Nine suspected shoplifters are facing felony charges in a string of shameless retail thefts of more than $1 million in merchandise from San Francisco shops, prosecutors said.
A group of up to 40 thieves stormed into a Louis Vuitton store across from San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday, smashing windows and grabbing whatever items they could while loading the stolen goods into waiting cars, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said Tuesday.
“These brazen acts will not be tolerated in San Francisco,” Boudin said in a statement. “But the problem is bigger than our city. Last weekend, there were similar incidents in Walnut Creek, Hayward, Oakland and San Jose.”
Two of the nine suspects charged with grand theft, commercial burglary and possession of stolen goods as felonies are also facing possession of firearms counts, Boudin said.
Boudin announced the charges alongside San Francisco Assistant Police Chief Mike Redmond, who said extra cops would be deployed in shopping areas and expects many more arrests in the Union Square robberies, as well as in other parts of the Bay Area, including Hayward, Oakland, San Jose and Walnut Creek.
“We believe it is a lot of the same groups involved,” Redmond told reporters, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The wave of robberies started Friday in San Francisco and continued Saturday at a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek, where roughly 80 people hopped out of cars and invaded the store, assaulting two employees while escaping with merchandise, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The chaos continued Sunday with stores targeted in Hayward, where 10 people waltzed into a jewelry store and smashed glass cases to snatch items. The suspects fled in waiting cars, witnesses said.
Another group of thieves – two women and two men — also hit up a sunglasses shop and a Lululemon store in San Jose, stealing nearly $50,000 in merchandise, police said.
San Francisco’s police chief, Bill Scott, told the Times Tuesday that cops were “going to disrupt” the ongoing wave of smash-and-grab robberies without shutting down Union Square.
“We are going to do everything we can to put a stop to this craziness,” Scott said. “In these spots, people were pulling up right in front and then running in the store, grabbing what they could and jumping back in their vehicles.”
Retailers lose about $65 billion annually to organized theft — and criminal flash mobs are a growing trend nationally. Other similar large-scale thefts have occurred in Chicago as well. The incidents are believed to be part of a network that recruits young people to steal items to be sold for profit online.
With Post wires
