This week, a video from a San Francisco Walgreens went viral on Twitter. The video depicted a man standing next to his bicycle, loading up a garbage bag with products. The man then rides his bicycle down the aisle, past a security guard, who limply throws out a hand to try to grab the bag; the shoplifter simply brushes past him, then rides out the door.
This sort of thing has become exceedingly common in San Francisco. In late May, Thomas Fuller wrote in The New York Times, “At a board of supervisors hearing last week, representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable.”
Employees at Walgreens had been told to stand aside as shoplifting took place because security officers had been assaulted repeatedly.
All of this is the result of a 2014 California ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent theft as a misdemeanor, so long as the thief took less than $950 worth of material.
Thieves quickly hit on a strategy: Hit up different stores for less than $950 worth of stuff. Then, amid the Black Lives Matter protests and riots of 2020, San Francisco decided to crack down on the police.
Mayor London Breed announced that booking photos would no longer be released, lest the prevalence of Black and brown faces lead to stereotyping; she announced a $120 million cut to the police and sheriff’s department over the next two years, in the interest of “prioritizing investments in the African American community”; in the first six months of 2020, 23 officers resigned from the force.
Property crime has skyrocketed. It’s not just shoplifting: burglaries increased nearly 50% year-on-year in 2020, and car theft jumped 34%. Meanwhile, the streets are littered with garbage, and have been for years thanks to lax law enforcement. In 2018, a survey of 153 blocks in downtown San Francisco showed trash on every block, 41 blocks “dotted with needles” and 96 blocks with open human feces.
This form of governance has become all too common. Los Angeles, my former hometown, has steadily declined in terms of livability. Suburban areas have been inundated with homeless vagrants, often openly shooting up, while the police have been directed to do nothing; Venice Beach has become an enormous open-air homeless encampment. Seattle has morphed from the Emerald City into a refuge for those living on the street, regardless of the risks to other citizens.
There is a reason why Americans are fleeing America's major cities. The problem predated COVID-19, and it will post-date it, too. Americans like having a Walgreens in their neighborhoods.
They enjoy being able to walk down the sidewalk without severely mentally ill homeless people -- who should be in institutions where they can receive actual care -- urinating on curbs. They should not have to instruct their children to hop over used needles on street corners.
Yet the governance of "compassion" continues. So does the migration away from such foolhardy policy. The top outbound states in America, according to North American Moving Services, were all deep blue: Illinois, New York, California, New Jersey and Maryland. The top inbound states were all red or purple: Idaho, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee and North Carolina.
At some point, there will be no more Walgreens in San Francisco. Then we will undoubtedly hear about how this is the product of systemic racism and white privilege; we will hear tell of the brutality of American capitalism. The truth is far simpler: Where Leftist governance reigns, criminality thrives. And where criminality thrives, Americans flee.
Sad, just sad that nothing is being done about this. WE need to vote conservative Republican for any and all government positions. The Dems are willing to let our cities be destroyed. We need to support our police and let them do their job. WE cannot allow really sick people to roam and destroy our cities.
Unless we get the voter fraud stopped, dems will always win from now on. It won’t matter who you vote for if dominion, the deep state and the NWO can change it at the click of a key
You are 110% correct…voter fraud needs to be brought to the front Bruner and hope AZ is the first state….WI is beginning a forensics audit for nov 2020. We have a lot of discrepancies also to the visual eye
Problem is, as these people leave the blue states and cities, they take their political thinking and actions with them, only to run the new location they moved to.
Better to stay and remove the crappy political machine they created.
Pull out a gun and shoot the assholes. They will get the hint. LOL…remember, the people that vote in the ledaer ship, are OK with all of this. Until it hits them. Low IQ
Agreed!
These douchebags have been coddled and accommodated for far too.long. That hobo with the garbage bag in the store? Should have been clotheslined and gotten the shit beat out of him.
Liberals never get it… You will recieve that which you are willing to tolerate.
If the rule of law doesn’t apply to these leftist toilet bugs, then by extension? It no longer applies to us either!
Its what Dems want for Blue states & cities.
No recourse aside Recall.
In a Race to see whose worst for Blue States
shop lifter are just looters start shooting them..
Not only can’t the democrats govern neither can their President. Biden administration wants to combat domestic terror? Does this means the Dems will stop funding BLM black lives matter?, ANTIFA, you know those militant movements, that attacks any right wing thinking process, police officers, police cars, police stations, and of course anyone they are paid to? Biden’s mind takes Hiatus through out the G7 Conference. His mind is in some type of senile cocoon protected by fools. Sky News host Chris Smith says there was some concerns about US President Joe Biden’s “mental capacity” after a video posted on Friday captured him “wandering around” appearing “lost” in a café in England. The video showed the president appearing “stunned” after someone asked him how his meetings in Cornwall were going. “I know Chris Kenny says the man should be in a home and sometimes I can’t disagree, and he shouldn’t be leading the country,” Mr. Smith showed further gaffes, including one where he said the president “threw his staff under the bus” regarding instructions taking questions from the reporters. “I come back to the point I’ve made before, this guy will be very lucky to last his full term,” Mr. Smith said. Biden also mixed up Syria and Libya three times during the news conference, including when he said, “I’m hopeful that we can find an accommodation where we can save the lives of people in, for example, in Libya,” Fox News reported and in a Q&A session with reporters, Biden admitted that “I’m going to get in trouble with staff” if he strayed from instructions that directed him to give the first question to Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press, a frequent guest on liberal cable news network MSNBC When on the world stage with his peers at the G7 summit this weekend, President Joe Biden had several mental lapses and gaffes. At one point, fellow world leaders openly laughed at Biden over his forgetfulness at the G7 conference in Cornwall, England
What would a reasonable person expect? The remarkable thing is we are admonished for being “racist” yet the truth is “crime follows race”and any honest person is “racist” because of what they see and experience. Don’t hide behind the terms Republican and Democrat, tell the truth and the truth will set you free.
IT IS EVIDENT IN WASHINGTON DC WHERE THERE ARE 800 POLICE VACANCIES FROM THOSE WHO ARE QUITTING. THIS IS DUE TO THE SLIPSHOT GOVERNANCE OF THE MAYOR AND COUNCIL ALONG WITH BLM LOVE AFFAIR. THERE WERE 198 MURDERS LAST YEAR AND WE ARE GOING IN THAT DIRECTION.
unfortunately when the more mobile residents flee the blue cities they take their blue ideas with them and infect red states and cities. I wish the Californians would stay in California and deal with their problems rather than bring their “new ideas” with them to Arizona.
Amen!!
When a youngster asks their well-heeled parent, “why can’t we go walking at the aquarium or Fisherman’s Wharf or any of the places we used to go when we were young?’ The answer is, “Your parents traded money and power for all the things that would have enriched your life. How sad.
Nobody seems to understand that these are not democrats..they are open communists using the name democrat.You are witnessing the communist takeover of our country being done without a shot fired. They have made cops out to be the villains and thugs and criminals to be victims.They have infiltrated the schools and have indoctrinated children to accept perversion and to hate themselves as well as their nation. They mock and attack anything that stands for patriotism and love of country as well as our culture as racist, oppressive , and colonialism.They have turned their eyes towards destroying our military now by ridding it of anyone who is there to actually serve and defend our country out of love and patriotism..they are now called domestic terrorists and extremists.The media is complicit in this.Without them..they would never get away with this. They covered up the theft of the elections.They divide us with fake racism.They silence opposers who might speak out by seeing to it they lose their jobs..or are publicly ostracized. Nobody seems to want to stand up and fight back against this. This is the Obama administrations policies back in place to take us down….and all we do is complain and whine while we watch them go about dismantling our nation and our rights. The first step is that we must turn back to God..how we live and rid ourselves of the sin that is being forced upon us.God said if My people pray, I will heal their land…start praying..and make your families a priority…NOW!
How many of the liberal “blood-sucking” politicians in California live among their constituents? Not many you can be sure. Most live in high rise condominiums or gated communities with armed security guards patrolling the area. They want you and I to live among the chaos they are responsible for. These politicians lives are not affected by damage they have made possible. The D.C. lifestyle, as related to me by a retired member of the Army who served in D.C. as a guardian of members of Congress said it was like nobody outside D.C. would even believe. If anybody ever wondered why politicians fight to spend millions of dollars of other peoples money to get elected the way they live in D.C. is the reason. America never had “royalty” but members of Congress live like it.
Ijust noticed something very odd. Can anyone explain why when I commented the time where I live was 10:10 P.M. CST but the time assigned to my comment was 3:10 A.M. ? What does that say about the location of this site ??