Shoplifters at a San Francisco Walgreens ripped off the plastic screens on its locked-up shelves on Monday night, a store manager said.
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: San Francisco Walgreens’ Locked-Up Shelves Ripped Off by Thieves.
Stores from Safeway to Home Depot have been increasingly locking items behind screens to deter shoplifting in the Bay Area and across the country. Customers and staff in San Francisco stores recently described the security measures as irritating, with it taking several minutes to access basic items like toothbrushes or high-value items such as liquor and power tools.
Walgreens manager Chanh Luu said the group entered the Bernal Heights store at around 8 p.m. and began smashing the shelves in two of the store’s aisles, where laundry soap and dental products are locked away behind plastic shields due to rampant shoplifting in the city. The shields were torn away so the thieves could get their hands on the items but were already replaced by Tuesday when The Standard visited.
The group of thieves then headed for the store’s counter but failed to steal cigarette lighters from a display, Luu said.
They then fled from the 3398 Mission St. store with $200 worth of toothpaste and laundry detergent, leaving behind $250 worth of damage, Luu said.
No employees or customers were injured during the incident on Monday, and the store was open for business on Tuesday morning.
San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office in early 1964. As NRO’s Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2010 when the original Detroit was making headlines and photo spreads thanks to its Hiroshima-like bombed out landscape, “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”