San Francisco has been in rapid decline since the Black Lives Matter movement held the city hostage in 2020. Now, we’re watching the city die in real time. Without quick and substantive measures to reverse course, one of the nation’s leading cities will become a cautionary tale against embracing the radical left’s agenda.
Bustling with tourists and locals enjoying the city’s shopping district and high-end hotels, Union Square was considered the heart of the City by the Bay — at least until 2020. That was when, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, city leaders opted to hand over power to the radical left in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
There’s been a mass exodus of the Union Square neighborhood’s top retailers since, like Saks off 5th and Nordstrom, driven by the city’s culture of lawlessness. Homeless addicts commit petty crimes to help feed their drug habit. Opportunistic criminals exploit lax approaches to crime.
The Westfield mall has emerged as the epitome of San Francisco’s struggles. Aside from frequent theft, security guards have been stabbed, and a homeless person allegedly sexually assaulted a customer while hiding out in a mall bathroom.
Claire’s jewelry complained of rampant shoplifting before closing. Staff with Ted Baker clothing reported violent homeless people continue to roam the mall. They were once forced to lock their doors after someone threatened “to bring a gun to shoot everyone, and telling our team that they will wait for them and rape them on their way home.”
Westfield handed the mall to lenders as its retail shops abandoned them and city leaders failed to deliver on promises “to find solutions to the key issues and lack of enforcement against rampant criminal activity.”
Whole Foods closed its flagship store in the Mid-Market neighborhood. The store suffered frequent theft and angry homeless people. The death of a 30-year-old man from a fentanyl and methamphetamine overdose in the store’s bathroom likely made the decision to close easier.
As I say in my forthcoming book “What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities,” San Francisco’s death spiral can be directly attributed to radical left policies and approaches implemented after the famously far-left city embraced the BLM movement.
San Francisco defunded police, diverting $120 million to fund Black community initiatives. It was meant as “a gesture of reparations for decades of city policymaking that have created or exacerbated deep inequities for San Francisco’s African American residents.”
George Soros-wannabe District Attorney Chesa Boudin ended gang enhancements, falsely characterizing them as “infused with racism” because they’re often used against Latino and black defendants. But both demographics, according to the state of California, make up the vast majority of gang members.
Boudin also pushed too many criminals into diversion programs, rather than jail where they belonged. With 33% of cases headed to diversion in 2021 (versus the average 11% from 2011-2019, before he took office), prolific offenders had little fear of punishment. Even if they were prosecuted, Boudin’s office only had a 33% conviction rate in 2021 (versus a 61% average from 2011-2019).
San Francisco crime skyrocketed almost immediately, with a 20% year-over-year increase in homicides in 2020 and then 17% in 2021, compared to 2020. Burglaries shot up an astonishing 47% in 2020 compared to three previous years.
Homelessness worsened with police unable to arrest drug dealers or users, who wouldn’t be prosecuted anyway. It attracted out of town addicts who knew they could get a quick high without much hassle. Soon, tourists stopped coming and foot traffic from locals dwindled.
San Francisco voters finally realized their city veered too far to the left. They pushed Mayor London Breed to refund law enforcement and recalled Boudin from office in 2022. But by then, the culture of lawlessness had taken hold. And some still pretend there isn’t a crisis.
Far-left columnists for the San Francisco Chronicle downplayed the closure of Whole Foods, chastising political pundits for arguing it’s a “telltale sign of the city’s apocalyptic doomscape.”
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They blamed the grocery store for being in the wrong neighborhood. They even blamed shoplifting on the store, citing one worker who said the liquor section shouldn’t have been by an exit.
One Los Angeles Times reporter even cast doubt that Union Square is dying, framing the crisis mostly around “reductions in consumer spending,” online shopping, and national retailers changing business strategies. Little focus was placed on crime, despite the reporter admitting the Bay Area has the highest property crime rate in the state.
Still, the city is attempting to mitigate the threat and discomfort of walking downtown with a police crackdown on drug dealing and public use, but the radical left is trying to stymie progress.
Supervisor Dean Preston demanded the city “end punitive policies, specifically arresting and incarcerating drug users” because he says it will lead to more overdoses. One columnist condemned the strategy because “arrests mean hundreds of lives will be altered forever — job prospects permanently marred, housing opportunities permanently foreclosed and distrust of governmental institutions permanently instilled.”
It’s unclear how long city leaders can sustain pressure from the radical left. But if San Francisco is to survive, leaders must ignore the very radicals who brought the city to the brink. They must allow cops to do their jobs, push the DA to follow through on charges, demand nonprofit groups in the homeless industrial complex show meaningful results or lose funding, and offer tax credits to keep retail afloat while the crime and homelessness are contained.
