I’ve been following the news from the Bay Area, where several of these types of robberies occurred over the past couple of days. They involve large groups of people “swarming” a store smashing and grabbing everything they can and getting into waiting vehicles. The robberies are planned ahead of time and difficult to combat because of how fast the operation is and how many people are involved. By the time police arrive, the robbers have often already dispersed and a single armed security guard isn’t enough.

I’ve known this to be a problem in the Bay Area for a while; one of the first instances I heard of was one in which teenagers in Oakland swarmed a BART train car and swiped phones and tablets out of riders’ hands.

I know we have a number of Bay Area users here: what is your perspective on the problem of “organized retail theft” and what can be done about it? In the rest of the country, California is portrayed as a lawless place where crime is essentially legal. There is a political and racial element to the problem since the perpetrators (at least in the Bay) are almost always black. Do you think Gavin Newsom’s “more police” promise is the solution?

Topics: law, retail, robberies, law enforcement, crime