San Francisco Safeway Cuts Hours Due to Rampant Shoplifting

Joel B. PollakOctober 31, 2021

A prominent Safeway supermarket in the Castro district of San Francisco is limiting its hours due to rampant shoplifting, the latest example of a retail store closing or limiting its operations in the left-liberal city due to out-of-control petty crime.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday:

Shoppers at the Safeway in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood will see a noticeable change to the store: It now closes at 9 p.m. due to what one supervisor described as “out of control” shoplifting.

Once open 24 hours a day, the Safeway store on Market and Church streets now has the earliest closing hours of all the Pleasanton-based supermarket chain’s San Francisco storefronts, most of which stay open until midnight.

…
[San Francisco Supervisor Rafael] Mandelman said theft at the Safeway at 2020 Market Street has been “out of control” and recently met with Safeway representatives “to better understand the issues at this store.” He said he also planned to meet with the San Francisco Police Department and the office of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin “to see what is currently being done to deter theft at Safeway, and to figure out a plan to do better.”

Earlier this year, Walgreens closed 17 stores in the city due to shoplifting, which skyrocketed after California voters passed Proposition 47, a ballot initiative aimed at criminal justice reform, which reclassified thefts up to $950 as misdemeanors. As a result, such thefts are rarely prosecuted.

The crime spike began under former district attorney George Gascón, who is now district attorney for Los Angeles County, and has continued under Chesa Boudin, who now faces a likely recall election.

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.