61 arrests, good........

San Francisco police crack down on shoplifting, leading to 61 arrests

By Amy Graff

In a continued effort to crack down on organized retail theft, the San Francisco Police Department said Monday that during an operation that lasted more than two months, 61 people were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting at stores in four areas across the city.

Fifty-two of the individuals were given citations for shoplifting and immediately released, and the others were booked at San Francisco County Jail on various charges, including grand theft and burglary, and outstanding warrants in addition to the on-view theft charges, which are the things officers observed in the stores, the department said in a news release. 

SFPD shared images on social media of allegedly stolen goods that included everything from Lululemon athletic pants to Tillamook cheese and Hershey’s chocolate bars. 

The arrests were made in preplanned operations dubbed “blitzes,” with plainclothes officers setting up in businesses and looking for incidences of shoplifting, the police said. Uniformed officers were on hand to assist with arrests. The operations occurred between May 13 and July 29. 

While SFPD did not name the businesses, it provided their general locations, such as in the Mission District on Mission Street near 29th Street; Walgreens and Safeway are on this block. Another was downtown on the 800 block of Market Street, home to Emporium Centre San Francisco. The other two areas were the 5200 block of Diamond Heights Boulevard, where the Diamond Heights Shopping Center with Safeway and Walgreens is located, and the 2300 block of 16th Street, the location of Potrero Center, with several shops including Safeway and Ross.

The stores “were chosen for operations due to the high number of shoplifting incidents the businesses were experiencing,” the department said.

Officers took the stolen property back from the suspected thieves and returned it to the stores. 

This latest bust is part of an ongoing effort started in 2023 and funded by a state grant to curb shoplifting, SFPD said. Hundreds of arrests have been made since October 2023, the agency said.