A San Francisco Target store has been putting all of its cosmetic and toiletry products on lockdown amid a shoplifting crisis that has crippled retailers in the Golden Gate City.
Footage of the store’s interior posted to TikTok Thursday showed aisle after aisle of common drug store products under lock and key in the megachain.
While it’s common for stores to lock up small valuable items like razors, heaps of inexpensive large items like mouthwash, shampoo and lotion were also being kept out of reach of the grubby hands of would-be shoplifters, the clip showed.
The cosmetic confinement had been underway since at least October last year at the Folsom Street store near the city’s Mission District, according to WNCT-TV.
“Like other retailers, organized retail crime is a concern across our business. We’re taking proactive measures to keep our teams and guests safe while deterring and preventing theft,” a Target spokesperson said in a statement to The Post.
The Bay Area has been especially hard hit by a national organized retail crime epidemic that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading chains such as Walgreens to close five San Francisco stores due to theft.
The National Retail Federation’s 2022 retail security survey ranked San Francisco/Oakland as the second-most hard-hit metropolitan area by theft in 2020 and 2021, only behind Los Angeles.
The organization lists items like body wash and over-the-counter medication as items that are particularly attractive to shoplifters, who can often sell their stolen wares on the black market to smaller stores.
New York City crept up to third on the list in 2021, outpacing Chicago.
Seventy-one percent of retailers surveyed by the association said they had seen a “substantial” or “moderate” increase in organized retail crime, with 55% saying that policies that reduce or eliminate cash bail for non-violent crimes in cities like San Francisco and New York are to blame.
While San Francisco’s murder rate remains far below that of many other major cities, an increase in violent crime there was punctuated by two recent high-profile attacks — the stabbing murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee earlier this month and the unprovoked crowbar attack on Fire Commissioner Don Carmignani a day later that left the top official fighting for his life.
Concerns about crime, safety and “high theft” had also led a Whole Foods Market in downtown San Francisco to close two weeks ago.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted last week to approve a new lucrative police contract to try to mitigate a staffing shortage, according to KRON-TV.
The city’s department is understaffed by 25% after failing to replace some 562 officers who retired or resigned, Police Chief Bill Scott told the outlet.
“People want our officers to focus on the open-air drug dealing, retail theft, home burglaries, and violence impacting our neighborhoods, but we need more police to deliver,” Mayor London Breed said.