On June 14, KGO television reporter Lyanne Melendez posted a video from a San Francisco Walgreens. The video showed a man shoving items into a garbage

A viral video has everyone talking about San Francisco's 'shoplifting surge.' But is it real?

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2021-06-26 16:00:03

On June 14, KGO television reporter Lyanne Melendez posted a video from a San Francisco Walgreens. The video showed a man shoving items into a garbage bag and biking out of the store without paying for them, as customers and a security guard looked on.

The video received over 6 million views on Twitter alone and generated dozens of news articles. Even before it was posted, however, many outlets had reported on a perceived spike in store thefts, including an article in the New York Times titled “San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge.”

But has there actually been a surge in shoplifting in San Francisco? Data from the San Francisco Police Department suggests these reports may be overblown. According to the data, overall shoplifting incidents reported to the police are below their levels before the start of the pandemic. And before that, shoplifting rates had been decreasing more or less steadily since the 1980s.

The Chronicle analyzed Police Department incident report data from January 2018 through April 2021. We looked at how overall numbers of shoplifting incidents and commercial robberies changed from month to month over that period.