(DailyVantage.com) – A Whole Foods Market grocery store in downtown San Francisco has decided to temporarily close its doors in response to growing violent and drug-related crime in the city.
The Amazon-owned company revealed on April 10 that the San Francisco store would close by the end of the day, just over a year after opening, due to the prevalence of crime in the area.
A Whole Foods spokesperson said the store would reopen in the future when the “safety” of its staff could be ensured, and an unnamed city staffer told the San Francisco Standard that the company had specifically cited San Francisco’s issue with crime as the reason for the closure.
Matt Dorsey, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, said in a statement that he was “disappointed but sadly unsurprised” by the store’s decision to close, noting that the neighborhood was well acquainted with “drug-related retail theft,” open drug markets, and other criminal activity that had taken over the area.
While Dorsey proposed fully staffing the San Francisco Police Department as a potential solution to San Francisco’s crime problem, critics argued that Dorsey and other Democratic Party politicians in the city were partially to blame for the situation.
On April 4, CashApp founder and Block CTO Bob Lee was stabbed to death in San Francisco in what was alleged to have been a “random mugging.” Lee was reportedly ignored by bystanders when he pleaded for help, and he died shortly after.
In response to the incident, billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed to know many people in the city who had been “severely assaulted.” He also claimed that violent criminals were “often released immediately” by San Francisco authorities following their arrest.
A 2022 poll conducted by SFNext revealed that 45 percent of people living in San Francisco had fallen victim to theft within the past five years. In addition, 24 percent of San Franciscans claimed to have been either physically attacked or threatened.
Copyright 2023, DailyVantage.com
