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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'

#51

Post by woodruffw »

speedybird wrote: post #45
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

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.

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

To be clear: betting like this is baseless speculation. I'm telling you from lived experience that it just isn't that common here, especially when you factor in how dense and populous NYC is compared to SF.

And it's probably not the case that he's "singled out" in any way (other than for reporting by the NYP). He's the "spiders Georg"[1] of shoplifting. There's always one!

[1]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spiders-georg

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

#52

Post by lookalike74 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #12
nimos wrote: post #8

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

You want to be where the police aren't. A bank near me gets robbed a few times a year because the neighborhood is safe and isolated enough that the city mostly avoids stationing officers nearby.

How do they know that, are they exit polling the robbers?

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

#53

Post by throwoutway »

zardo wrote: post #50

Walgreens is losing money and shutting down hundreds of stores nation wide.

> During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.”

From the article. This isn’t normal

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

#54

Post by grandmczeb »

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…

I’m also a SF resident and the above comment does not represent the vast majority of people here. A good example is Ahsha Safai’s comment (the supervisor for district 11):

“I am completely devastated by this news - this Walgreens is less than a mile from seven schools and has been a staple for seniors, families and children for decades. This closure will significantly impact this community.”

https://twitter.com/ahsha_safai/status/1447988178586013698?s...

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

#55

Post by speedybird »

woodruffw wrote: post #51
speedybird wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I bet there are dozens if not hundreds more like him. To be clear: betting like this is baseless speculation. I'm telling you from lived experience that it just isn't that common here, especially when you factor in how dense and populous NYC is compared to SF. And it's probably not the case that he's "singled out" in any way (other than for reporting by the NYP). He's the "spiders Georg"[1] of shoplifting. There's…

> To be clear: betting like this is baseless speculation.

It is speculation, but it is not baseless. I base my speculation on a foundation of N=1, which may not be very firm but is not baseless.

Just now though, I clicked through to that nypost article and found this:

> There are 77 other thieves right now walking the streets of New York with rap sheets of 20 or more shoplifting charges, NYPD sources say.

77 is a bit more than 6 dozen, so I feel vindicated. My speculation was accurate.

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

#56

Post by xrd »

I wonder if there is some Marxist website somewhere celebrating this.

These huge businesses like Walmart, Walgreens and Starbucks target and study successful mom and pop businesses and then move in ruthlessly. In Portland I've seen so many great local businesses destroyed because they couldn't compete with the large chains. And, if that eventually doesn't work out for the chain, they close up shop.

Amazon and Walmart have destroyed small mom and pop grocery stores across the country.

I bet these retail gangs wouldn't go after a mom and pop shop of any kind. The owner would probably fight them with their bare hands. That's why they are going after Walgreens.

In some weird way, this feels like capitalism, actually. It's just a hidden facet we don't see often.

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

#57

Post by woodruffw »

happytoexplain wrote: post #41
woodruffw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It was a little clumsy of me, but I was trying to hedge between the normal reactionary critiques of SF and something more constructive. NYC has plenty of problems, some of which are a lot worse than SF's, but we don't have anything really resembling this.

Why? Probably a lot of reasons. But it certainly doesn't hurt that we have a (mostly court-backed) housing mandate, and the country's largest youth employment program[1].

[1]: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dycd/services/jobs-internships/abo...

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

#58

Post by DantesKite »

xrd wrote: post #56

I wonder if there is some Marxist website somewhere celebrating this. These huge businesses like Walmart, Walgreens and Starbucks target and study successful mom and pop businesses and then move in ruthlessly. In Portland I've seen so many great local businesses destroyed because they couldn't compete with the large chains. And, if that eventually doesn't work out for the chain, they close up shop. Amazon and Walmart…

> I bet these retail gangs wouldn't go after a mom and pop shop of any kind. The owner would probably fight them with their bare hands. That's why they are going after Walgreens.

That's a big assumption...If elderly Asian people are being attacked on the streets, I don't think their moral code extends to mom and pop shops, even if they're willing to throw down, unless they bring out guns.

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

#59

Post by xrd »

BobbyJo wrote: post #24
google234123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> organized nonfeasance as leadership political protest Nope, this is fake news. You should learn more about your DA Chesa Boudin. He rarely brings cases to trial, fired a bunch of prosecutors and 30 others have left, and removed cash bail which puts repeat offenders right back on the street after arrest.

The police don't want to arrest criminals and fill out paperwork if the people they pick up aren't going to be held. That's a knock on effect of what you're describing.

I don't want to fill out TPF reports either but if that's a requirement of my job, shouldn't I do it?

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

#60

Post by throwawaylinux »

BobbyJo wrote: post #21
rgergerger4 wrote: post #14

In a few years we will be hearing about all the food deserts in San Francisco and how they stem from racism and white supremacy...

Historic racism -> Intergenerational poverty -> Crime -> Area divestment -> Food desert.

Bombarded with suffocating propaganda telling them that society considers them subhuman and they will never succeed on their own merits and their only option is to rely on the benevolence and generosity of the brave and wonderful allies who have taken pity on them. -> Demoralization and withdrawal from constructive participation in society. -> Crime, poverty. -> Poor disadvantaged people stay dependent, on the bottom. -> Self proclaimed allies pushing these policies remain on top and continue to allegedly be the only ones who will fix the problems.

I'm beginning to prefer that theory. Explains some motives a little better.

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