Thief Brazenly Fills Trash Bag With Store Items as Security Guard Records the Crime

A thief was caught on video filling a trash bag with items from a San Francisco Walgreens store Monday while a security guard stood in the aisle and recorded the crime.

The crook ended up easily bicycling past the guard — who attempted to snag the bag to no avail — and exiting the store in broad daylight.

This just happened at the @Walgreens on Gough & Fell Streets in San Francisco. #NoConsequences @chesaboudin pic.twitter.com/uSbnTQQk4J

— Lyanne Melendez (@LyanneMelendez) June 14, 2021

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Lyanne Melendez, a KGO-TV reporter, was shopping in the store on her day off — and she’s the one who recorded the above cellphone clip.

“That’s when he sort of ran into me with his bicycle,” Melendez told her station in the aftermath. KGO said she was not injured.

“It’s hard for me as a journalist to say ‘I won’t be involved, I can’t get involved,’ I have to be sort of neutral, but this is also my city,” Melendez added to her station. “I live in this city, and I see this constantly. Not only Walgreens, but cars, and my garage … has been broken into twice.”

The brazenness of such crimes is common these days, KGO said, and they’re driving retailers out of the city. {snip}

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Melendez told KGO that she’s witnessed three out-in-the-open shoplifting sprees at different Walgreens in San Francisco: “At what point do we say, ‘Enough is enough, we want our city back’?”

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The station said stores are closing in the wake of such thefts, which drive down profit.

“Seventeen Walgreens over the last five years, almost every Gap retail outlet is gone, CVS is under assault,” San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safai told KGO.

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