Apparently many SFPD officers spent April camped out at a couple high-theft Safeway and Walgreens locations, and these operations brought the arrests of 37 suspects, who were allegedly stealing mostly candy and ice cream.

If you’re shopping (or shoplifting) at your local Safeway or Walgreens, be aware that some of the apparent customers around you just might be plainclothes SF police officers looking to bust people for stealing. The SFPD is obviously aware that Walgreens and Safeway stores are hotbeds for shoplifting, and so they spent April placing undercover officers at the Mission-Bernal Safeway and the Crocker-Amazon Walgreens on Geneva Avenue. And KRON4 reports this effort netted 37 arrests in the month of April.  

“Three operations were held in April 2025,” SFPD said in a Wednesday press release. “These operations resulted in the arrest of 37 suspects for Organized Retail Crime and petty theft.  Thirty-three adult suspects were cited and released at the scene for shoplifting (490.2(a) PC). Four adult suspects were booked at San Francisco County Jail for outstanding warrants and stay-away orders in addition to the on-view theft charges. The stolen property taken by the suspects totaled over approximately $2,500 dollars.”

While 37 suspects sounds like a pretty good haul for SFPD, $2,500 seems like small potatoes compared to some shoplifting arrests we’ve seen. Doing the math, that’s an average of about $67 in merchandise that each suspect allegedly tried to steal, so these were not huge busts.  

Still, it may serve as a deterrent from future shoplifting. And while 33 of the 37 suspects were just given a citation and let go, that is four people with arrest warrants or stay-away orders that did have to serve some jail time.

While arrests have been made, this is an ongoing investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

Related: Retail Theft Crackdown Targeting Safeway Stores, Walgreens In SF Yields 61 Arrests [SFist]

Image: @SFPD via Twitter

It was a violent morning on Castro Street Wednesday when an employee at the Walgreens store there allegedly stabbed a shoplifter in the eye during a street altercation.

It's not clear how things escalated, but what is clear from video that was taken of the incident from across the street is that a man with a backpack was chased out of the store by a security guard and a store employee wearing a blue shirt and face mask, and he was physically attacked by both men until he dropped an object he had in his hand.

The video, posted by the Xitter account FriscoLive415, then shows the man with the backpack recrossing Castro Street and having some kind of exchange outside the Walgreens with the security guard. At that point, the employee can be seen emerging again, possibly with a weapon of some kind in his hand. After he and the shoplifting suspect exchange words, there is another physical confrontation and the suspect falls the ground and curls up in pain.

A second, more graphic video shows the bloody aftermath.

This all happened around 5 am Wednesday. The Chronicle reports that SFPD officers arrived on the scene and arrested the store employee, identified as 45-year-old Guang Hong, as well as the suspected shoplifter, who is identified as 30-year-old Larry Whitlock.

Hong is being held on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

Whitlock was cited for battery and petty theft and taken to the hospital for his injuries.

Confrontations between employees and shoplifters at CVS and Walgreens stores have been unfortunately common in recent years in SF, and one such confrontation turned deadly two years ago. A hired security guard at a Walgreens on Market Street fatally shot 24-year-old Banko Brown, who was trying to exit the store with some stolen candy, after getting into a physical altercation.

The latest effort to tamp down the illegal vending scene in SF is a state-level bill from state Senator Scott Wiener, though it only applies to San Francisco, and Wiener has lined up Mayor Lurie and several SF supervisors to support it.

For at least the last three years now, San Francisco has been struggling with a surge of illegal street vending at certain high-foot traffic street corners in the Mission District, Civic Center, and South of Market. The city has attempted numerous crackdown mechanisms, like trying to permit vendors, a vending moratorium on Mission Street, and even briefly those bizarre fences at 24th and Mission Street. These tactics have all had very mixed results at best, as illegal vending continues to contribute to the existing street chaos of open drug use and homelessness in those areas.

Now state Senator Scott Wiener is proposing a new anti-street vending state law that would give police more powers to cite and arrest illegal vendors, according to the Chronicle. And even though it’s a state law, Mission Local reports it will only apply to San Francisco, and thus Wiener introduced it in SF today, flanked by Mayor Daniel Lurie, and Supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Danny Sauter, and Bilal Mahmood.

“Criminal organizations are fueling retail theft and bringing violence and chaos to our streets, displacing legitimate street vendors, harming local businesses, and undermining public safety,” Wiener said in a press release that was distributed before Monday’s press conference. “The SAFE Streets Act holds these disruptors accountable and allows our communities to flourish.”

The acronym in “SAFE Street Act” stands for “San Francisco Allows Fencing Enforcement on our Streets.”

It’s a different version of a law Wiener tried to get passed last year, but it died in committee. The new proposed law would allow the SF Board of Supervisors to create a list of commonly stolen goods in retail theft operations (deodorant, laundry detergent, etc.). Anyone selling those designated items would need a permit, or proof that they had purchased it. Police will confiscate the goods and issue citations for the first two violations, the third violation would result in a misdemeanor charge, with a possible six-month jail sentence.

There is of course already a vending ban on Mission Street, but it’s not always enforced, particularly at night. And Wiener’s bill (which does not apply to vendors selling prepared food, like the bacon-wrapped hot dog carts) puts more enforcement in the hands of police, instead of Public Works employees.  

And really, the only tactic that ever seems to work to discourage this illegal vending is to have police presence at the corners. From a staffing standpoint, it’s not possible to have police stationed at those corners 24/7.

"It’s largely tolerated," one illegal Mission Street vendor told the Chronicle. That vendor admitted to the Chronicle that he was selling shoplifted stuff. "I call it the acquisition and redistribution of needlessly overpriced consumer goods."

And in a strange insight into that illegal vending culture, the Chronicle adds that particular vendor “said he steals products from convenience stores and sells them on the sidewalk to pay for drugs or a new phone, which he loses about every three days."

We’ll see if Wiener’s new law, if it does indeed pass and becomes law, would be any more effective than previous efforts to bust up these vending scenes.

Related: New State Legislation Targets Street Vendors Selling Stolen Goods, Permitted Vendors Are All For It [SFist]

Image: SFGovTV via YouTube

On a quarterly earnings call, the CEO of Walgreens conceded that putting items behind lock and key has hurt the company’s sales, because no one wants to shop in a store where even the toothpaste is behind glass.

The retail pharmacy chain Walgreens (or rather, its parent company Walgreens Boots Alliance) had its quarterly earnings call on Friday, the day after announcing they were closing 1,200 stores nationwide, including 12 Walgreens stores in San Francisco.

And that earnings call explained why they’re closing so many stores, as Walgreens lost $245 million this quarter, compared to a loss of just $39 million in the same quarter of the previous year.    

Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Tim Wentworth admitted on the call one big reason why their sales have slumped so much over the last year. Wentworth conceded that the stores’ wildly unpopular policy of locking up so many retail items to prevent shoplifting has also significantly hurt Walgreens sales, as CBS News reports.

“When you lock things up, for example, you don’t sell as many of them,” Wentworth said, according to a transcript of the call. “We’ve kind of proven that pretty conclusively.”

That said, Wentworth did not make any grand announcements about removing the locks in the chain’s ongoing struggle with shoplifting. "I don't have anything magnificent to share with you today,” he said. “It is a hand-to-hand combat battle still, unfortunately."

Admitting that locking up store items was a poor choice brings to mind a previous Walgreens CEO admission in January 2023 that "Maybe we cried too much” about shoplifting. Though in fairness, that was a different Walgreens CEO. The CEO who said "Maybe we cried too much” was then-CEO James Kehoe. Tim Wentworth replaced Kehoe as Walgreens CEO in October 2023.

Related: Walgreens Closing 12 SF Stores In Late February, Here’s a Map Showing Which Ones are Closing [SFist]

Image: Rich U via Yelp

These unauthorized signs were apparently real and placed in Union Square, creating a viral uproar among people who believed the signs’ official-looking claim that "stolen goods must remain under $950."

Among the community of people who actually pay Elon Musk $8 a month for a blue check mark on Twitter, the latest outrage du jour is a series of signs spotted near high-end Union Square SF retailers saying, “Notice, Stolen goods must remain under $950.”

Many are taking these signs at face value, and believe the City of San Francisco is legitimately giving shoplifting advice.

This gag is likely a reference to 2014’s voter-approved state law Prop 47, which makes the theft of stolen property worth less than $950 a misdemeanor charge rather than a felony. That law has long been blamed for California’s crime situation, and it may be revised by a ballot measure this year.

The signs were not sanctioned, and were probably a prank. The Chronicle got a response out of Public Works, who said they had nothing to do with the unauthorized signs, and the Chron reports that “a city staffer was sent out to investigate but didn’t see any signs.”

Gizmodo was also on the case. “They’re photos of a ‘real’ sign in the sense that they weren’t created using programs like OpenAI or Photoshop,” that site explains. “The sign was captured from multiple angles, as you can see above.”

Additionally, Gizmodo adds that “while they look professionally done, the signs had subtle clues indicating they weren’t real (including screws that look different from those used by the city), which proves they were installed by anonymous pranksters.”

So yes, this was once again the work of pranksters. But we gotta admit, some of the Twitter responses were pretty funny.

Related: SF Artist Lampoons Empty Downtown Spaces By Covering Google Office Sign With Spirit Halloween Store Sign [SFist]

Image: @transmissions11 via Twitter

A SoCal state Senator is pushing a new bill that would eliminate self-checkout stands from many stores in California, under the reasoning that self-checkout is responsible for a whole lot of shoplifting, and to keep more human cashiers employed.  

We are already seeing some retailers abandoning their self-checkout stations that they paid good money to install, with several Bay Area Target and Safeway stores ditching self-checkout because it seems to have facilitated shoplifting. Indeed, some of SF's most notorious serial shoplifters frequently used self-checkout as part of their schemes.

But the removal of some of those self-checkout stands is not enough for one state lawmaker, as KGO reports on a proposed new bill that would eliminate self-checkout for many stores in California.

It’s called Senate Bill 1446, and Los Angeles state Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas’s bill would not completely ban self-checkout in the state. Instead, stores using self-checkout would have to meet several criteria, “including having no more than 2 self-service checkout stations monitored by any one employee and requiring the employee to be relieved of all other duties.”

But many of the bill’s supporters say its real value would be cutting down on retail theft.

"The hope is that we can reduce the amount of theft that happens. That's a much better solution than punishing theft after it occurs," Prosecutors Alliance of California executive director Cristine Soto DeBerry told KGO. "There's data on this that shows there is stuff that happens at self-checkouts."

The California Chamber of Commerce is against the idea, saying the self-checkout technology is important for retailers to keep labor costs low.

"In part it's codifying some requirements that I think, from our perspective, are a little heavy-handed, as far as getting down into the granularity of how business or a store needs to operate," the chamber’s senior policy advocate Ashley Hoffman said to KGO.

Self-checkout seems to be working for some retail franchises, and not for others. This seems like a decision that maybe just ought to be made by the retailers themselves. But it is surprising to see how many retailers spent heavily to install that self-checkout machinery, and then decided that the benefits just don’t check out.

Related: Sure Enough, Shoplifting Was Not the Reason For the Closure of Target at Folsom and 13th Streets [SFist]

Image: A girl customer scans and pays for bottle of juice from a supermarket in an automated self-service checkout terminal (Getty Images)

Another brazen Walgreens shoplifting heist was captured on video Sunday, as burglars emptied the shelves of the Ninth and Market street store, but police did not respond to the incident until four hours later.

We’ve long wisecracked that the Civic Center Walgreens at Ninth and Market streets is “San Francisco's worst Walgreens.” Its reputation will not be helped by a Monday night KPIX report that this Walgreens was ransacked by shoplifters at about 4:30 pm on Easter Sunday afternoon. The plundering was captured on video, but what may be more newsworthy here is that SFPD did not respond until four hours after the incident.  

The KPIX report is seen above, and the video was taken by an unidentified KPIX producer who just happened to be shopping in the store. There are at least a half-dozen culprits, masked and concealing their faces with hoodies. They seem to be aware that they’re being recorded, though as is the case with many of these Walgreens thefts, there is no visible response or intervention by store security.

We understand that Walgreens security guards may have limited their hands-on engagement since last April’s Banko Brown shooting, but there is no visible security presence seen in this video.

"End of the day on Easter Sunday should have been pleasant,” the KPIX producer, who declined to give his name, told the station. “Instead I was shocked to see looters taking what they pleased with no regard for the law, or those around them, real-life smash and grab."

Another thing we may be shocked to see is that SFPD did not respond to the incident for four hours. KPIX did get an emailed statement about the incident from SFPD, which they paraphrase as saying “officers responded at about 8:38 p.m. to a report of a group of people stealing from a business on the 1300 block of Market Street.” So that’s about a solid four hours after the incident took place.

But KPIX also adds that “Officers arrived to find the business was closed and no one was there to report the incident.” Admittedly, we are missing the crucial piece of information of what time police were called. But this sure could feed into the “Police did nothing” narrative we’ve heard before.

That district’s supervisor Matt Dorsey, a former SF Police public relations rep who sees giving the police more money as the solution to every SF problem, says this sort of thing can be prevented if we hire more police officers.

"If we had a fully staffed police department, we could have a robbery unit that was doing more enforcement in places where retail theft plays out, holding more people accountable and doing more to go after the fencing operations that make this lucrative," Dorsey told KPIX.

That station estimates that 17 San Francisco Walgreens locations have closed since 2019, most recently in February in the Financial District. Though many of these closures were announced in 2019 after the chain had over-expanded, and it's debatable whether shoplifting played a major role in the closures.  

Related: Group of Suspects Ransacks and Robs Walgreens Store In Castro [SFist]

Image: Kevin Y. via Yelp

One SoCal woman allegedly netted $8 million by selling shoplifted cosmetics on Amazon, while a San Jose operation reportedly made a mint reselling stolen TJ Maxx items at flea markets, as organized retail theft operations become more ruthlessly organized.

Do you sometimes shop on Amazon because you can find great deals? And are you frustrated with the chronic shoplifting that leads to retail items being locked up in stores? You might want to sit down for the news that these two phenomena may be directly related.

An exhaustive new CNBC investigation into organized retail shoplifting shows that some shoplifters work for highly sophisticated operations, with one of them making $8 million on Amazon selling stolen goods to unsuspecting online shoppers.

The CliffsNotes version of the report is in the video segment above, but CNBC was embedded with the California Highway Patrol’s organized retail theft program for eight months. They found that yes, many shoplifters are just homeless or mentally ill. But others are part of large, ruthlessly efficient operations that go to great lengths to conceal that the goods are stolen.

“We’re talking about operations that have fleets of trucks, 18-wheelers that have palletized loads of stolen goods, that have cleaning crews that actually clean the goods to make them look brand new,” Homeland Security Operations assistant special agent Adam Parks told CNBC. "Just like any business, they’ve invested their capital into business assets like shrink wrap machines, forklifts."

The report details how these operations work with three levels of staff. There are the “boosters,” the retail thieves themselves who steal the loot. There are also recruiters of thieves, who can also act as middlemen to move the goods to shady online resellers. And then there are the kingpins, whom law enforcement call “fencers,” and CNBC says they resell the items “at a margin Wall Street could only dream of.”

CNBC observed one operation in New Orleans, where undercover agents staked out some Walgreens and CVS stores that experienced as many as 20-30 shoplifting incidents per day. But they didn’t arrest anyone, they just watched the thieves, and followed them out of the stores to see what they did next.

One suspect they observed pulled a bag out of his pants and filled it with 17 jars of nail polish. Per CNBC, he left the store and then “sold the nail polish to a security guard” at the New Orleans Public Library. Are the security guards in on it, too? That’s probably a one-off, but who knows how many one-offs there are out there.

Here in the Bay Area, CNBC was with California Highway Patrol (CHP) San Jose officers when they raided what that outlet calls an “innocuous single-family home with Christmas decorations out front” — one of five locations at which suspected San Jose ring was storing mountains of stolen goods. Officers found “dozens of discarded clothing tags, anti-theft devices, hangers and other retail store detritus” in the property’s yard, and seized “enough suspected stolen merchandise to fill three 20-foot-long U-Haul trucks.”

The items were generally jugs of liquid detergent, Gillette razors, and Olay moisturizer, which CHP had been tracking since they were stolen from TJ Maxx and various drug stores. That case is still being prosecuted, but the suspects are accused of reselling the items to larger-scale fencers, or simply at the Capitol Flea Market in San Jose.

The Capitol Flea Market did not return a request for comment. But large flea markets seem to be another lucrative front for these operations to move hot merchandise.

And then we have the case of Michelle Mack, the accused ringleader of a shoplifting ring investigators dubbed the “California Girls.” Mack is alleged to have run a 11-state shoplifting ring out of her luxury San Diego home, paying the airfare and travel expenses of a team of shoplifters directed to steal cosmetics and other items from Bloomingdale’s, Prada, Sunglass Hut and more.

Mack operated an Amazon shop called Online Makeup Store, which between 2012 and 2023 sold cosmetics and retail goods at around half their normal cost. Prosecutors say Mack netted $8 million selling stolen goods over that period, and $1.89 million in 2022 alone.

CNBC was there for the raid of Mack’s home, where they say she had “shelves and shelves of beauty products, sunglasses and designer bags organized in neat bins and categorized by product.”

“This is a multimillion-dollar criminal scheme. It was complex. It was orchestrated,” state AG Rob Bonta said when announcing against Mack. charges. “We are not talking about garden-variety shoplifting.”

And the retail companies are on to the fact that large online sales platforms are playing a role in organized retail theft, through they are reticent to mention Amazon by name.

“There’s an ease of distribution that has become even more prevalent for stolen goods through online marketplaces,” Ulta Beauty CEO Dave Kimbel told CNBC.

“You used to have to sell stolen goods at flea markets or out of the trunk of your car or maybe just locally,” he added. “Now, you have more sophisticated tools to have a broader reach across the country or even internationally.”

Congress passed the Inform Consumers Act last summer, which requires the online platforms to verify information on third-party sellers. But it didn’t stop Mack’s operation, which worked in full view of Inform Consumers Act compliance.

Related: Two New SF Proposals Target Resale Markets Where Shoplifting Rings Sell Their Stuff [SFist]

Image: California Highway Patrol

The $40,000 in allegedly stolen merchandise from Target is just one of the many SF shoplifting cases against Aziza Graves, who is not in jail, but instead back in court for hearings that have dragged on for nearly two and half years.  

It was way back in November 2021 when we first heard about mind-boggling mass shoplifting allegations against San Francisco woman Aziza Graves, who at that point was accused of 128 counts of theft for stealing $40,000 of merchandise from the Stonestown Target. (She would allegedly go to the self-checkout, pay $1, or even one cent, and just walk off with the rest of the stuff.) Then-DA Chesa Boudin wanted her locked up, but a judge let her go, and she was arrested again less than a month later for shoplifting at the Westfield Centre.  

Fast forward to now two and half years later, and KGO reports that Graves is still on the streets as her trials inch forward. The KGO I-Team segment above details the length of these criminal proceedings, speaks to DA Brooke Jenkins about how on earth this notorious serial shoplifting suspect is still free, and even gets some degree of comment out of Graves herself.

The segment does push DA Jenkins’s narrative that Boudin was too soft on crime, though the supposedly tougher-on-crime Jenkins is getting the exact same result with Graves’s case, but these days it’s somehow all the judge’s fault instead of the DA’s fault.

“There are judges who will offer their own plea bargain to defendants of ours, they have the ability to do that,” Jenkins told KGO. "We're having that happen in a case right now involving a repeat offender of theft."

Jenkins was referring to Graves’s case.

KGO also tried to get comment from Graves herself, who is apparently homeless, during one of her “more than two dozen” court appearances. At one point she appears ready to give comment, but it seems her offscreen public defender (wisely) discourages this, and she cuts it off by saying “I don’t want to do this, this is stupid.”

But she did respond to a KGO email request, in which she maintained her innocence. But she did so in terms that, well, maybe do not sound like the views of a stable person.

"The machine said payment complete after putting in just one cent,” Graves reportedly wrote. “I had to figure out how one cent could equal 100%." She also added, "the actual value of what we call a penny is .000001 credits or $100 million."

The judge in Graves’s case, Brendan Conroy, recently offered Graves a plea deal where she could get 138 theft counts reduced to one grand theft charge, with a two-year sentence and credit for time already served. Prosecutors argued this was too lenient, the public defender argued it was too harsh, but that’s how attorneys operate. The plea deal was apparently accepted.

But that plea deal “fell through,” according to KGO, though there’s no information on how or why it fell through. And so Graves is back in court today for another hearing, nearly two and half years after her initial arrest, and she has reportedly racked up many other shoplifting charges since.

Related: Thief In Viral Video at SF Walgreens Arrested After Attempting to Steal Again [SFist]

Image: Luis C. via Yelp

A San Mateo Safeway may regret their decision to fire an employee who stopped a $500 shoplifting attempt, and then deny that employee unemployment benefits, because a state board ruled they have to pay the unemployment, and now a wrongful termination suit is looming.

The grocery chain Safeway has a clean-up on Aisle Seven, at least from an employment law standpoint. You’d think that longtime, 22-year Safeway employee Antoinette Baez would have been named Employee of the Month in February 2023, when she thwarted a shoplifter attempting to steal roughly $500 of groceries from the store on De Anza Boulevard in San Mateo. And Baez even took a punch from that shoplifter, whom she did eventually get to leave the store, and her store manager said she acted appropriately after reviewing video of the incident.  

But the higher-ups at Safeway’s corporate offices apparently did not agree. As KPIX reports, Safeway fired Baez, and even denied her unemployment benefits afterward.

Why did Safeway fire Baez? "Three weeks later, there was an anonymous phone call complaining about her," her attorney Neil Eisenberg told KPIX. "It went to the Safeway board of directors, and in their infinite wisdom, they fired her because she touched the bag."

The company has a policy banning physical contact with customers even if they are committing a crime.

Moreover, the grocery chain denied Baez’s unemployment claims. “Safeway refused to pay unemployment benefits, claiming Baez was fired for misconduct,” as KPIX notes. “So, after 22 years of service, the single mother has been fighting a multi-billion-dollar corporation to collect $450 a week in benefits.”

Baez and her attorney appealed the decision to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, where they were awarded the lost unemployment benefits. "The claimant was aware of the employer's customer service shoplifting policy,” administrative law judge K.A. Duncan wrote in the ruling. “She was not aware she could be terminated for performing her duties, while on or off the clock, and without a warning."

Safeway is not appealing that ruling, so Baez will get her unemployment benefits, plus lost benefits for the period Safeway wasn’t paying. But the grocery chain may not be out of the woods on this one yet, as Baez’s attorney is also vowing to file a wrongful termination lawsuit.

Related: SFPD Touts 60 Arrests In New Retail Shoplifting Crackdown [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

SFPD is hailing it as proof that their crackdown is working that both internal and external data show a decline in San Francisco retail theft, though it’s not yet a long-term trend, and the findings could just be statistical noise.

The San Francisco Police Department is tooting their own horn today over a “blitz” operation that arrested 17 shoplifting suspects in one day at the Target at Mission and Fourth streets. “On Tuesday, November 28, 2023, the operation, named ‘Blitz ‘23’ was successful in arresting a total of seventeen adult suspects listed below,” SFPD said in a press release. “Two of the suspects had outstanding arrest warrants. The stolen property was seized by officers during the operation and returned to the store.”

SFPD didn’t mention that it was Target where this operation was conducted. But the Chronicle reported this detail, in their larger analysis saying that retail theft is down in San Francisco. Or at least, that’s what SFPD data says, and that conclusion is seconded by a new independent report that says retail theft has dropped by 35% compared to last year.

“We are also sensing a palpable improvement in the streets, just in time for the holidays,” Union Square Alliance CEO Marisa Rodriguez told the Chronicle. “These statistics are trending in the right direction and align with our strong momentum.”

And it’s not just Union Square, which had regrettably become famed for high-profile smash-and-grab incidents, but has since been well-bolstered with patrol officers. According to the Chron’s read on SFPD data, the decline in theft is citywide.

“Larceny cases over Thanksgiving weekend were down about 75% from last year, with 100 reported thefts compared with 401 in 2022,” the Chronicle says using SFPD’s reported statistics. “For the whole Thanksgiving week, there were 206 reports of theft versus 747 last year. Compared to 2021, when the city made national headlines when luxury stores were looted by large crowds in November, reported thefts over the holiday weekend dropped 80%.”

This conclusion is backed by an independent, third-party analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice that found San Francisco has seen a 35% decline in retail theft in the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2022. Though that is not a long-term trend, and it’s essentially just a return to pre-pandemic theft levels.

And shop owners are not all in agreement that shoplifting is down. “We don’t get the wholesale shoplifting in our stores, but we have lots and lots of shoplifting and it is from all segments and all demographics,” Cole Hardware owner Rick Karp told the Chronicle. “We have a lot of stuff locked down and in security cases with hooks and locks on them, but whatever is loose and can go, often does go.”

Related: 30-Year-Old SF Woman Accused of Committing 20 Separate Retail Thefts at Westfield Mall [SFist]

Image: Andrew D. via Yelp

Six weeks after Outer Richmond convenience store clerk Yowhannes “John” Tewelde was fatally beaten trying to stop a shoplifter, the SFPD has arrested 21-year-old Hollister resident Santos De La Rosa for the crime.

It was the night of Thursday, August 24, when an alleged shoplifter plucked a couple beers from the shelves of the Outer Richmond convenience store Richmond Market, and the shop’s 60-year-old cashier Yowhannes “John” Tewelde tried to stop him by wielding a baseball bat. But the suspect knocked Tewelde over and beat him into a coma, and Tewelde died five days later, drawing an outpouring of grief in the neighborhood.

But as seen above, there was security video showing the suspect’s face. And now, Hoodline reports that SFPD arrested a suspect in the killing Wednesday, 21-year-old Santos De La Rosa of Hollister. According to KPIX, De La Rosa has been charged with murder, second-degree robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon, and remains in SFPD custody.

“I would also like to thank the family and friends of the victim for their patience and trust in the system,” SF District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a Thursday statement. “Previously, I offered my condolences, and now I offer my office’s unwavering commitment to fighting for justice in the courtroom.”

Tewelde’s family is still operating a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the costs of his medical bills and funeral.

Per a Thursday morning SFPD press release, De La Rosa was arrested Wednesday in Hollister. Though as the Chronicle points out, De La Rosa’s getaway car driver remains at large.

And so the SFPD investigation is ongoing. If you have any information on this incident, you’re asked to call the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

Related: Richmond Market Store Clerk Has Died From Head Injuries After Assault by Alleged Shoplifter [SFist]

Images: (Left) via GoFundMe, (Right) Steve D. via Yelp

A clerk at a store in El Sobrante is recovering from severe burns that he got in an altercation with a shoplifter two weeks ago.

The man, identified only as Suraj, got into the altercation at Appian Food and Liquor in El Sobrante on September 22. As KPIX reports, the alleged shoplifter had been in the store multiple times that day, and was allegedly attempting to steal lighter fluid when he sprayed the fluid at Suraj's face and lit him on fire.

The disturbing surveillance video can be seen in the KPIX report below. Suraj is at the left of the screen, struggling with the suspect, while another clerk can be seen behind the counter fetching a baseball bat. Suraj then runs off screen.

"He just splashed lighter fluid on my face, and I was so scared that moment," Suraj tells KPIX from the hospital — the burn unit at Saint Francis Memorial in SF. "I tried to cover his hand, but I don't know. I don't remember. He just lit the fire on me you know. I just rushed to the restroom, and I just splashed water on my face."

The victim has now been hospitalized since September 22 with second and third-degree burns on his face, neck, chest, and shoulder.

"It's terrible. You know, I'm still in a trauma right now, me, my family," he said.

His wife, Sabeena, has posted a GoFundMe to help cover his medical expenses, which has so far raised $32,000 of a $100,000 goal.

"As wounds [from burns] takes time to heal and recover and we are overwhelmed by the mental trauma and the pressure of medical procedures, so we are reaching out to you to request for any support or contributions to this fundraiser," she writes.

As KRON4 reports, police arrested 38-year-old Kendall Lavanon Burton for the crime, and as of Monday he has been charged with multiple felonies including criminal mayhem. Burton has a criminal history in multiple NorCal counties dating back to 2004.

Big-box retailer Target announced the closures of nine stores nationwide on Tuesday, and one of them is the Target at Folsom and 13th Streets, while two of the others are in the East Bay.

Condolences are in order for shoppers who rely on the Target at 1690 Folsom Street (at 13th Street), as the Chronicle reports the company announced they’re closing that South of Market location, with the final day being Saturday, October 21. Same goes for the Oakland Target store at 2650 Broadway (at 27th Street), and the Pittsburg Target at 4301 Century Boulevard in the Century Plaza Shopping Center, as the Chronicle adds that Target is closing nine stores nationwide.

“We have made the difficult decision to close nine Target stores across four states, effective Oct. 21.,” the company said in a Tuesday morning press release. “In this case, we cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance. We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all.”

Certainly Target has been affected by crime in the Bay Area; the Metreon Target store somehow had half of all reported SF shoplifting incidents in September 2021, and just months before that, all SF Target stores moved their closing time up to 6 p.m. over crime concerns. The Chron rightfully points out that a viral TikTok video showing lots of merchandise locked up was filmed at that Folsom Street Target.

An Associated Press report (which incorrectly says three SF Target stores are closing, though we know that narrative plays well) otherwise correctly notes that the Folsom Street Target is “under a busy overpass with homeless tents in a largely commercial neighborhood with auto shops.” So maybe not the best location out of Target’s 1,900 stores nationwide.

But CNBC did a deep-dive into big-box retailers’ alleged shoplifting woes last month, and found that retail theft is more than just shoplifting. Namely, employee theft and self-checkout theft are larger issues than many retailers are acknowledging. CNBC says that in terms of self-checkout machines, “The machines come with increased costs. In some stores with high rates of theft, losses are outweighing the investments companies made in them.” (The Folsom Street Target has self-checkout machines.)

Another CNBC report notes that gift card theft and return fraud also contribute substantially to the theft losses that retailers call “shrink.” Meanwhile just today, a separate CNBC report says that the National Federation of Retailers say that theft is at the same level it’s been the last three years, and is not increasing substantially.  Sure, it may be increasing at Target, but shoplifting might not be the only cause for these closures.

With the closure of the Folsom Street store, SF will have three remaining Target locations, and 32 in the Bay Area overall.

Related: Half of All Reported SF Shoplifting Incidents in One Month Came From the Metreon Target [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

After the cashier at an Outer Richmond convenience store was struck with a bat in an alleged shoplifting incident last Thursday, that 60-year-old cashier Yowhannes “John” Tewelde died from his injuries Tuesday afternoon.    

We reported Tuesday on the awful baseball bat attack on the clerk at a convenience store, the Richmond Market at Balboa Street and 41st Avenue. That clerk, 60-year-old Yowhannes “John” Tewelde, had tried to thwart an alleged shoplifter, but was thrown to the ground and suffered head injuries, and then was struck by the suspect with a baseball bat. Tewelde remained in a coma since Thursday evening, but KRON4 reports that tragically, Tewelde died from his injuries Tuesday afternoon.

The announcement came publicly on the GoFundMe page for Yowhannes Tewelde. “I am deeply saddened to share that Yohannes 'John' Tewelde passed away in the SF General Hospital ICU today at 1:58pm,” the page said in a Tuesday update. “John was a beloved member of the community and even more loved by his family and friends. The family has asked me to relay their gratitude for your continued support and asks that your prayers go out for John and his family.”

The page also mentions a vigil for Tewelde scheduled for Thursday evening. “In memory of John, several of us neighbors have decided to organize a Vigil in his memory on Thursday (8/31) at 9pm, a week since the incident. It will be held in front of the Richmond Market on the corner of 41st Avenue and Balboa Street,” the page says.

Security video of the suspect can be seen above via KTVU. At around 9:30 p.m. last Thursday, the suspect entered Richmond Market and stole a bottle of water. That same suspect returned ten minutes later and stole two beers, but Tewelde, with a baseball bat in tow, attempted to block the individual from leaving the store. The suspect knocked Tewelde to the ground, injuring his head, and allegedly struck him with the bat before fleeing.    

Police found Tewelde unconscious, and he never regained consciousness.

If you have any information on this incident, you’re asked to call the SFPD tip line at (415) 575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

Related: Pleasanton Home Depot Employee Shot and Killed When Confronting Shoplifter [SFist]

Image via GoFundMe