On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva called New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comments regarding smash-and-grab robberies a “Jedi mind trick.”
The Empire State’s Democratic Representative recently told The Washington Times that “a lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are actually not panning out,” she said, naming a “Walgreens in California that cited the issue but didn’t have the ‘data to back it up.’ ”
LA County Sheriff Villanueva responded to AOC’s comments stating, “In the words of John Adams, ‘Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,’” Villanueva continued, “No matter how badly certain politicians want to perform the Jedi mind trick to further their political narrative, the facts and evidence cannot be altered.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments referred to Walgreens’ decision to shut down almost two dozen stores in the San Francisco area, the city being nicknamed a “shoplifter’s paradise.”
In a statement to the Times, Walgreens said, “organized retail crime is one of the top challenges facing” Walgreens, commenting that the crime “has evolved beyond shoplifting and petty theft to the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods online.”
The current trend for thieves to break into stores and steal merchandise by the handful, or sometimes cart-full, is known as “smash-and-grab robbery.”
In October 2020, law enforcement officials in San Francisco recovered approximately $8 million in stolen merchandise.
Black Friday last month also saw an uptick in these types of robberies in cities across the US.
The senior executive vice president of communications for The Retail Industry Leaders Association, Jason Brewer, said in an email regarding AOC’s comments, “Respectfully, the Congresswoman has no idea what she is talking about. Both the data and stack of video evidence makes fairly clear that this is a growing problem in need of solutions,” continuing, “If she is not concerned with organized theft and increasingly violent attacks on retail employees, she should just say that.”
Photo Cred: Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
