• ICE arrested two protestors who are US citizens outside its 630 Sansome Street field office Friday afternoon before releasing them later that night. Agents reportedly mocked the group of ten protesters while pointing pepper ball rifles and batons at them. [Mission Local]
• Rodney Williams, 55, of San Francisco was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison Friday on charges including two counts of possession of child pornography. In July 2024, police found hundreds of images and videos of child sexual abuse at Williams’s Potrero Hill home, along with around 3.8 kilograms of methamphetamine; a kilogram of cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl; 11 firearms; and 116 pounds of ammunition. [Bay City News]
• A suspected shoplifter at the Colma Target bit a police officer's arm while trying to avoid arrest after first ignoring police and attempting to walk around them. [KRON4]
• Newsom appointed seven new judges to Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara county courts on Thursday. [KPIX]
• Noah Alhayek, an 11-year-old San Jose boy, has been missing since August 4 and was last known to be taking public transit to San Francisco. [KRON4]
• Jennifer Bryant, 25, is scheduled to appear in court Monday on charges of animal cruelty in the 2024 death of a horse named Honey, who died from malnutrition and heat stroke when Bryant was manager of Chaparral Ranch’s Bear Creek Stables in Los Gatos [KTVU]
• A team of scientists at California Academy of Sciences is part of a collective of agencies working to save 26 species of starfish impacted by a “wasting disease” that’s caused by rising ocean temperatures. [KPIX]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• The suspect in a bombing at Target in San Ramon last week has been tied to a $4 million, multi-state ATM heist crew that allegedly used disguises, power tools, and blowtorches to rob banks across the West Coast. Prosecutors say the crew, including mostly Chilean nationals, posed as construction workers and even tunneled through walls to get to the cash. [Bay Area News Group]
• Yina Marcela Ramos Bello, 30, was killed and her two young sons critically injured after an SUV ran a red light and struck their car in San Mateo Thursday night. Police say the Ford driver, whose name is withheld, wasn’t impaired and are investigating why he failed to stop. [KRON4]
• The Sonoma County Fair kicks off Friday night with its famous World's Ugliest Dog Contest, with this year’s theme, "Hot Dogs and Cool Cats." [NBC Bay Area]

• During a road rage incident in San Mateo, a man was chased and stabbed with a chisel after a honking dispute while parking a customer’s truck, and his brother was also attacked when he tried to intervene. [KTVU]
• Santa Rosa 15-year-old Joyce Kristin Albino has been found safe in the South Bay after missing for over a week under circumstances similar to those of Fremont teen Katie Hong, who is still unaccounted for. [KRON4]

• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) and Solidarity Organizing Initiative (SOI) are hosting a two-part virtual training Tuesday, August 5, to equip white allies with clear strategies and tools for supporting immigrant communities. [Mobilize]

National:

• Black labor organizer Chris Smalls has returned to the US after being violently detained by Israeli forces during a humanitarian aid mission to Gaza. Smalls, best known for unionizing an Amazon warehouse, was the only activist held in custody — an act he and others believe was racially motivated. [The Grio]
• Angelica Vargas, a brave and determined woman known as “Angie the ICE Chaser,” is tailing immigration agents across LA, catching them on video as they commit apparent traffic violations to evade her. She also honks and shouts warnings to alert immigrant communities of ICE’s presence. [Threads]

• The Reno gunman who fatally shot three people Monday outside the Grand Sierra Resort has died after being shot by police. Authorities say he fired 80 rounds and had no known ties to the victims or casino. [Associated Press]

Video of the Day:

• Mimicking the BART predictions voice like a pro (with a hint of Darth Vader):

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Another signature San Francisco mall is up for sale in the Metreon, but in this case, the sale is not being forced by owners surrendering the property to a lender, and the place has a bustling 92% occupancy rate.

The financial implosion of downtown San Francisco’s former Westfield Mall was the poster-child driver of the “doom loop” narrative, with its ever-increasing vacancies, shoplifting and violence, and most significantly, an owner who had to surrender the property to their lender because of the very San Francisco pandemic-era problem that their debt far outweighed the present value of the property.

And today’s very surprising news from the SF Business Times that the Metreon mall is up for sale will probably end up resurrecting more of that “doom loop” talk. But the Metreon appears to be in very solid shape financially, and is highly unlikely to sell for one of those desperate fire-sale prices that we see so much of SF commercial real estate going for these days. This is a rare SF real estate property that just might sell for the asking price, and quite possibly more.

For one thing, as the Business Times points out, the Metreon is currently 91.9% leased, an absolutely unheard-of figure at a time when the adjacent Union Square has a 20.6% vacancy rate. Yes, the Metreon's occupancy is mostly the Target store and an AMC cineplex, but both seem to be doing brisk business by what my eyes can tell. There are also five 40-foot billboards on the Moscone-facing side of the building that are reportedly pulling pre-pandemic levels of revenue, and every year, you have a shit-ton of guaranteed Dreamforce advertising for which a skilled bargainer could easily overcharge.

"Metreon represents a generational opportunity to acquire an iconic urban retail asset with immediate and long term opportunities to add value and to shape the future of downtown San Francisco," listing firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) says in its promotions for the building.

You can confirm the place is up for sale on JLL’s website.

But about the details: There is not a sale price listed in the brochures which the SF Business Times analyzed, but the current owner is Starwood Capital Group, who bought the Metreon in 2012. Interestingly, the City of SF owns the land on which the 312,592-square-foot shopping center sits, though the rental lease runs all the way through 2082.

Those of us who were here when it opened as the “Sony Metreon” in 1999 remember that despite the hype, the mall had a disastrous run. A PlayStation store and a Microsoft store hoped to bring crowds, but there were days when I would walk some floors and not see one other customer shopping. (Remember that Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are exhibit? Nobody went!) The flagship stores closed and the Metreon was sold in 2006, ironically to Westfield, who then sold it to Starwood Capital.

But the Metreon has shown it can reinvent itself. And heck, it doesn’t even have to reinvent itself when it’s got a near-93% occupancy rate. Throw in a couple buzzy restaurants or bars in some of the vacant ground floor space, and the Metreon is a pretty attractive buy. Or at least, it is to any private investment firms willing to shell out eight or nine figures.  

Related: SF’s Former Westfield Mall Being Rebranded as ‘The Emporium Centre San Francisco’ [SFist]

Image: Jason F. via Yelp

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)

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

When Target announced they were closing an SF store in SoMa, they blamed “theft and organized retail crime.” Uhh, turns out that Target had the least reported crime of any Target store in the entire Bay Area.

Oh, the fuss that was made when Target announced in September that they were closing their store at Folsom and 13th streets, among several other Target stores, with the explanation that “we cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests.” And it seemed plausible enough, because as the Associated Press pointed out, that South of Market Target was located “under a busy overpass with homeless tents in a largely commercial neighborhood with auto shops.”

But CNBC dug into the numbers, and the crime excuse suddenly seems less plausible. CNBC analyzed data and found that particular SoMa Target had the fewest reported crime incidents of any Target in the Bay Area. Moreover, they found the same pattern where the Target stores simultaneously closed in Portland, Seattle, and New York City all had significantly lower reported crime incidents than the ones that remain open.

CNBC analyzed reported crime incidents during the 32-month period between January 2021 and September 2023 (when the closures were announced). They found the Folsom Street Target experienced only 84 reported crime incidents during that period. Meanwhile, the Metreon Target, which certainly gets hit by crime, had 486 such incidents (nearly six times as much crime!) yet it remains open. Meanwhile, the Target at Stonestown had 123 crime incidents, and it too remains open. So was the crime excuse a publicity stunt meant to hide other unflattering metrics?

“I don’t want to use the word ‘stunt,’ because I don’t know exactly what went on in Minneapolis [where Target is based], but to me, it read like a stunt, looking to divert attention from the company’s lack of performance overall,” previous Sears Canada and Lazarus CEO Mark Cohen told CNBC.

“They did not disclose their actual shortage statistics,” Cohen added. “They talked about it in general terms; they did not disclose any other factors that would have caused them to decide to close any of those stores. They implied that the only reason they were closing the stores was because of theft. That may or may not be true. My guess is: Not true.”

CNBC has previously established that employee theft and self-checkout theft are larger factors than big retailers would like to admit, as are gift card theft and return fraud. And another CNBC report questions whether retailers have a legislative agenda to push to mask what may have been their own questionable business decisions.

A pattern we see in all of the Target closures is that there was another Target store within a short drive, perhaps even within walking distance. The Target stores that remained open had higher crime rates, but were also in more affluent zip codes, and had more foot traffic. So perhaps like Walgreens, they simply opened too many stores that were close to one another, and the stores cannibalized one another’s business.

Related: Target Will Permanently Close Its Folsom and 13th Streets Location, Plus Two East Bay Locations [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

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

A fire broke out at the Serramonte Center Target store on Thursday, and it is being investigated as a case of arson.

The smoke began appearing inside the Target store at 2:46 p.m. Thursday, and as KPIX reports, North County Fire Authority sent six trucks to the shopping center. Firefighter proceeded to try to locate the source of the fire and launch an "aggressive attack" on the blaze.

It sounds as though the fire was quickly contained, and per KPIX, firefighters "remained on scene for two hours checking for fire extension, completing salvage and overhaul operations."

No injuries were reported and all customers and employees reportedly self-evacuated.

As KTVU reports, Target is reporting a "major loss" of floor stock from the fire.

The store is currently listed as closed on Google and Yelp, with a "special hours" opening time of 2 p.m.

The fire was classified as an arson, and the Daly City Police Department is now seeking suspects.

The parking lot at the Serramonte Center, outside this Target store, was the site of a SamTrans bus accident in December 2022 that left four people injured and over a dozen cars damaged. The incident was not publicly explained, but a witness at the time belived the bus driver was having a medical emergency at the time.

Photo: David B./Yelp

Shoplifting incidents reported to SFPD doubled in September! But the increase all came from one Target store, then the spike completely disappeared the next month, and what can we even believe anymore.

There's plenty of misinformation out there on the topic of shoplifting in San Francisco, like the time when right-wing media reported that the Target at the Metreon was closing becuase of crime. But it turns out that even the most reliable crime information can, in fact, also be misinformation. The Chronicle published another of its famed deep dives into crime statistics today, using SFPD reported crime data, the supposed gold standard in the great crime debates. And the data singles out  — guess who?  — the Target at the Metreon.

The Chron found that reported San Francisco shoplifting incidents doubled in the month of September 2021. Sounds bad! But that spike completely disappeared the following month. And then there’s another crazy insight in that reported data.

“A closer look at the data shows that the spike in reported shoplifting came almost entirely from one store: the Target at 789 Mission St. in the Metreon mall,” the Chron reports. “In September alone, 154 shoplifting reports were filed from the South of Market intersection where the Target stands, up from 13 in August. And then, in October, the reports from this intersection went down again to 17.”

A Target spokespeson told the Chron the September shoplifting surge is attributed entirely to a new reporting system wherein they could report shoplifting by phone. The spokesperson did not respond to a question on how their sudden surge disappeared the following month.  

The loudest voices in the room are all going to insist that this proves that their theories on crime in San Francisco are the only true and correct interpretation. It seems the bigger takeaway here is that the SFPD crime data dashboard, whose results SFist has embedded in like a zillion different articles, may itself be prone to statistical swings and unreliable data. Its results show what could be legitimate crime trends, or data blips that might just be an unexpected item in the bagging area.

Related: SF Target Stores Closing Early Due to Crime [SFist]

Image: Lambert P. via Yelp

Photo: Daniel ODonnell

Fears of Amazon competition might kill San Francisco's eighth Whole Foods location before it even has a chance to open its doors, as the battle between big box and online retail spills onto the grocery chain's floors.

The fight is in San Francisco's City Center Mall, the shopping complex at the southeast corner of Geary and Masonic Boulevards. Since its opening in October of 2013 in the old Sears/Mervyn's space (as always, reference point dependent on length of SF tenure), Target's been City Center's largest tenant — and as such, Reuters reports, the big boxers have a say on who their neighbors at the mall shall be.

That means when the adjacent Best Buy closed last month, Target was already poised to block the new tenant eyeing the space: yet another San Francisco location of the Amazon-owned Whole Foods Markets, the city's eighth.

The reason for Target's opposition is, Reuters reports, "it feared competition from the grocery chain’s new owner, Amazon.com Inc."

The two companies have been in talks over the turf since this summer, Reuters reports, but "Early attempts to persuade Target failed, and Whole Foods may now have to concede certain Amazon initiatives - such as lockers where customers can pick up goods ordered online - if it wants the location."

Before you roll your eyes and blame some arcane San Francisco law for the holdup, Reuters says that this isn't just a 415 flap:

Across the United States, large retailers including Target, Bed Bath & Beyond Inc and Best Buy Co Inc have legal rights in many lease agreements that allow them to limit what Amazon can do with nearby Whole Foods stores, and where it can open new ones.

Documents reviewed by Reuters show bans on Amazon lockers and delivery operations near a Target store in Illinois and also in Florida, where a new Whole Foods is set to open. Lockers for retrieving online orders are a way for Amazon to spur sales through the grocery chain.

In Manhattan and other locations, the leases of Whole Foods’ big box neighbors bar it from selling a range of goods that Amazon has in its massive online inventory, from electronics to toys and linens.

Talks between the retail Goliaths are "ongoing," Reuters says. In a written statement, Target tells Reuters that “It’s inaccurate to characterize lease agreements as our corporate strategy," but that the company is “focused on what’s best for the company and delivering on the reasons our guests love Target. Our more than 1,800 stores across the country are a strategic asset and a vital part of Target’s future.”

That said, it might come down to San Francisco's Planning Commission to give Whole Foods -- and therefore, Amazon -- the green light to set up shop next to the big red circle. (And, one should note, just catty-corner from Trader Joe's.) Though SocketSite says that "a formal application to allow the move has yet to be filed with Planning," Whole Foods spokesperson Erika Dimmler tells SF Gate that "the grocery chain has a lease for the Geary and Masonic location and is still planning to open a store there," with the matter to be discussed at the Commission's December 7 meeting.

Update: Never mind that last paragraph! Dimmler reached out to SFist to say that she "thought we were discussing a different site" when she spoke with SF Gate, and that "there is no planning commission meeting or lease agreement for city center" for Whole Foods.

Related: Target, CVS, And Starbucks To Rise Across The Street From Rainbow Grocery

Oh, what a difference five years makes.

It was five years ago this month that San Francisco's first Target store opened to much pomp and celebration in the faux-Vegas splendor of the Metreon. Since then, four more have opened across the 7x7 — another one downtown on Bush Street, that one at Geary and Masonic, one on Ocean Avenue, and one that opened in July at the old Stonestown Borders/Sports Authority (designation determined by length of time in area). And now comes news that a sixth Target will be opening in the city, raising the question: Have we reached full Target saturation yet?

Like the Stonestown one, this Target is slotted for another former Sports Authority, a retail chain that closed all its locations after it went bankrupt then failed to find a buyer last year. The company's 1690 Folsom Street location, which based on Yelp reviews closed in June of 2016, has been sitting vacant ever since — a dicey proposition for a structure on Division Street, a location known for its persistent encampments of homeless people.

The perceived grittiness of the area didn't deter Target, it appears, even as the company's initial plans in 2014 to open four SF stores expanded with the Stonestown effort. As as reported by Hoodline in February, the retail giant first approached San Francisco's Planning Commission in February stating a desire for a sixth SF spot, asking "to lease the property, complete interior tenant improvements and limited exterior modifications such as new signage to convert it to a Target store."

SocketSite reports this week that unlike the other Targets in the city, which are the smaller "City Target" style stores with a limited selection of goods, the sixth one — right across from Rainbow Grocery, I'll note — will be a "full service" store, like the ones at Daly City's Serramonte Mall and (the far inferior one in) Colma.

Via the comments to their report, SocketSite also notes that the location's parking lot will boast 52 slots, but Target says that as it is "located in an area that is well-served by public transit...many of its customers may walk, bike, or utilize public transportation to access the site."

The 40,000 space will also include a "a full-service CVS Pharmacy and Starbucks," SocketSite reports. No word yet on if "Tally" the shelf-scanning robot will be allowed to transfer to SoMa from his(?) current position at their downtown location.

Related: Robot Roaming Aisles Of Downtown Target Confirms Underwhelming Future

Police are seeking a man who allegedly creeped on a woman inside a Bay Area Target, taking photos under her dress when she bent over as she shopped.

According to a press release from the San Mateo Police Department, it was September 29 at around 6:40 p.m. when police were called to the Target store at 2220 Bridgepointe Parkway in San Mateo.

When they arrived, they were told by the store's loss prevention staff that the suspect depicted in the photo to the right and video below "was observed on surveillance cameras taking photographs under a woman’s dress."

According to the SMPD, which reviewed the footage, "the man targeted the victim and followed her around the store."

"Once the victim bent over the man quickly ran up behind the her, took a photograph under her dress and walked briskly out of the store."

You can see video of the incident here:

Though officers conducted a search for the man when they arrived, they were unsuccessful in tracking him down. Now they're hopeful that the public might recognize the man and help bring him to justice.

Police say that they believe that the suspect "has full sleeve type tattoos in black ink on both of his arms." He's described as a "black male adult, possibly in his 20-30's." At the time of the incident, police say, he was "wearing a black SF Giants hat with orange logo, a black T-shirt with a large '420' in white writing across the chest, and dark pants."

Anyone with information regarding the identity of this suspect or information on this case is asked to contact SMPD via their dispatch center at (650) 522-7700. You can also call the SMPD Secret Witness Line at (650) 522-7676, or submit an anonymous tip through their website here.

Related: Men Chase Alleged Up-Skirt Creeper Through Union Square

A group of masked men robbed a popular East Bay Target store this weekend, and police say that as of Tuesday, the suspects remain at large.

KRON 4 reports that the crime went down Saturday at the Target store located at 1555 40th Street in Emeryville.

According to Bay City News, at 12:07 a.m. three men in masks stormed into the Target. "One of the suspects had a handgun and another had a rifle and they told all the employees to get on the floor."

A look at the Target website reveals that this was just minutes after closing time, as that location (which the company calls their "Oakland-Emeryville" location) is open from 8 a.m. to midnight every day. It's unclear from initial reports if any patrons were still in the store at the time of the heist.

BCN reports that the suspects "took money from the cash drawer and fled in a 4-door silver sedan." As of publication time, information on the amount of cash stolen had not been released.

As of Tuesday morning, further details on the suspects were not available. However, police did confirm that the investigation is ongoing, and that no arrests had been made in the case.

Related: Have You Seen This Alleged Target Fraudster?