A former Republican candidate for mayor of San Francisco says the city is run by ‘left-wing ideologues’ whose calls to defund the police are responsible for low morale among cops and whose policies are to blame for the rise in crime.
Richie Greenberg made the comments just a day after video emerged on social media showing shoplifters brazenly making off with stolen goods after ransacking a local Neiman Marcus store.
Crime statistics indicate an increase in burglaries this year compared to 2020, with critics blasting the progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, for being too lax in meting out punishments to offenders.
‘I called this years ago and we see this is now coming to fruition,’ Greenberg told Fox News on Wednesday.
‘It’s astounding, it’s jaw-dropping, it’s completely unacceptable...it’s outrageous,’ he said.
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Richie Greenberg, a former Republican candidate for mayor of San Francisco, says the city is run by ‘left-wing ideologues’ whose calls to defund the police are responsible for low morale among cops and whose policies are to blame for the rise in crime
Greenberg says there is a ‘drop in morale’ among the police officers, which he attributes to a November ballot measure that ended a requirement that there be a specified number of cops assigned to patrol certain neighborhoods.
Before Proposition E was adopted, San Francisco law required that at least 1,971 full-duty officers be staffed at the police department.
Prop E now requires the police to submit a staffing report and recommendation every two years to the Police Commission, a body whose members are appointed by the mayor and the city Board of Supervisors.
Greenberg says that the problem is the city does not have enough ideological diversity.
'This is a far left-wing governed city,' he said.
'There's virtually no conservative, even centrist candidates that really win, especially on the city council and our board of Supervisors.
'This city is controlled completely by left-wing ideologues.'
He added: 'There’s not enough police - part of the whole defunding police movement.'
Earlier this week, video was posted to Instagram capturing yet another brazen act of shoplifting in San Francisco.
At least 10 people are seen in the video with armfuls of designer goods and then fleeing the luxury department store Neiman Marcus - 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 pursue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000.
A video posted to Instagram earlier this week 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 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.
There were 12,194 instances of larceny between January 1 and June 27, 2021, according to SFPD's most recent data.
This is a drop by around 11 percent from the same time period in 2020, when there were 13,804 instances.
The second-most committed crime is burglary. So far this year, there have been 3,624 instances of burglary, a roughly 5 percent increase from the 3,439 acts committed in 2020 during the same time period.
Burglary differs from larceny in that it is defined by the department as including
