Five Walgreens Stores in San Francisco Closing Due to Brazen Shoplifting

Walgreens announced Tuesday that amid brazen shoplifting, they will be closing five more stores in San Francisco next month.

According to SFGate, the five stores will close next month - currently, Walgreens has closed 10 locations in San Francisco since 2019. A spokesperson for Walgreens, Phil Caruso said:

"Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average”

Crazy to mention, but last year Walgreens closed one store where the chain was losing an average of $1,000 A DAY due to thefts.

Ahasha Safai, Supervisor of San Francisco, discussed how devasting it was the stores would be closing due to theft:

“This is a sad day for San Francisco,” ... “We can’t continue to let these anchor institutions close that so many people rely on.”

Last month, San Francisco Mayor, London Breed and San Francisco Police Chief, Bill Scott announced that they would be increasing police presence, as well as making it easier for people to report these thefts. Unfortunately, this has not worked as well as they thought.

Mayor Breed discussed and mentioned:

We care about criminal justice reform. We care about second chances. We care about making sure that people are not wrongly accused,”... “But don’t take our kindness for weakness, our compassion for weakness.”

Only time will tell to see what happens next.