By Ryan Steal
Two seasoned police officers say a shoplifting incident involving 80 people accused of stealing merchandise and fleeing a Nordstrom store in California in under a minute on Saturday night is one of the worst they’ve ever heard of.
“These type of smash-and-grabs I have not seen in my 45 years in law enforcement,” Andrew Scott, the former police chief of Boca Raton, Florida, said. “I haven’t seen smash-and-grabs in such a mass scale. … They ultimately blitzkrieg a particular location. … And in the matter of minutes, in just a couple of minutes, they can literally steal hundreds of thousands of dollars of product.”
Walnut Creek police said approximately 80 looters swarmed on the Nordstrom at about 9 p.m. in the city’s Broadway Plaza. According to a police spokesperson, one employee was pepper-sprayed, while two others were hit and kicked. Authorities say that the burglars were in and out of the store in less than a minute. The estimated value of the stolen items was not provided by officials.
The robbery was one of a series of quick-hit thefts that have plagued high-end retail businesses and pharmacies in the San Francisco area this year.
Police claimed the shoplifting was “clearly a planned event.”
Timothy T. Williams Jr., who retired from the Robbery-Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department after 29 years, said he had never seen so many suspects in a shoplifting incident.
“That’s a hell of a lot,” Williams exclaimed. “Businesses need to invest in displays that are shatterproof. That will be a deterrent. They can’t go in and do smash-and-grab because nothing is smashing for them to grab.”
Three individuals were arrested by the police in connection with Saturday night’s incident.
According to NBC Bay Area, a jewelry store in Hayward, California’s Southland Mall, was targeted by roughly nine individuals who used hammers to break cases before fleeing. Requests for comment from police in Hayward and Walnut Creek, approximately 30 miles northeast, weren’t returned as at Monday.
Last month, Walgreens announced the closure of five shops in San Francisco due to organized retail robbery.
