WATCH: Reporter Captures Shoplifter Brazenly Loading Up Garbage Bag in Walgreens, as Thefts Surge in San Francisco

On Monday, customers at a San Francisco Walgreens looked on and recorded a shoplifter casually stuffing a garbage bag full items before riding off on a bike, though not before one of the onlookers tried unsuccessfully to grab the bag from him. While the apparent brazenness of the shoplifter might surprise some, San Franciscans have been getting used to such thefts in recent years.

The video was captured by reporter Lyanne Melendez of ABC7 News, who was later interviewed by her own station about the incident, which she said is the sort of thing that’s become far too common.

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

Retailers have been hightailing it out of San Francisco in recent years thanks in large part to rising theft and crime overall. In recent years Walgreens alone has closed 17 stores in San Francisco, where shoplifting at its locations in the city is four times higher than the chain’s national average, according to the company.

As Board of Supervisors member Ahsha Safai told ABC7, “Seventeen Walgreens over the last five years, almost every Gap retail outlet is gone, CVS is under assault.”

Many have blamed the surge on Prop 47, a ballot measure passed in 2014 that reclassified certain nonviolent offenses from felonies misdemeanors. Notably, the measure raised the threshold for what constituted felony shoplifting and grand theft to $950.

Additionally, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has received his fair share of criticism, beginning with his pledge not to bring charges on certain nonviolent, though common crimes in the city.

“We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes,” Boudin told The San Francisco Chronicle before being elected in 2019. “Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.”

Boudin’s policies haven’t sat well with some members of the San Francisco Police Department. As one union president told 60 Minutes, “In the short term you know, we’ve seen the consequences of his policies, and that’s just pure destruction,”

Watch above via ABC7 San Francisco.