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Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

sfgate.com

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Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#41

Post by happytoexplain »

woodruffw wrote: post #37
adventured wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fascinating. I grew up in an area - Appalachia, specifically an area among the poorest regions east of the Mississippi - with entrenched forever poverty, and vast underinvestment in pretty much every way you could name. It never occurred to anyone to put together organized retail crime gangs and endlessly plunder local stores until they were all forced to close. What other excuses do you have?

> It never occurred to anyone to put together organized retail crime gangs and endlessly plunder local stores until they were all forced to close. I'm not particularly invested in defending SF, but comparing shoplifting in a dense urban center to one of the least densely populated regions of the Eastern US doesn't make a ton of sense. It occurs to me that Appalachia has plenty of entrenched and even organized crime (…

>I'm not particularly invested in defending SF

It's depressing that we need prefaces like this.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#42

Post by speedybird »

nimos wrote: post #8

Surprised how far out those stores are - only the 300 Gough St one is really close to the Tenderloin.

The organized retail theft gangs have get-away cars (often nice ones.) They can drive to wherever the pickings are good.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#43

Post by sammalloy »

mikysco wrote: post #25
sammalloy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to add to your comment, that the problem with Walgreens security in SF is well known, far before the issues with the changes in the law took front and center. I actually had a conversation with a friend about how bad their security was back in 2007. The issue is purely one of store layout and design. They could easily fix that and solve most of the problem.

I feel like criminals are also abundantly aware at this point they won't face prosecution from SF's DA, so feel agency to commit "minor" crimes like this with impunity. But most of the SF stores do have a very old-school layout.

One way to solve the problem, is to put a counter in front of all the merchandise, make everyone use a shopping cart in the app as they walk around the store, allowing you to use your camera to snap images of products you want, or choose from a list, which the app checks and converts to real time inventory, and adds to your cart as needed. Then, check out and pay for it either online or at the counter, and pick up your items. Problem solved.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#44

Post by potiuper »

gruez wrote: post #38
l- wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting closer to being a capitalist utopia. No retail stores, no theft. All items have to be ordered online, rule by code. It would be interesting to know the stores financial statements to see if this was just an excuse to get rid of the retail footprint due to sales & property tax in SF. The current building demand with low interest rates and COVID re-opening should more than compensate the remodeling costs.

People flagrantly disregarding property rights is a "capitalist utopia"?

It is assumed. Property rights require enforcement. Changing the enforcement from a public taxed expense to a private one is capitalistic rather than socialistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKz1ibLYgk

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#45

Post by speedybird »

woodruffw wrote: post #32
zz865 wrote: post #13

NYC is similar https://nypost.com/2021/10/02/nyc-man-leads-record-shatterin... > Rodriguez is finally in jail, but he rode the city’s revolving door of justice to allegedly rip off Walgreens 37 times this year. He was particularly partial to the drug store at 91-08 Roosevelt Ave. in Jackson Heights, which he hit 23 times, police said.

The NY Post has an editorial incentive to hype up cases like this. Having lived in the city my entire life: I've never heard anything remotely similar to this. It's a bit like the guy who keeps trying to steal subway trains[1]: you can write a great breathless article about him, but there's still only one of him. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum

Maybe this Rodriguez is the single guy in the city who decided to make crime a career. Or maybe he's the single guy the city permitted to get away with it for so long. No systemic problems, just one particular guy who is singled out for exceptionally tolerant treatment by the system.. for some reason.

Probably not though. I bet there are dozens if not hundreds more like him.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#46

Post by gruez »

throwaway3776 wrote: post #39

Throwaway, but I can assure you as an SF resident, most of us are more than happy to see Walgreens go. They pay and treat their employees terribly along with pushing junk food and other garbage to people just trying to fill a prescription. We are excited for quality, owner operated pharmacies to return and replace them. Just like they served us before Walgreens came in and muscled them all out of business. It’s almos…

>We are excited for quality, owner operated pharmacies to return and replace them. Just like they served us before Walgreens came in and muscled them all out of business.

What makes you think that the owner operated pharmacies won't be targeted by shoplifters? Are a significant chunk of the shoplifters doing it for ideological reasons?

>It’s almost as if not looking out for your community results in that community not looking out for you.

Sounds like victim blaming to me. The whole point of having laws and law enforcement is to have an official way to pay your dues to the community and get protection in return, rather than having to pay for "protection" from the community itself.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#47

Post by speedybird »

potiuper wrote: post #44
gruez wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People flagrantly disregarding property rights is a "capitalist utopia"?

It is assumed. Property rights require enforcement. Changing the enforcement from a public taxed expense to a private one is capitalistic rather than socialistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKz1ibLYgk

I think you're confusing capitalism for anarcho-capitalism or something like that. I think most self described "capitalists" support the existence of a government that, at the very least, enforces property rights and resolves contract disputes. 'Capitalism' is not synonymous with 'no government.'

Nearly all libertarians I've ever met will readily admit that some form of government existing is desirable. Their disputes with socialists are all in shades of gray. In internet discussions on platforms that amplify extremism (reddit, etc), it may seem like the the two camps are "no government" anarcho-libertarians vs "all the government" totalitarian-communists, but in my experience either of these extreme positions are so rare they're hardly worth considering at all.

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#48

Post by woodruffw »

gruez wrote: post #40
woodruffw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NY Post has an editorial incentive to hype up cases like this. Having lived in the city my entire life: I've never heard anything remotely similar to this. It's a bit like the guy who keeps trying to steal subway trains[1]: you can write a great breathless article about him, but there's still only one of him. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum

>you can write a great breathless article about him, but there's still only one of him. Right, but even if 46 arrests in a year isn't representative of the median shoplifter, it's still an appalling example. Why is the justice system so ineffective that a shoplifter is allowed to be arrested 46 times in a year? You'd think by the 4th or 5th one he'd be denied bail.

> You'd think by the 4th or 5th one he'd be denied bail.

I don't think the article says, but I suspect that he probably hasn't had a bail hearing related to these arrests this year. The court system is badly backlogged, and the alternative would be indefinite detention (here is where I'd expect the civil libertarians to come marching in, but there's always curious silence when it's someone like this).

Re: Walgreens closing 5 San Francisco stores due to 'organized retail crime'

#49

Post by wahern »

nostromo wrote: post #31
Veliladon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF went from $668 million in 19/20 to $661 million in 20/21 for the SFPD, mainly due to police not being required as much at SFO. If the police can't stop crime and enforce the laws of 47 square miles and 874,961 residents for the princely sum of $755 per person/year or $14 million per square mile/year what exactly are people paying for? Like if I told you that you pay $62/mo for a police subscription and this was th…

This has nothing to do with policing and everything to do with local prosecutors, judges, and city leadership.

A lot of SF judges have been elected on a platform of being less harsh on defendants, and stricter with prosecutors. I don't know this particular judge's politics, but one SF judge recently opened up in open court on the incompetence of District Attorney Boudin's office that resulted in it dropping a criminal case: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-judge-blasts-DA-C...

Boudin and his defenders have been trying to spin the rebuke (including the apology, which was actually to the trial attorney, not Boudin), but the comments are perfectly consistent with this critique of Boudin's office from earlier this year: https://www.marinatimes.com/why-colleagues-say-district-atto...

Boudin famously fired at least 7 veteran prosecutors immediately after taking office. (https://www.kqed.org/news/11795676/why-did-san-franciscos-ne...) I'm not sure how many more prosecutors were fired or left after that, but as far as I can tell 7 is about half of the total number of prosecutors. And he seems to have replaced them with public defenders and fresh law graduates who have no experience prosecuting cases. (Boudin himself had never prosecuted a case.)

Boudin doesn't deserve all the blame. His predecessor, Gascon, made several changes that already made the San Francisco District Attorney's Office one of the most lenient in the country. People compare Boudin to the reformist D.A. in Philadelphia, but the better comparison is Gascon; Boudin took things to a whole new level, far beyond the reforms in Philadelphia or in the national conversation.

I've always been on board with Boudin's push for more lenient sentencing. But that's just a small part of his agenda, much of which simply translates as no sentencing. And because of general incompetence he's flubbing everything, resulting in him becoming defensive, spinning and lying about cases (e.g. most recently--last couple weeks--a controversy about disparate treatment of some pedestrian death cases that resulted in his firing the office's victims' advocate) that really should have seen both better attention by his office and, mistakes notwithstanding, a better defense in the media.

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