Stores Cannot Exist with This Much Crime

One store in San Francisco Bay Area: Shoplifters cost Fremont hardware store $700K amid Bay Area spike

That is one store. More than half a million dollars in shoplifting. A lot more than half a million.

Experts cite a unique set of circumstances that contribute to today’s shoplifting problem: accelerating organized retail theft, social media posts that facilitate mob-ransacking, increased homelessness, widespread drug addiction, and a societal move away from incarceration for less-serious crimes.

Nationally it was estimated to be $95 billion in 2021. That is Billion, with a "B."

Business owners across the Bay Area say shoplifting is escalating, and because so many incidents go unreported, official statistics fail to capture its magnitude.

Even so, reports of shoplifting crimes last year hit their highest numbers since 2013 in Alameda, San Mateo and San Francisco counties, according to data from the California Department of Justice.

Another store owner in San Jose, who loses between $1000 and $3000 a month stopped calling police.

“I stopped calling police. Shoplifting, they don’t even bother to show up anymore,” [Sam] Kalil said.

How can one store absorb $700,000 in losses? The short answer is that in the long run, they probably can't survive. And the Leftists will wring their hands, and lament when there are no supermarkets, or drug stores, or hardware stores in an area and they will blame everyone from the EEEEEVIL bankers to greedy merchants. They won't blame their insane, Progressive policies that drove the companies out of an area.