Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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featureless wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 1:03 pm Events like these remind me we are indeed a ways down the path of the wheels falling off the bus. It's also ironic that now the Dem pols in California are swinging back to tough on crime. I guess their sponsors don't like getting burgled. But property crime against the low income? What property crime?

Yup, Newsom was out telling the media that CHP will be helping patrol retail establishments in CA. SF DA Chesa Bodin is facing a recall election next year for not being tough enough on criminals.

Yes Dem politicians have to keep their donors happy, especially the ones who live in mansions with security systems and private armed response. The ones who suffer the most from crime are the low income, they get written off because they live in high crime areas.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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No doubt Newsom is getting calls from friends and donors reminding him he's up for reelection in 2022. He'll next be after the DA's.

Thieves rushed into a southern California Nordstrom store the night before Thanksgiving and ran off with pricey goods in the latest of a string of organized retail thefts in the state. The robberies have been marked by swift attacks by large groups of people, often as the shops are open.

In the latest incident five people, one wearing an orange wig, entered the open store shortly before 7pm on Wednesday at the Westfield Topanga Mall in the Canoga Park area of Los Angeles, took seven or eight expensive purses and fled in a car, police said.

A security guard was sprayed with some kind of chemical by the thieves and was treated at the scene, police said.

Police cars and ambulances converged on the mall but there were no immediate arrests.

Multiple police cruisers, as well as fire trucks and ambulances, were seen parked outside the Nordstrom store at the popular shopping complex in Canoga Park. At least a dozen shoppers appeared to be standing outside.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -robberies
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Also Wednesday,
An Apple store in Santa Rosa was also robbed on Wednesday of $20,000 in merchandise, according to the police.

"In a brazen daytime burglary in front of customers and staff, the suspects grabbed over $20,000 worth of merchandise from the store and fled the area in an unknown vehicle," Santa Rosa police said in a statement.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... -robberies
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Los Angeles police late Friday were on citywide tactical alert after a wave of smash-and-grab “flash mob” robberies at high-end stores.

And in Lakewood, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detectives were investigating a possible smash-and-grab robbery at a Home Depot after people stormed into the store Friday night and fled with sledgehammers and bolt cutters, according to authorities and a store employee.

Friday’s tactical alert follows a series of incidents in which groups have swooped in on stores across Los Angeles — including a Nordstrom at the Grove shopping center and several stores at the Beverly Center in the Beverly Grove neighborhood — and have fled with thousands of dollars in merchandise.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the incident at Nordstrom on Tuesday, where as many as 20 people stole $5,000 worth of merchandise after smashing a display window, police said.

In Canoga Park, several people entered a Nordstrom store Wednesday night at the Westfield Topanga & the Village shopping center, where they attacked a security guard with bear spray and took off with merchandise.

At the Home Depot in Lakewood on Friday, more than half a dozen people entered the store shortly before 8 p.m. and stole merchandise, Deputy Miguel Meza said.

“Witnesses saw multiple vehicles taking off,” Meza said.

A store employee told The Times in a phone interview that men took sledgehammers and crowbars and some wore sweatshirts with hoodies.

Detectives were at the scene late Friday interviewing witnesses.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -robberies


LAPD tactical alert:
A Tactical Alert is an announcement of the anticipated redistribution of on-duty officers to achieve personnel levels necessary for controlling an emergency.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Bisbee wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 1:35 pm
Wino wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:06 am I have nothing but contempt for thievery !! Having been on the receiving end of auto theft, auto break ins, home robbery, stealing things I worked hard to pay for is a bit unsettling. There is a huge difference in stealing an apple pie off a window shelf because you are starving and just outright theft of anyone's or things property. Inequities are no excuse for stealing - I don't care who or what you are or one's lot in life, it does not entitle anyone to theft.
Wino, I write this to help expand your view of “stealing” and add to the process of understanding that you have already started upon. You agree that there is no monolithic reason why people steal. Their motivations are important to differentiate who they are. One steals food out of desperation and a need for survival. Another steals property to enrich himself at the cost of a stranger (or worse a friend or family member who trusted them). Now, consider the mythical Robin Hood character. The troublemaker who wishes to upset the status-quo and redress some social inequity and reduce the suffering of the powerless by giving them what he has stolen from the rich? Of course that sort of thief is celebrated in the public consciousness and many mafia bosses have considered themselves variants of such “honorable criminals”. What is less celebrated are simply the angry poor. Such as those who started the French Revolution. The ones who spontaneously organized to upend the system though revolution and “eat the rich”. Yes, we actually celebrate those people through broadway plays. Yet if they are colored folks who smash and grab Fendi purses or Gucci outfits, somehow that is less glamorous. Consider also that these stores are completely “insured”. These luxury stores are not victims like you or me. (Their employees may be the victims if they don’t have a sales job to return to a looted store the next day but that is beside the point.) A thief stealing your car (to cut up and sell as parts) that you need to get to work is clearly evil as the victim bears all the cost as well as future losses (not being able to get to work). But that is quite different than an ignorant thief who steals handbags to sell on Craigslist when the store suffers no losses, are fully insured, and nobody needs the handbag to do anything (it is literally a bobble for rich folks’ egos).

Stealing a handbag off the shoulder of an owner is even different than stealing the exact same handbag from a store. In corporate stores there truly are no direct victims (though they would like us to believe otherwise). One could possibly say the most direct victim in the recent smash & grabs are the thieves themselves who have been living under such economic or social pressures that they explode in rage or believe that risking police beating, arrest and jail is worth some spontaneous act of immediate gratification. These people live both as outcasts of society and in total ignorance to their power to create or ensnared in illusions (such as the value of luxury goods to their lives).

My point is not to exonerate crimes or criminals. It is to help all of us see beyond the limitations of our current perspectives. Not doing so keeps all of us mired in conflict over crumbs and trapped by our collective illusions over what is real; blind to the solutions to pertinent social challenges.
Then allow me to add to this understanding. Desperately hungry people breaking into a grocery store and stealing food is one thing. It's a crime, yes, but an understandable one. Breaking into stores to grab Gucci, et. al, however, is BS. Gucci bags are not food. Manolo shoes are not food. Breakfast cereal and milk, though, are.

And I would remind people here that some of the businesses that get looted and destroyed are Black-owned and thus already disadvantaged. We need those businesses, and we need them intact, not destroyed.

https://www.newsweek.com/looters-exploi ... es-1509777
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... ebuilding/
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Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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What a great exchange. One of the reasons I love this place.

wrt stealing: on a certain level, stolen atoms are real--you know, atoms making up a handbag are real. On another level, one of the Buddhas was robbed of his bowl and robe on a summer's evening. He lamented aloud that he could not give the thief the beautiful full moon as well.

This is not to say that someone trying to steal my beer won't get shot in the left nut. For the record, women never steal beer. They get you to buy them one. And a house. I kid! :-0

CDFingers
Crazy cat peekin' through a lace bandana
like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed Jack

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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CDFingers wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:07 pm What a great exchange. One of the reasons I love this place.

wrt stealing: on a certain level, stolen atoms are real--you know, atoms making up a handbag are real. On another level, one of the Buddhas was robbed of his bowl and robe on a summer's evening. He lamented aloud that he could not give the thief the beautiful full moon as well.

This is not to say that someone trying to steal my beer won't get shot in the left nut. For the record, women never steal beer. They get you to buy them one. And a house. I kid! :-0

CDFingers
https://www.ump-attire.com/Products/NT- ... lar-Carbon
This isn't going well, is it?

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Kevin Nishita, a former police officer working with Star Protection Agency, was shot when a group of men tried to rob the news crew of its television camera Wednesday, officials said. Crime Stoppers of Oakland, the city’s Police Department and other contributors are offering a reward totaling $32,500 for information leading to the arrest of anyone involved in the crime.
On Wednesday, Nishita was assigned to a KRON reporter covering the Monday night burglary of the Prime 356 clothing store on the 300 block of 14th Street. As Nishita stood outside the store with the reporter at about 12:20 p.m., a group tried to rob the pair and the security guard was shot in the abdomen, Oakland police spokesperson Kim Armstead said. He was taken to Highland Hospital in critical condition.

Stanley Roberts said he was covering the theft for KRON when three men pulled up in a car, one with a gun in hand, and tried to rob the reporter of his camera. The security guard was shot when he intervened, Roberts said.

Roberts added that television news crews have bodyguards because they’re often targeted for their equipment while working in communities with high crime rates.

“This has been a systemic problem, and it’s making it harder for journalists to do their jobs,” he said.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/art ... 655373.php
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Oh, that couldn't have happened--California is a "GUN-FREE ZONE!"

Grrr...if only Californians would consider voting for pro-2A Liberals instead of who's in there now. You know, the ones who keep passing laws limiting the 2A rights of Californians. I've gotta say, we don't really have the above-described problem here in Virginia where news reporters get regularly robbed. That's because the thieves aren't sure who might be carrying here, since we're a "shall-issue" state.

May Mr. Nishita's recovery be swift and complete.
"SF Liberal With A Gun + Free Software Advocate"
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Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Sadly Mr Nashita succumbed to his wounds. He was there protecting the KRON news crew which is the NBC affiliate in SF, the crew was filming about a smash and grab burglary. I hope there is more street video and maybe even a passerby's cell phone pictures and video of the crime.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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After a spate of brazen smash-and-grab robberies left Los Angeles-area retailers and shoppers on edge last month, officials announced Thursday that they had arrested 14 suspects in connection with the crimes.

Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore, joined by other officials and members of the business community at LAPD headquarters, said none of the 14 suspects remains in custody.

One of the suspects is a juvenile, Moore said. The others either posted bail or were released without bail.

The chief pointed to zero-bail policies that were put in place last year for certain crimes, including burglary, as a public health measure to reduce jail populations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s criminal elements that are recognizing that condition and are capitalizing on it,” Moore said.

He pointed to one of the incidents as an example — the Nov. 23 smash-and-grab robbery of a Nordstrom department store at the Grove mall in the Fairfax district.

Three suspects were arrested after the robbery and a pursuit that made its way into South Los Angeles, police said. One was a juvenile; two adult suspects have criminal records and were released on zero bail.

Garcetti said the community needs the help of the criminal justice system, judges and jailers.

“There are people who need to be behind bars,” he said. “We have opened up a lot of the city because we’re in a better place with COVID. We should be able to also open up our jails, and we should be able to have judges that put people behind those bars as well.”

The mayor sought to assure the public that shopping centers and malls are safe places to shop during the holiday season, and he said police have his and the City Council’s full support and are being provided the resources they need to bring an end to the robberies.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -robberies
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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All criminality is more common here. Police try to keep a handle on the stuff as it happens but they certainly aren't going to go out of their way to chase down thieves and end up on some video. Around here car thefts have become much more common and no one ever seems to get arrested. Walmart used to arrest people but don't anymore, CVS, Walgreens, people just take what they want and walk out. Home Depot has gone to great lengths to make it harder. Expensive tools are locked up. Anything that can be resold.

The riots of the summer of 2020 was the turning point. Everyone has a get out of jail free card now. People used to not even be able to find our town, and if they did it was a pain finding your way out as the streets end at the creek and are hemmed in by RR tracks on the other side. Now there are break ins even here in the poor part of town.

Re: About 80 masked looters ransacked a Northern California Nordstom's store Saturday night.

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Quote forcibly appropriated from Twitter about how not new this is.
"Everything I don't like is BLM's fault," for a phenomenon that's been on Wikipedia for a decade (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_rob)

2011 Chicago: https://wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527 ... 1383528354
2011 DC suburbs: https://washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime- ... #pagebreak
2011 Houston: https://abc7chicago.com/archive/8460708/
2012 Portland: https://web.archive.org/web/20120412051 ... 23375.html
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/statu ... 9562566658

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