CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid—the list of drug stores in Oakland and other parts of the East Bay that are closing down is growing, leaving many customers scrambling to get their prescriptions filled.
I used to get my prescription meds, as well as other items, at the CVS on Webster Street at 21st Street. But they closed down a few months ago. The store never explained why, but it was obvious to those of us who shopped there: rampant, uncontrolled shoplifting. About 25% of all the items were kept behind locked sliding doors, and you had to ring a bell and wait patiently for a store employee to come over and help you. Sometimes someone show up, sometimes they didn’t. I was told numerous times by employees that people would come in from the street, load up with items, and then walk casually out without paying for them, knowing full well that (a) the security guard would do nothing, (b) no one would call the police and (c) even if they were called the police either wouldn’t show up or would come hours and hours later, by which time the perps could be anywhere.
So widespread has this phenomenon of locking items behind plexiglass cases that Slate.com calls it “a symbol of a society in decline.” Typical examples: a mob ransacked a pharmacy on Piedmont Avenue last Fall, “grabbing boxes of drugs off shelves.” A CVS drugstore in Berkeley was similarly robbed. Last month, CVS announced they were permanently closing 900 stores across the country.
Last month, the Walgreens on Telegraph at 34th street in Oakland shut down for good. Walgreens said that all the closures were due to “organized retail crime.”
The situation was exacerbated after State laws changed to allow shoplifting less than $950 worth of goods a misdemeanor rather than a felony. The conservative Hoover Institution, at Stanford University, said this meant that “Shoplifting is now de facto legal in California.” In so many California cities, the Institution said, “there is no attempt to conceal theft, and there is almost never any effort by store employees, including security personnel, to confront the thieves.”
I would hope that even the most Progressive among us can agree that this is a dire situation—one that threatens the fibers that hold us together as nation of laws. But maybe not; maybe the Progressives believe that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. The “omelet” they hope to make is obscure to me: is it social justice, whatever that means? Is it decarcerating our prisons? Is it driving businesses out of Oakland? Meanwhile, the eggs that are being broken are the rest of us: increasingly without drug stores, soon, perhaps, without retail of any kind. Yet vox populi. Our wonderful voters have now given us the most progressive Oakland government in history. How do you think that’s going to work out?
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Remembering Rich DiLeo
It’s been two years since CBO’s co-founder, Rich DiLeo, died (pancreatic cancer). I find myself thinking often of him. Somewhat gruff and burly on the outside (he’d played football), he was a teddy boy inside, and despite the fact that we were so different in so many ways, I grew quite fond of him.
Rich lived with his wife, Stephanie, in a big, somewhat ramshackle house near Oakland Tech. We met through nextdoor.com, where he was sympathetic to my posts that Oakland was falling apart and someone needed to do something about it. We joined forces with Jack Saunders, and behold! The Coalition for a Better Oakland was born.
Rich never wanted to be in the leadership. He refused to accept a Board position, preferring to stay in the background. He was glad to leave leadership to Jack and me. But Rich was the beating heart of the Coalition, our eminence blanc. Rich was as passionate about public safety in Oakland as anyone I’d ever met. He took every assault, every mugging and carjacking, every murder personally, as if it had been performed against him. He kept me and Jack going forward. And Rich was super-optimistic. He was always predicting we’d have thousands of members soon. I don’t think Rich fully understood the difficulties in creating and growing a movement, but that was one of the things I liked about him: his confidence, his belief in our cause.
The last time I saw Rich—we all knew he didn’t have much time left—he gave me his beautiful old walking stick. I treasure it. I don’t need to use it, yet, but if I ever do, I’ll think of Rich every time I lean on it, every time it holds me up.
Rest in peace, Buddy.
Steve Heimoff