A video posted to Instagram captures yet another brazen act of shoplifting in San Francisco, this time at the luxury department store Neiman Marcus where at least ten people stole armfuls of designer goods and then fled without anyone trying to stop them.
The footage reveals the shoplifters leaving the Union Square store, each carrying bags of stolen items with the security tags still dangling off of them. The perpetrators then ran in different directions, with a few speeding away from the scene in a white sedan.
One person watching says, ‘They can’t do anything,’ perhaps referring to security at Neiman Marcus.
Shoplifting cases are all too common in San Francisco, where charges of property theft less than $950 in value was downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor in 2014 - meaning that store staff and security do not persue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000.
A video posted to Instagram captures the moment at least 10 people stole loads of designer bags from Neiman Marcus in San Francisco and fled undeterred
Police are still investigating the incident and the suspects were already gone by the time they arrived
Witnesses told KTVU that the store was about to close when the suspects came in and smashed display cases before nabbing the goods and leaving
Shoplifting cases are all too common in San Francisco, where charges of property theft less than $950 in value was downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor in 2014
The person who posted the video wrote a message demanding San Francisco crackdown on shoplifters and called for District Attorney of San Francisco Chesa Boudin to be removed from office.
‘Everyone in the city is tired of this so please sign the recall petition to oust Chesa Boudin now! Crime is legal basically and allowed and tolerated due to policies put in place and supported by all our supervisors and mayor and DA,' Instagram user sfstreets415, whose bio reads, ‘Asian photographer and crime reporter,' wrote.
The petition was first launched in March to recall Boudin, who has come under fire in recent years, along with the city’s leadership, for allegedly not doing enough to combat San Francisco’s shoplifting problem.
The city’s surge in such incidents arose almost immediately after the passage of Proposition 47, a ballot referendum known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act that downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor.
The monetary value of the goods stolen from Neiman Marcus is not clear and police are still investigating the incident. According to reporting from KTVU, when officers arrived at the scene the suspects were already gone.
Witnesses told KTVU that the store was about to close when the suspects came in and smashed display cases before nabbing the goods and leaving.
Larceny is the most common crime committed in the Bay Area, according to the San Francisco Police Department's Crime Dashboard
Larceny is the most common crime committed in the Bay Area, according to the San Francisco Police Department's Crime Dashboard.
There 12,194 instances in 2021 between January 1 and June 27, 2021 – the department’s most recent data. This is a drop by around 11percent from the same time period in 2020, when there were 13,804 instances. The next highest crime is burglary and there were 3,624 instances in 2021,
