Only 3% out of 74 restaurants surveyed said they had not experienced graffiti or property crime in the last month, according to a new survey from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.Part of the reason for the shoplifting increase is Proposition 47, a 2014 voter-approved law that made the theft of merchandise under $950 in value a misdemeanor that is often not investigated.
The city has spent $1 million on grants for vandalism relief since 2021, and nearly 800 businesses have received $1,000 or $2,000 grants for graffiti, broken windows, or other vandalism, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
San Francisco’s 311 call center has received 10,000 reports of graffiti on commercial buildings and sidewalks in the last six months, the outlet reported. Meanwhile, businesses are suffering, and repairing the damage is expensive.
A pizza shop in San Francisco’s Mission District was recently hit with acid, the owner told ABC7.
“This is acid so you can’t just remove it. They have to replace the glass,” Supreme Pizza owner Leandro Jayme told the outlet. He said replacing even one small glass square costs him $300.
Some restaurants said they gave up, including Shuggie’s, also in the Mission district, which received a grant, but gave up trying to clean up the almost daily graffiti.
Shoplifting is another major problem for the crime-ridden city.
In the past, San Francisco’s stores have geared up with unprecedented security measures to try to deter shoplifters.
Grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retailers have installed extreme security devices and paid for private security guards to combat rampant theft.
Supermarket chain Safeway installed exit gates that require customers to scan their receipts in some of its Bay Area grocery stores. A Walgreens locked its freezers with chains in response to shoplifters hitting the store 15 to 20 times a day, according to an employee.
In 2021, businesses in San Francisco’ Union Square hired private security to combat the “smash and grab” robberies that plagued the area.
The consequences for this barbarism are bad for everyone but they're especially hard on the poor who are often the victims either directly or indirectly of the permissiveness of those who run the city government.It's the poor who must live in neighborhoods plagued by violence. It's the poor who suffer when schools are out of control and when merchants decide they can no longer continue in such a chaotic environment. It's the poor who lose their jobs when these businesses pull out of their neighborhoods and tourists no longer venture into them.
Murder is up 3% to 40 murders so far. Robberies are up 16% to 2,039 robberies so far. Car thefts are up 11% to 5,038 thefts.
Crime, open-air drug use, and homelessness have caused businesses to flee San Francisco’s downtown, where foot traffic has thinned.
A string of major retailers have recently fled their downtown San Francisco locations. Mall company Westfield, AT&T, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, and two hotels have all shuttered locations in the city recently.
The city’s drug crisis hit a grim milestone last month with a record 84 accidental drug overdose deaths in August, according to preliminary city data. So far this year, a total of 563 people have died from a drug overdose in San Francisco.
Homelessness has only gotten worse since before the pandemic. About 38,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area on a given night, up 35% since 2019.
It's the poor whose life is made more miserable when the city elects council members more worried about using correct pronouns than in making their city safe and it's the poor whose misery is exacerbated by woke prosecutors who think that it's somehow humane to refuse to prosecute criminals and get them off the streets.
Perhaps when people realize that they're the ones who are electing these feckless and corrupt leftists to run their city they'll also realize that things will continue to get worse until they start voting for people who are more serious about protecting their citizens, shops and restaurants than in lining their own pockets and blathering about "social justice."