The Bay Area shoplifting racket

 Stephen Green:

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Have you seen the latest clip making the rounds? Three “plus-size suspects,” according to the New York Post, loaded up three shopping carts worth of stuff at a Burlington in Sacramento and then loaded up the stolen goods “into a red Dodge Charger as alarms blared in the background.”

The slow-motion audacity is almost thrilling.

Whatever you think of the “Ocean’s 11” remake with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, today’s short film is the exact opposite.

Despite the all-in-the-family vibe of today’s thieves, much of the shoplifting wave isn’t committed by starving Jean Valjeans desperate for a loaf of bread. In San Francisco, organized crime gangs, often operating out of Oakland, have capitalized on the city’s anything-goes attitude towards so-called lifestyle crimes. Their thugs go in to steal high-margin goods that the OC outfits then sell on the black market.

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This is happening because liberal prosecutors do not have these perps arrested and tried.   The result is that the price of goods for honest people goes up to cover the losses that crooks inflict on businesses.  Some stores in California are putting their merchandise under lock and key and customers have to get an employee to retrieve the merchandise for them to buy.