San Francisco police arrest shoplifters allegedly responsible for thefts valued at over $100,000

In a press release issued today, San Francisco Police announced that they had arrested a four-person “burglary gang” responsible for multiple shoplifting incidents valued at over $100,000 in San Mateo County and San Francisco.

The statement goes on to say that the arrests were made on Thursday. An officer spotted the suspects' vehicle in the area of ​​the 3200 block of 20th Avenue and then arrested two suspects as they were being dropped off at a shopping center in Daly City.

The vehicle then allegedly fled the scene and was later found by authorities at the intersection of 16th and Bryant, where officers arrested the other two suspected perpetrators “without any problems.”

During a subsequent search, a firearm and an unknown quantity of stolen goods were found inside the car. The car was then towed away “for further investigation.”

The suspects, three San Francisco natives and a South San Francisco resident, were turned over to Daly City Police and are awaiting further investigation.

Shoplifting has been a persistent problem in both San Francisco and California in general, but both politicians and police have made significant efforts in recent months to get the problem under control.

Earlier this summer, San Francisco police announced they had made 61 arrests in a blitz around four Walgreens and Safeway stores in the city and surrounding areas.

On Thursday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the last of 13 crime-fighting bills that kicked off a long legislative battle earlier this year over how exactly to address criminal justice reform in the face of California's prison overcrowding, a problem that stems from similar “tough on crime” laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s that disproportionately affected communities of color.

Crime is generally on the ballot at the national, state and local levels this year, although there is little evidence that crime in California is increasing since the first spike in 2022.

In San Francisco, Mark Farrell is positioning himself as a “law-and-order” candidate against what he sees as systematic inaction in protecting citizens from Mayor London Breed, even though crime in the city has actually decreased.

House Bill 36, which would classify certain petty thefts and drug offenses as serious crimes, has become a hotly contested issue ahead of the November election.

The ballot measure pits criminal justice advocacy groups and a host of prominent Democratic lawmakers, including Governor Newsom, against a broad consortium of major retailers, law enforcement officials, Republican politicians and a number of liberal-leaning officials, including Mayor Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

Supporters, who have spent 10 times more money than their opponents, say the proposal is a reasonable attempt to address the ongoing fentanyl and theft problems that plague certain areas of the state.

Critics argue that this would undo the significant progress made in recent years in reducing prison overcrowding and would send the state back into a dark age of racially motivated policing.

In addition, during his re-election campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly used California's allegedly rising crime rate as a pretext to attack Kamala Harris' performance as a prosecutor, even though available data suggests the opposite.

A report from Attorney General Rob Bonta's office found that murders fell nearly 16 percent last year, and the nonpartisan California Budget and Policy Center think tank found that overall crime rates are still less than half what they were at their peak in the early 1990s.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash