The Consequences of Tolerating Theft

Tessa McLean reports in the SF Chronicle:

Another Walgreens is permanently shutting down in San Francisco.

The drugstore at 790 Van Ness Ave. had been dealing with rampant shoplifting, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, amounting to up to $1,000 in lost merchandise every day. Thefts were often brazen and carried out in broad daylight.

“I feel sorry for the clerks, they are regularly being verbally assaulted,” longtime customer Sebastian Luke told the Chronicle. “The clerks say there is nothing they can do. They say Walgreens’ policy is to not get involved. They don’t want anyone getting injured or getting sued, so the guys just keep coming in and taking whatever they want.”

Many products are already locked behind plastic theft guards, as anyone who’s shopped inside a city store has noticed.

The closure of one drug store may not seem like a big deal, but this is a symptom of a larger decay of our society. This is the eighth closure by the Walgreen’s chain alone. How many other businesses have closed in San Francisco because the law favors law-breakers over law-abiders?

When stores close, consumers have less choice. They must travel farther to make their purchases, costing time and money. There is less competition for their business. That plus the higher cost of security in the businesses that do remain open adds up to a higher cost of living, and this in a city where the cost is already sky high.

Mail order is not the answer, given that “porch pirates” are just as brazen as shoplifters and face no greater consequences.

At the root of it all is the misconception that “property offenders” are harmless and that punishing them is oppressive, racist, etc., etc., etc.

The reality is that California was not punishing property offenders excessively before Propositions 47 and 57. The kind of offender that most of the people who supported those measures think of when they hear that term rarely went to state prison before. A handful of well-publicized anecdotal examples of “three strikers” whose third strike was “petty theft with a prior” distorted the public perception. That problem had already been fixed back in 2012 with Proposition 36.

We need to have genuine consequences for chronic thieves. We need strong protection against civil liability for store owners and employees who take action against thieves. Proposition 20 on the current ballot is a first step in the right direction, but only a step.

It is high time that people who have been deceived by “wokeness” actually woke up. The bill of goods that the soft-on-crime crowd sold to the people is taking our society straight down the sewer. We need to turn it around now.