their bicycles. Target hasn't really done anything. It is kind of weird to shop there. That said, I wonder what happens at safeway during a fire or shooter.
> That said, I wonder what happens at safeway during a fire or shooter. During a fire, the gate controller will have a fire alarm input on the terminal block wired to an output from the fire alarm system that will open the gate if the fire alarm system activates. All automatic doors/gates/card access doors and fire alarm systems work the same way, fail open on fire alarm signal. If there was a duress button system at…
At least in most jurisdictions, the egress to a gathering area can __never__ be blocked, there is some provisions for delay on emergency exits, but those require NRTL certification, and are actually usually mechanical.
You might be able to lock it down during periods of limited occupancy, and you can rig it to an annoying alarm, and maybe try to identify the person, and ban them from future. It is possible to get variances for this, but you usually need to either be a medical or penal facility.
Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#14I used to live near this store. It was not a pleasant experience to shop there unless you enjoy watching drug addicts threaten security for stopping them for stealing or having them cut in line in front of you.
Why do people in SF just put up with this? If it were anywhere else in the country I’d think mayor would be ousted by someone who’d clean up the city. And I’m not talking about homelessness in general. New York has plenty but at least it’s somewhat under control. No companies are leaving or putting these sorts of barriers in place because of it.
I live in an affulent area of one of the wealthiest counties in the country. The homeless rate and crime rate are significantly lower than the national average for the county as a whole and the numbers for my area of the county are significantly lower than the county as a whole. I went into a local grocery store on Monday and they had installed these gates at some point over the last week.
Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#15Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That said, I wonder what happens at safeway during a fire or shooter. During a fire, the gate controller will have a fire alarm input on the terminal block wired to an output from the fire alarm system that will open the gate if the fire alarm system activates. All automatic doors/gates/card access doors and fire alarm systems work the same way, fail open on fire alarm signal. If there was a duress button system at…
At least in most jurisdictions, the egress to a gathering area can __never__ be blocked, there is some provisions for delay on emergency exits, but those require NRTL certification, and are actually usually mechanical. You might be able to lock it down during periods of limited occupancy, and you can rig it to an annoying alarm, and maybe try to identify the person, and ban them from future. It is possible to get var…
Thanks for clarifying the finer points, my exposure to these systems is sending people to wire them up (mostly electrical but sometimes the control wiring) and not so much on the code side.
I looked up a wiring diagram for a similar gate and saw it had a fire alarm input so I assumed the AHJ in this case approved it based on the ability for the gate to open when an alarm condition is detected. That being said, it seems like a danger to me.
A regional hardware store chain has turnstiles at the entry points and swing gates at exits, which seems much safer for access control in a big box store.
Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#17I agree it sucks this is necessary but given the situation in that area I'm not sure it's fair to just blame the retailers. It's either increasingly invasive things like this or locking most products away behind glass reducing convenience and increasing wait times - or raising prices even further to pay for more loss prevention staff (at SF wages on top of already pricey SF lease costs).
Many other retailers have already relocated elsewhere, so at least Safeway is still there trying to provide people with a local option.
Re: At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something
#18I used to live near this store. It was not a pleasant experience to shop there unless you enjoy watching drug addicts threaten security for stopping them for stealing or having them cut in line in front of you.
Why do people in SF just put up with this? If it were anywhere else in the country I’d think mayor would be ousted by someone who’d clean up the city. And I’m not talking about homelessness in general. New York has plenty but at least it’s somewhat under control. No companies are leaving or putting these sorts of barriers in place because of it.
> I’d think mayor would be ousted
That already happened in SF, although it took far too long. So far, things haven't improved much or, alternatively, have gotten even worse. It depends on who you ask and where they happen to stand on highly-politicized SF city governance issues.
That politicization is really the root cause of all this - and it goes back decades. Long enough to undermine or weaken so many underlying structural fundamentals it may not even be possible to fix anytime soon. Realizing this, I got out quite a while ago.