By Rich Lowry
Tuesday,
November 23, 2021
It ought to be possible to operate a
retail store in one of America’s largest and most iconic cities, but this most
basic commercial proposition is in doubt in San Francisco.
The erstwhile Golden City is beset by an
ongoing tide of theft that is closing down retail locations and demonstrating
again the city’s unwillingness to govern itself.
Cities around the country dub themselves
“the capital” of this or that signature product: artichokes in Castroville,
Calif.; earmuffs in Farmington, Maine; spinach in Alma, Ark.; fried chicken in
Barberton, Ohio.
San Francisco, and the larger Bay
Area, could now easily claim the title of Shoplifting Capital of the U.S.A.,
should it want the honor.
The viral video of brazen thefts has
become one of the city’s most influential cultural exports.
Hey, look — here are 80 people engaged in
a large-scale, smash-and-grab robbery of a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek outside of
San Francisco last weekend, one of a series of jaw-dropping thefts over the
past several days, including an operation that cleared out a Louis Vuitton on
San Francisco’s Union Square.
Check this out — people with fancy
handbags running out of a Neiman Marcus into waiting cars.
You won’t believe it — this guy loads
merchandise from a Walgreen’s into a big trash bag and jumps on his bike to
ride down the aisle and out of the store.
These aren’t episodic crimes. Walgreens
says that its San Francisco stores experience a level of theft five times the
national average. As a consequence, the chain has been steadily
closing locations. It has shuttered 17 already and last
month announced five more closures, including the one hit by the man on the
bike (who was finally arrested after robbing the store one too many times).
Target and Safeway have been reducing
hours to try to limit the exposure of their locations to theft.
Stores often put the likes of toothpaste
and shampoo behind security locks, as if they are high-end goods or the outlets
are operating in Caracas, Venezuela.
The shoplifting problem represents a
deliberate choice rather than an unstoppable tide. Modern societies long ago
figured out how to maintain civil order such that law-abiding people could buy
and sell goods without being systematically preyed on by thieves. It’s just
that the Bay Area has chosen to forget.
California adopted Proposition 47 in 2014
that made thefts of $950 or less a misdemeanor. Once people realized that they
were unlikely to be arrested or prosecuted for stealing less than $1,000, they,
of course, responded to the incentive. For their part, the stores advise
employees not to interfere with shoplifters, lest they get hurt. Many crimes
don’t even go reported.
And so, it is open season for people to
take whatever they want.
New York City famously reestablished order
in the 1990s based on “broken windows” policing, or a focus on offenses that
degraded the quality of life; San Francisco and similar locales are engaged in
“broken windows” neglect — the broken windows being at high-end stores struck
by emboldened robbers.
This is a polity deciding that it is more
important to stay its own hand from arresting and jailing criminals than to
protect businesses from getting robbed, protect duly employed people from
having to watch reprobates flout the law, and protect neighborhoods from losing
retail outlets that they depend on.
The stance of San Francisco isn’t exactly anti-business.
No, it is, in effect, privileging one business model over another. On the one
hand, there are the legitimate businesses that buy their goods and sell them in
legal market transactions. On the other, there are the organized-crime rings
that oversee the theft of vast amounts of merchandise that is turned around and
sold online.
The former model should be given the
environment to thrive, the latter ground to dust. A rational society knows
this, and perhaps, one day, San Francisco will again as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment