Union Square visitors look at damage to the Louis Vuitton store on Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021, after thieves ransacked the San Francisco business the night before.
Danielle Echeverria/The Chronicle 2021
Bay Area retailers were on alert after groups of thieves rushed a Nordstrom in Walnut Creek on Saturday night and then hit stores at malls in Hayward and San Jose on Sunday, stealing merchandise in the wake of Friday’s ransacking of high-end retailers in San Francisco’s Union Square.
San Francisco police were investigating possible links among the brazen heists.
A day after about 80 people flooded into the Walnut Creek department store and made off with goods Saturday, a group armed with hammers struck at Hayward’s Southland Mall. They stormed into a jewelry store at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, smashing glass cases and grabbing jewelry, and fled in waiting vehicles, Hayward police Lt. Mark Ormsby said. Police had not made any arrests as of Sunday night.
An hour later in San Jose, at around 6:30 p.m., a group of thieves entered the high-end athletic wear store Lululemon at Santana Row mall and took merchandise. They fled before officers arrived, San Jose police Sgt. Christian Camarillo said. adding that he could not provide further details in the ongoing investigation.
In both Walnut Creek and San Francisco, dozens of people ransacked stores, scooped up armfuls of merchandise such as clothing and bags, and dashed away.
Earlier Sunday, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca said, “Our investigators will be looking into the Walnut Creek incident” for possible connections to the Union Square mayhem.
Ormsby said Hayward police had no information yet to suggest the robbery was linked to other cases. Camarillo also had no information about possible ties between the San Jose incident and others.
Walnut Creek police called the Nordstrom assault “clearly a planned event.” Sources told police the same group of thieves might strike again at retail stores, though the information was “very vague,” said Lt. Holley Connors.
Police tweeted that “out of an abundance of caution,” they were deploying more officers and reserves. They urged businesses and residents to be prepared and said “some stores may consider closing early or taking other precautions.”
Three people were arrested in what police called the “organized retail theft” at the Nordstrom in Broadway Plaza.
Connors said people in dark clothing, ski masks and hoods stormed the store “like a flash mob thing” after police began receiving calls about cars driving recklessly nearby just before the 9 p.m. closing Saturday.
People dashed in and out within three minutes and raced away in about two dozen cars that were parked in the middle of the street, many with their license plates covered, Connors said.
Nordstrom employees called 911 to report that about 80 people stole merchandise, police said. Officers arrived “within moments,” joining one who had been working nearby, he said.
Two Nordstrom workers were assaulted, and one was pepper-sprayed by the attackers, police said. Connors said there were reports also of people carrying crowbars.
Video showed people making off with bags and suitcases of merchandise.
Police stopped one car and arrested two people, one of whom had a firearm. A third person was arrested nearby soon afterward, police said.
The three face charges of robbery, burglary, conspiracy and possession of stolen property, police said.
Police identified the suspects as Dana Dawson, 30, of San Francisco, who also faced gun charges; Joshua Underwood, 32, of San Francisco; and Rodney Robinson, 18, of Oakland.
Rueca described the San Francisco investigation as broad because of the high number of thieves involved. Eight people were arrested. A video from one store showed as many as 30 people who appeared to be engaged in vandalism or theft, he said. Retailers that were hit included Louis Vuitton, Burberry and Bloomingdale’s in the Westfield mall and Yves Saint Laurent on Geary Street, plus two cannabis dispensaries, among others, police said.
The back-to-back heists in the four Bay Area cities followed a string of similar group thievery assaults in Chicago, dealing blows to retail companies trying to get their holiday seasons under way after struggling through more than a year of pandemic hardship.
“This is not normal,” Rueca said about the nature of the thefts. “These are not normal incidents.”
“Smash and grab” thefts are not new, said Jim Dudley, a lecturer at San Francisco State University’s department of criminal justice studies and a retired SFPD deputy chief of patrol. But he added, “it seems like they’re happening more often.”
San Francisco’s downtown remained rattled after the Friday night mayhem. Dramatic videos on social media showed masked people running with their arms loaded with goods, followed by a swift police response as officers ran to a car and broke windows with batons while a patrol car raced up to block it from leaving.
Some retailers did not hold back in voicing frustration.
“The mayor and her entire team should resign,” said John Chachas, whose family owns luxury retailer Gump’s on Post Street in Union Square. “You can’t really run a retail enterprise if you have to board up the windows five weeks before the critical Christmas selling season.”
Gump’s is re-evaluating being in San Francisco, said Chachas, the company’s chairman and CEO.
“The fact that the city can’t maintain sufficient order that businesses can operate (in) without fear of being damaged,” he said, leaves him to conclude that officials may have “no understanding of the concept of how an orderly city is necessary for commerce to function.” That means “we can’t operate a business. ... So we will evaluate our options to be elsewhere unless this nonsense ends.”
While some speculated about whether the Bay Area thefts were connected to protests after the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict Friday in Kenosha, Wis., that did not appear to be the case, Dudley said. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in two killings that followed racial justice demonstrations last year.
“These did not occur during marches, where we’ve seen groups splinter from a march and take anger out on retail sites along the way,” he said. “These seem to be coordinated, with tools, lookouts, vehicles for getaway and swarming tactics used by criminals with intent to plunder.”
He said that the incidents might be instead related to “the perfect storm” in California: the raising of the threshold to $950 to categorize theft as a felony under Proposition 47, “and you have retail establishments with ‘no chase’ or ‘no touch’ policies.”
Walnut Creek police said investigators were reviewing surveillance footage to identify suspects and asked people with information to contact Detective Wallen Deng at [email protected].
Jessica Flores, Julie Johnson and Catherine Ho are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @jesssmflores, @juliejohnson, @Cat Ho
