A family-owned hardware store in California’s Bay Area had an eye-watering $700,000 in merchandise stolen in a single year — as organized retail theft runs rampant in the Democrat-run state.
Dale Hardware in Fremont documented record losses in 2022 due to the brazen larceny, owner Kyle Smith told The Mercury News.
He said his business loses about $1,800 a day — and that his grandfather, who first began the business in 1955, would “roll in his grave” if he knew the financial hardship the store was facing as a result of the scourge.
“You’ll go, ‘Sir, sir, sir!’ and they don’t even turn around,” Smith told the outlet.
“Or they’ll give you a look, like, ‘Do you want to go there?’”
Retail experts told the outlet a variety of things have led to the current shoplifting crisis, including an increase in “organized retail theft,” or social media posts that have seemingly prompted people to flock to stores and steal.
Thieves at Dale Hardware can be seen in shocking surveillance footage shamelessly stuffing merchandise down their pants.
One man pocketed 37 circular saw blades before bolting from the store, Smith said.
Other shoplifters brazenly filled a shopping cart with $11,000 in specialty wire, and kept an accomplice at the door to warn employees against pursuing the thieves because they had guns, Smith said.
Another jaw-dropping instance involved a woman pushing a baby stroller who was caught on video stealing the store’s entire stock of batteries, hiding over $4,000 worth of supplies under a blanket in the carriage.
Staff at the hardware store say they only call the police when the loss is greater than $10,000 because authorities are unlikely to hold the perpetrators accountable over lower-level amounts.
Other Bay Area businesses have also reported a disturbing uptick in retail theft, but many incidents don’t get reported so the problem only persists.
Smith said about half of the losses come from those “who need something and didn’t want to pay” while the other half is a result of professional and habitual thieves.
The store owner recalled one woman who showed him a list of items she had been tasked with stealing by an Oakland man who sent a dozen thieves out to shoplift each day in the Bay Area.
“She had already been to Target,” he said. “She’d been to Home Depot. She’d been to Lowe’s.”
According to the National Retail Federation, organized retail thieves mainly target designer clothes and sunglasses, phones, allergy pills, vacuums, shoes, handbags, beauty products, office supplies, printer cartridges, meat, booze and infant formula.
The National Retail Federation’s 2022 retail security survey ranked the Bay Area as the second-most hard-hit metropolitan area by theft in the previous two years.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles has topped the list for the past four years and Sacramento moved up in the disturbing ranking, becoming the seventh-most hard-hit metropolitan area.
