Picking up where we left off last week, rampant organized looting – apologies if the word "looting" is triggering, a term that has, in turn, also become triggering – wracked various American cities over the holiday weekend. When crime is ignored, downplayed, justified, or even decriminalized, crime increases. Lax attitudes and enforcement of "lower level" crimes can manifest in spiking violent crime, too. A number of so-called progressive blue cities have spent the last year-plus de-emphasizing and demonizing enforcement, often in the name of "equity" and "justice."
How's that working out? Chicago:
Shoppers returned to stores this Black Friday, but criminals did too...burglars targeted a trio of shops in a crime spree in Wicker Park early Friday morning. And an industry expert said such crimes are becoming more frequent – and thefts now tracking to locally-owned shops...It was around 1:40 a.m. when thieves hit a Foot Locker at 1241 N. Milwaukee Ave., just northwest of the intersection with Division Street. A gate was broken, a window was shattered, and items were taken. Minutes later at 2 a.m., the North Face store at 1629 N. Damen Ave. was hit. A worker said at least two people pried a door open and stole numerous coats. And then at 2:40, a nearby Boost Mobile store at 2642 W. Division St. in Humboldt Park also had its door broken into. Chicago police said multiple electronics were stolen. “It seems to be happening with more frequency,” said Illinois retail industry expert Robb Karr...“We have clearly seen a trend more year-round,” he said, “and it’s not just Chicago, but Chicago is clearly one of the national epicenters.” And it is also not just at those high-end stores with the stunning images of fast, brazen thefts. “It’s happening at mom-and-pop stores,” Karr said. “It puts retailers and customers in harm’s way.”
A flash mob of 20 to 30 suspected looters struck a Best Buy electronics store in Minnesota on Black Friday and managed to get away before police arrived, according to a report. The incident happened around 8 p.m. at a Best Buy location near the Burnsville Center shopping mall in Burnsville, a suburb south of Minneapolis, WCCO-TV reporter Nick Streiff wrote in a Twitter post...It was not immediately clear how much merchandise was taken, police said, according to the post. In a separate incident at a nearby Best Buy in Maplewood, the Maplewood Police Department said a "large group" of 10-12 adult and juvenile suspects entered the store together and stole multiple high-value items. Police called the incident a "grab and run" theft, adding that televisions, tablets and hoverboards were among the items stolen. When police arrived, the suspects were already gone.
Shootings in retail settings on both coasts:
Gun violence erupted at retail outlets crowded with post-Thanksgiving holiday shoppers in North Carolina and Washington state on Friday, sending bystanders at both locations scurrying for cover and injuring a total of seven people, police said. At a shopping mall in Durham, North Carolina, a late-afternoon shootout between "two groups who knew each other" left three people struck by ricocheting gunfire and three others injured in the ensuing chaos, city Police Chief Patrice Andrews said...One of the those wounded was a 10-year-old boy, but Andrews described the injuries sustained by all six people hurt in the melee as non-life-threatening. She said it was not immediately clear whether any of the victims were among the individuals who exchanged gunfire, and that the majority of those involved had fled the scene, though one was taken into custody...A short time earlier across the country, security officer shot a man suspected of trying to steal merchandise from a Walmart store during an altercation in the eastern Washington town of Kennewick, police said. The shooting occurred when the suspect, confronted as he was leaving the store, pointed a gun at the officer.
A citywide tactical alert was lifted Saturday, after a Black Friday marred by several more smash-and-grab robberies across Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles Police Department issued the alert Friday night and called it off at around 2 a.m. Saturday. The department defines a tactical alert as enabling all available officers to respond to a criminal incident if necessary. A Home Depot in Lakewood was hit by a group of multiple suspects who took about $400 in tools that might have been intended for use in other planned robberies...A series of so-called “flash mob” or smash-and- grab robberies have taken place across Los Angeles County in the past week...Officials added that they would ask District Attorney George Gascon to prosecute the suspects to the fullest extent of the law.
Gascon, like his left-wing counterpart in San Francisco, has been extremely weak on crime – going so far as to even soften charges against cop killers. The argument that property-related crimes are victimless (including the bogus "they have insurance" offshoot) is elitist, false and insulting. And when allegedly victimless crimes proliferate, so do victims. It's not just billions of dollars in destruction and ruined lives; it's lives lost, too. This was true during the "unrest" (ie, violent rioting) last summer, and it's still true now. An awful development out of California:
California's robbery epidemic became deadly today.
— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) November 27, 2021
A security guard protecting a local news crew covering another flash mob robbery was shot on Wednesday after a group of armed robbers tried to steal camera equipment.
He died this morning. Senseless.https://t.co/jXWOEtnvFr
The security guard died from his injuries Saturday morning after being shot in an attempted armed robbery while on assignment protecting a KRON4 crew. The victim is Kevin Nishita. He leaves behind a wife, two children and three grandchildren. Nishita worked as an armed guard for Star Protection Agency. Prior to working as a guard, he served as a police officer at the Oakland Housing Authority, Hayward Police, San Jose Police, and the Colma Police departments. A reward of $32,500 is being offered for information that leads to an arrest. The KRON4 crew was covering a story on Wednesday about a recent robbery where 12 thieves wearing masks and hoods raided a clothing store on the 300 block of 14th Street. At 12:20 p.m. Wednesday, an assailant attempted to steal KRON4’s camera equipment, according to police. The armed guard was shot in the lower abdomen.
Broad daylight, on a Wednesday. And now this husband, father, and grandfather is dead. Former US Senator Barbara Boxer, a liberal Democrat was also recently brazenly robbed and assaulted in the middle of the day in Oakland, one of the country's most "progressive" enclaves. In case you missed it, here's leftist and proudly rude celebrity Seth Rogen making the ridiculous and extremely privileged case that (15!) robberies really aren't so bad in crime-riddled Los Angeles:
If you are making $19/hour then a broken car window costs over 2 days of hard labor to fix.
— Michelle Tandler (@michelletandler) November 26, 2021
Not caring about theft comes from a place of privilege. https://t.co/g5SqJavVVh
I'll leave you with a simple truth from Rich Lowry, as well as CNN's bizarre, "rogue car" framing of the horrific Waukesha massacre – which very quickly vanished as a major national news story once the details didn't align with the media's preferred racial and cultural framing:
The beginning of the answer to the Bay Area’s theft problem is very easy—tolerate no theft, make excuses for no theft, jail thieves
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) November 28, 2021
Waukesha will hold a moment of silence today, marking one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring scores of others.https://t.co/QMNccpBI0y
— CNN (@CNN) November 28, 2021
