San Francisco Retailer: 'The Mayor and Her Entire Team Should Resign'

San Francisco retailers are venting their frustration at San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the city administration after “mass looting” events over the weekend that saw mobs ransacking stores in Union Square — and suburban Walnut Creek.

As Breitbart News noted, in both cases, dozens of cars suddenly appeared outside high-end stores, and scores of looters rushed out, grabbing whatever they could before escaping. San Francisco police restricted vehicular access to Union Square — one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations — after the heist on Friday night, hurting ailing local retailers anew.

Retailers who already suffered looting in the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 have had enough, and are speaking out against the left-wing Mayor and other public officials who have failed to protect them. The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

“The mayor and her entire team should resign,” said John Chachas, whose family owns luxury retailer Gump’s on Post Street in Union Square. “You can’t really run a retail enterprise if you have to board up the windows five weeks before the critical Christmas selling season.”

Gump’s is re-evaluating being in San Francisco, said Chachas, the company’s chairman and CEO.

“The fact that the city can’t maintain sufficient order that businesses can operate (in) without fear of being damaged,” he said, leaves him to conclude that officials may have “no understanding of the concept of how an orderly city is necessary for commerce to function.” That means “we can’t operate a business. … “So we will evaluate our options to be elsewhere unless this nonsense ends.”

San Francisco has already been suffering a surge in shoplifting, thanks in part to the statewide Proposition 47 of 2014, which made thefts up to $950 mere misdemeanors, which local prosecutors are more reluctant to pursue. Moreover, the city has had two successive district attorneys — George Gascón and Chesa Boudin — who have prioritized “criminal justice reform” over law enforcement, presiding over a rise in petty crime, homelessness, and public nuisances like drug use and even defecation.

Mayor Breed championed cause to “defund” or “reimagine” the police in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd last summer, diverting some money from law enforcement to black community organizations, though some police funding rose. The city has also enforced vaccine mandates among first responders, putting nearly 200 personnel on leave in October.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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