‘Walgreens fed my family’: inside the San Francisco stores closing over ‘retail theft’

The drugstores are at the center of debate over crime. But closures threaten an affordable staple of many communities

In mid-October Walgreens announced the impending closure of five of its San Francisco stores. Retail theft" had risen to unsustainable levels despite increased investment in security, the chain said. It was time to give up.

In the months before the announcement, viral videos of brazen shoplifting attempts at Walgreens locations in the city - including one that appeared to show a man riding his bike out of a store with a trash bag filled with stolen items - had put it at the center of a heated national debate over fears of a pandemic-induced crime wave".