As retail theft continues to surge in San Francisco, a group of four women were caught on video allegedly fleeing from a CVS store with bags full of stolen merchandise.
The incident occurred at the CVS location on Van Ness Avenue and Jackson Street on Monday around 5 p.m. and was first reported by KTVU FOX2 crime reporter Henry K. Lee, who spoke briefly with witnesses on the scene.
According to Steve Adams, a witness at the scene, the four women fled from the scene after “picking the place dry.”
When Adams asked the CVS employees if they were going to call the police after the incident took place he said “they just shrugged.”
“This sort of thing is becoming so normal,” the witness told Lee.
An increase in crime sprees across the country, specifically in New York and California, have recently forced several retail stores to close their doors permanently.
As previously reported by Fox News, “multiple incidents in California have been captured on camera, including a viral video from earlier this month that shows a group of shoplifters dashing out of a Neiman Marcus department store in San Francisco and jumping into idling getaway cars.
Earlier this month, Target announced it would be closing its five San Francisco stores early due to a surge in crime and an ongoing loss of police presence in the city.
As previously reported by ABC7 news, Walgreens told the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that theft in their San Francisco stores is four times more than the average in stores across the country. The company also spends 35 times more on hiring security personnel. In the past five years, Walgreens has closed 17 stores in the Bay Area.
“Our investigations have shown that there are organized fences where people are selling these products that they steal,” said San Francisco Police Department spokesman Robert Rueca.
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