"It's a ghost town," said Michelle Tandler, a San Francisco native and high-tech entrepreneur, whose photos of the stores barricaded in plywood went viral on social media this week. "Every store has a security guard. People are going to lose their jobs. And these things have a ripple effect."

Two weeks ago, San Francisco was the first of several progressive cities hit by smash-and-grab mobs of thieves, sometimes as many as 80 in a group. Video from the San Francisco looting of Louis Vuitton shows criminals walking casually out of the store, goods in hand. Other cities hit include Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis. 

"This is traumatizing for our associates and is unacceptable," said Best Buy CEO Corie Barry four days before yet another outlet was ransacked on Black Friday in a Minnesota mall. "We are doing everything we can to try to create as safe as possible environment."

There may be several factors behind the looting.

Part of the problem is a lack of police. San Francisco and other cities are short of cops, making robberies easier to get away with. San Francisco is short 400 officers, Los Angeles 300, with Minneapolis down by 200.

Total police officers in the United States declined by 20,000 between 2008 and 2018, due to a tighter labor market, rising technological complexity within the profession, and the high psychological toll of policing. Anti-police protests following the death of George Floyd in May 2020 have led to further attrition.

Progressive prosecutors are also letting more criminals free, sending the message that theft is an understandable response to poverty. In early 2020, San Francisco's progressive District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, told the co-founder of Black Lives Matter before an audience at the Commonwealth Club that wealth inequality caused crime, and declared he would reduce prosecution of theft.