‘We Can’t Survive’: Small Business Loses Hundreds Of Thousands To Theft In Crime-Ridden California California hardware store lost $700,000 from shoplifting in 2022 as thefts continue to burden the area, according to The Mercury News. Dale Hardware, located in Fremont, California, is losing $1,800 a day to shoplifting due to both individual and organized theft. The increase in thefts follows relaxed attitudes from local prosecutors and law enforcement towards lower-level crimes like small-dollar shoplifting, following a national trend under liberal defense attorneys who have received large amounts of funding from mega-donor George Soros. "How do we run a small business with $1,800 of loss every day?" Dale Hardware owner Kyle Smith said. "It ends up costing the consumer more money because we can’t survive without raising prices." Smith said that Dale Hardware typically only calls the police when the amount stolen is over $10,000 because shoplifters are not likely to be held accountable in cases of lower-cost thefts. San Francisco has also seen a spike in retail crime, with 23 retail stores closing in downtown San Francisco since 2020 as of May. Top retailers like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Nordstrom and T-Mobile have fled the area due to rising crime. Fremont is under the jurisdiction of Alameda County, where current District Attorney Pamela Price ran her 2022 campaign on "pursuing comprehensive alternatives to incarceration" and "social service interventions that reduce harmful behavior without law enforcement involvement." In 2018, the California Justice and Public Safety PAC, which was given $6.1 million by Soros, gave Price $699,647 for her district attorney campaign. 'We Can't Survive': Small Business Loses Hundreds Of Thousands To Theft In Crime-Ridden California Story, Will Kessler, The Daily Caller see related thread: California to make it illegal for stores to stop thieves (posted in Law & Justice section, June 5, 2023 ) The legal and law enforcement environment, something most people often take for granted, will end up having an economic impact and effect how people in society buy things. I fear this is going to further accelerate the closure of smaller businesses, as sales shift to bigger business models. Police don't seem to be helping, and small business owners are too fearful of prosecutions and lawsuits coming from the local court system to take matters into their own hands and stop the thieves. (In these progressive areas, they're often much more sympathetic to petty criminals than to businesses, and do not take a sympathetic view to violent physical force being used to protect property, very different from conservative areas)
related story: Manhattan DA prosecuted store employee for defending self, stopping thief (posted July 7, 2022 in Law & Justice section)
