Staffers are seen screaming in terror as the heist unfolded.Īround the same time on Sunday evening, packs of thieves ransacked a sunglasses store and a Lululemon store in San Jose, stealing nearly $50,000 in merchandise, San Jose police Sgt. Over the weekend, the San Francisco Bay Area saw a string of audacious 'smash-and-grab' robberies, including an incident involving a gaggle of hammer-wielding masked bandits who ransacked jewelry, sunglasses and clothing stores at the Southland Mall in the San Jose suburb of Hayward.ĭramatic footage released on Monday showed a group of about 40 to 50 robbers smashing glass display cases at Sam's Jewelers at the mall at around 5.30pm on Sunday. 'It's easy, it's fast, and the payback is good.' 'People see the ability to commit these 'smash-and-grab incidents' knowing that there is little consequence, especially if the thefts are kept below the threshold of a felony offense,' Buel added. 'For the low-level criminal, the benefit far outweighs the risk, since the threshold for a misdemeanor offense is $950, meaning that a person can steal up to that amount and only be charged with a misdemeanor,' Lynda Buel, president of Ohio-based security consulting firm SRMC, told CNN. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education, urged news outlets to refer to the crimes as 'organized smash-and-grabs.'īoyd and Martin's remarks immediately opened the floodgates of mockery on Twitter, with critics on the right mercilessly pillorying the 'woke' experts.Ĭonservative activist and former convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza tweeted: 'Experts refuse to call a spade a spade, unless, of course, it's a spade wielded by a white male.' Lorenzo Boyd, a professor of criminal justice & community policing at the University of New Haven, and Martin Reynolds, co-executive director of the Robert C. Meanwhile, two progressive criminal justice experts suggested the news media and law enforcement officials should stop using the term 'looting' to describe the brazen store robberies, arguing that the term is racist. Other major US cities have also seen a spike in store break-ins, including Chicago and its suburbs, where more than a dozen suspects attacked a Louis Vuitton store last week and stole more than $120,000 worth of high-end clothing and other merchandise.Īside from the organized crime rings, the growing problem has been attributed to police officers' apparent reluctance to pursue retail criminals in the current political climate, prosecutors' failure to prioritize larceny and theft, and the decriminalization of low-level offenses in some jurisdictions. These are people who go out and do this is for high profit, and for the thrill.' Nine people have been charged in connection with Friday night attacks on stores including Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdale's in the downtown area and in Union Square, a posh shopping district popular with tourists that was teeming with holiday shoppers.īen Dugan, president of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, said: 'We're not talking about someone who needs money or needs food. Meanwhile, five people pleaded not guilty Wednesday to felony charges involving thefts in San Francisco. The women were stopped in a car where police said they found at least $15,000 in clothes from a second RealReal location that was burglarized in Larkspur earlier that night. A security guard reported the effort and the crowd fled as police arrived. Police said 30 to 40 people arrived in some 20 cars and tried to break down the glass front door but it held.
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