San Francisco DA says eight people will be charged after 20 people ransacked ...

San Francisco DA says eight people will be charged after 20 people ransacked ...
San Francisco DA says eight people will be charged after 20 people ransacked ...

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has announced he plans to bring felony charges against eight people involved in the shoplifting of a Luis Vuitton store

 San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has announced he plans to bring felony charges against eight people involved in the shoplifting of a Luis Vuitton store

San Francisco's notoriously woke District Attorney Chesa Boudin has announced he plans to charge eight people involved in Friday's brazen organized theft of a Louis Vuitton store.

Boudin said on Tuesday he plans to file felony charges against eight people involved in the shoplifting of the Union Square store. He is expected to announce those charges at a news conference at 4pm local time.     

Police responded to the Louis Vuitton store shortly after 8pm Friday where they 'observed several suspects involved in criminal acts.' 

Witnesses recorded video of more than 30 masked thieves running through the streets with their hands full of clothing items and bags. 

Law enforcement officers are seen chasing a thief to a  parked getaway car then bashing in the windows with batons, dragging the culprit out of the car and restraining them on the sidewalk. 

Footage also showed the decimated storefront with shattered glass all over the sidewalk and totally empty shelves. 

Police confirmed they arrested multiple suspects and that the Louis Vuitton store may have not been the only one targeted.  

They were able to recover thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise, the police chief said in a news conference the next day.

It was the first incident in a weekend-long spree of organized criminals targeting luxury retail stores across the Bay Area, with another group of criminals raiding a Nordstrom store in Los Angeles Monday night, as others targeted a CVS. Critics have blamed the rise in crime to Boudin's failure to persecute thieves, but in an interview on Monday he turned the criticism on police who have not yet caught all of the criminals.

SAN FRANCISCO: A suspect was seen running away with an armful of merchandise after stealing from a Luis Vuitton store in San Francisco's Union Square on Friday night

SAN FRANCISCO: A suspect was seen running away with an armful of merchandise after stealing from a Luis Vuitton store in San Francisco's Union Square on Friday night

Sunday marked the third consecutive day the San Francisco Bay Area was hit with looting. This map shows the recent spate of ransackings that have plagued the Bay Area 

Following Friday's Union Square theft, Boudin issued a series of tweets backing the Louis Vuitton arrests, and in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo Monday, he fought back against claims that he is being soft on the crime plaguing the area.

'Let me be clear, I am doing everything in my power to keep San Francisco safe and to make sure that people who come to our city to commit crimes are held accountable,' the progressive district attorney said.

But, he said: 'This is not a one-person job, it's not a problem that's limited to San Francisco.

'The police have the job of arresting and investigating these crimes, and when they do that and when they bring me and my office arrests, we file charges and we prosecute.

'And then it's up to the judges to impose the appropriate sentences,' Boudin told Cuomo. 'Everyone has a job to do.'

While he praised the work the police have done, Boudin also remained critical of the force, calling for 'higher quality investigations.'

'Take the incident in Union Square a couple days ago.

'We know that more than 30 individuals were involved - and the reality is only eight of them have been arrested.'

San Francisco police have said they are continuing to pursue those responsible for the brazen shoplifting, ABC 7 reports, and Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association on Tuesday lambasted the district attorney's remarks.

He accused Boudin of 'trying to play district attorney' while 'residents keep getting abused, small businesses keep getting hammered and our city has become an unsafe national joke,' the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday, he fought back against claims that he is being soft on the crime plaguing the area.

In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on Monday, he fought back against claims that he is being soft on the crime plaguing the area. 

Boudin also used his platform on Monday to discredit reports that he is persecuting thieves at lower rates than his predecessor, saying: 'It's only true if you cherry pick statistics from 2020 during the pandemic.'

He noted that he created a Retail Theft Task Force 'to focus on more effective and more efficient ways to intervene in disrupting organized retail theft,' and said: 'The fact is if you look at my charging rates in 2021 after the pandemic settled down, we're charging rates at a higher number than other district attorneys around the Bay Area and at higher rates than my predecessor in 2018 and 2019.' 

But city data shows Boudin has only been charging people of theft in 46 percent of all cases since taking office. In comparison, his predecessor George Gascon made such charges in 62 percent of all cases in 2018 and 2019.

He has an even lower rate in petty crime and has only made charges in 35 percent of all cases, compared to Gascon's 58 percent.

Boudin has also convicted far fewer people of both crimes than Gascon, only convicting thieves in 79 percent of thefts and 62 percent of petty thefts. Gascon has an 82 percent conviction rate for theft and a 77 percent conviction rate for petty theft.

Overall, Boudin has charged people with crimes in 48 percent of all reported cases, while Gascon has a charging rate of 54 percent.

Boudin is now facing a 2022 recall election amid fury among locals of famously liberal San Francisco at soaring crime many blame on his soft policies.

California's Proposition 47 - lighter sentences for thieves

Proposition 47 was passed by California voters on November 5, 2014.

It made some 'non-violent' property crimes, where the value of the stolen goods does not exceed $950, into misdemeanors.

It also made some 'simple' drug possession offenses into misdemeanors, and allows past convictions for these charges to be reduced to a misdemeanor by a court. 

Under California law, though, if two or more person's conspire to 'cheat and defraud any person or any property, by any means which are in themselves criminal' they can face no more than one year in county prison, a fine of $10,000 or a combination of the two.

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He issued a series of tweets backing the Louis Vuitton arrests, but critics of the DA say his words are too little, too late, as authorities report a wave of thefts in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent months, with many citing a law in the city that downgrades charges of property theft less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. 

As of October 31, San Francisco police have received reports of 810 burglaries or attempted burglaries this year in the jurisdiction of the Mission District Police station, marking a 13 percent increase from the same time last year. 

Businesses throughout the city have reduced their hours or closed entirely because of the uptick in property theft, with Walgreens closing 17 of its 70 San Francisco stores due to the constant shoplifting by thieves who waltz past security guards and sell the items outside the drugstore chain's doors.

And just recently, a Safeway grocery store said it was scaling back its round-the-clock service to just 6am to 9pm, citing rampant shoplifting as the reason. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has also been condemned over her handling of soaring crime in the city. 

'The mayor and her entire team should resign,' John Chachas, whose family owns Gump's on Post Street in Union Square told the San Francisco Chronicle as his store reeled from the aftermath of the nearby shoplifting on Friday night.

'You can't really run a retail enterprise if you have to board up the windows five weeks before the critical Christmas selling season,' he said, noting that he is thinking of relocating his store.

'The fact that the city can't maintain sufficient order that businesses can operate [in] without fear of being damaged,' Chachas said leaves him to believe that city officials have 'no understanding of how an orderly city is necessary for commerce to function.

'We can't operate a business,' he said. 'So we will evaluate our options to be elsewhere unless this nonsense ends. 

Walgreens has had to close 17 of its 70 San Francisco stores due to constant shoplifting with thieves stealing items in front of security guards and sell them outside the drugstore chain's doors

Walgreens has had to close 17 of its 70 San Francisco stores due to constant shoplifting with thieves stealing items in front of security guards and sell them outside the drugstore chain's doors

As of October 31, San Francisco police have received reports of 810 burglaries or attempted burglaries this year in the jurisdiction of the Mission District Police station, marking a 13 percent increase from the same time last year

As of October 31, San Francisco police have received reports of 810 burglaries or attempted burglaries this year in the jurisdiction of the Mission District Police station, marking a 13 percent increase from the same time last year

The Bay Area was hit with three straight days of brazen shoplifting on Sunday, when a gang of thieves were filmed smashing glass cases at a jewelry store and emptying them as staff screamed in terror. 

It happened at a Sam's Jewelers store at the Southland Mall in Hayward around 5:30pm PST Sunday, and was caught on camera. 

Robbers - said to have been part of a gang of around 40 to 50 teens who entered the mall - wielded hammers to smash display cases at Sam's, before making off with goods. Dramatic footage shot from a nearby store showed shop workers screaming with fear as the disturbing scene unfolded. 

Also on Sunday, another gang of looters snatched garments from upmarket yoga clothing brand Lululemon's San Jose store, KPIX reported.

And on Saturday, video posted to Twitter a swarm of robbers was caught on security camera stealing prescriptions from Wellspring Pharmacy in Oakland at around 7.30pm.

Pharmacy employees sped up the footage to show dozens of people running through the store to grab boxes of drugs off the shelves before quickly moving out. It is unclear what drugs were stolen, but staff say customers' whose meds were stolen will be able to collect replacement meds that have been ordered in. 

Store employees told KGO-TV reporter Dion Lim they were 'overwhelmed and devastated' by the brazen theft, as it is a small drug store and does not have the same resources as chains like CVS or Walgreens.

Video of the Sam's incident, meanwhile, shows the men, all of whom were wearing hoodies, smashing the cases and running off with handfuls of jewelry, with one man even running back to grab an item he dropped before fleeing.

People inside the store screamed and ran away from the horrifying scene, which has become common in the Bay Area since a California state law downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor in 2014. 

Store staff and security now tend not to pursue or stop thieves who have taken anything worth less than $1,000. 

HAYWARD: A group of brazen thieves were seen using hammers and other tools to break the glass cases at a jewelry store in the Southland Mall on Sunday

HAYWARD: A group of brazen thieves were seen using hammers and other tools to break the glass cases at a jewelry store in the Southland Mall on Sunday

HAYWARD: The group of about 40 to 50 teenage shoplifters made off with an unknown amount of jewelry and other items

HAYWARD: The group of about 40 to 50 teenage shoplifters made off with an unknown amount of jewelry and other items

HAYWARD: One brazen shoplifter was seen even going back to grab some of the stolen property he dropped as he ran out

HAYWARD: One brazen shoplifter was seen even going back to grab some of the stolen property he dropped as he ran out

OAKLAND: Video posted to Twitter shows a swarm of robbers entering Wellspring Pharmacy in Oakland on Saturday and grabbing boxes of prescription drugs off the shelves

OAKLAND: Video posted to Twitter shows a swarm

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