| | | Shoplifting soars as prosecutors back off
October 16, 2019 CWBChicago Citywide
Last Wednesday, Area North detectives issued a community alert about a robbery pattern in Logan Square. Chicago police release similar warnings dozens of times every month.
But the Logan Square warning was unique. An armed man, police said, had shoplifted from the exact same Walgreen’s location and then threatened store employees with a weapon three separate times in three weeks.
A little after 5 o’clock last Friday evening, a small group of men gathered armloads of merchandise and ran out the front door of shoe retailer DSW’s Loop location.
It was the second time in four hours that organized shoplifters had struck the store.
In May, shoplifting crews struck the DSW location at Clark and Halsted in Lakeview three times in one week. Each time, police reports indicate, groups of five to seven men and women entered the location and fled with duffle bags full of merchandise.
The popular Ulta Beauty chain has been targeted by countless shoplifting mobs across the city this year. Police on Sunday afternoon said a two-man team stole between $8,000 and $9,000 worth of merchandise from the company’s Lincoln Park location at 1000 West North Ave.
These incidents are not isolated.
A CWBChicago examination of Chicago Police Department data found that retail theft cases are up sharply in recent years across the city and in its busiest shopping corridors.
The increase comes as Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx makes a public effort to back away from retail theft prosecutions. Attorneys in Foxx’s office are instructed to not pursue felony charges against shoplifting suspects unless the value of the pilfered merchandise exceeds $1,000. That’s three times the $300 felony threshold set by state law.
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