May 25, 2021
SAN FRANCISCO, California—“Woketopia” continues to thrive in the city of San Francisco. Violent attacks toward Asian-Americans have increased exponentially, the homeless population has skyrocketed, human feces and needles litter the streets and petty theft is driving away an array of stores.
Shoplifting has gotten so out of control, Walgreens has permanently closed 17 of its stores. Its closes competitor, CVS, told its employees not to intervene because the thieves often attack anyone who tries to stop them.
According to the Independent, CVS employees now call San Francisco “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime.”
“We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Brendan Dugan, head of CVS’ retail crime division, said at a May 13 hearing with city officials, according to a New York Times report.
Even the San Francisco Police Department agrees the stealing has become an epidemic not seen in the city’s history.
“The one trend we are seeing is more violence and escalating – and much more bold,” Commander Raj Vaswani of the San Francisco Police Department said at the hearing. “We see a lot of repeat offenders.”
In 2014, Californians passed a ballot measure called Proposition 47, which made any nonviolent theft of items worth less than $950 a misdemeanor, not a felony. This was mainly pushed through because the justice system “disproportionately” affected African-American males.
However, this has caused criminals to operate with near impunity because they face no jail time for their offenses. The Independent reports shoplifters were selling items they stole from Walgreen just six blocks away from the Walgreens they stole the items from.
“Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,” Ahsha Safaí, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told The New York Times. “I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.”
“This place is like Africa. I’ve seen a guy defecate on the corner of Stockton St, pull up his pants, walk into a convenience store, steal a pack of toilet paper, wipe his a** inside the store, and walk back out. No one did anything, the store employee didn’t even call the cops,” explained a Chinatown San Francisco resident.
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