America’s Shoplifting Hotspots: The Top 11 Cities With the Highest Shoplifting Rates Revealed – And San Francisco Isn’t Number One!

Downtown San Francisco has developed a reputation as a hotbed for theft in recent years.

But it looks like the Golden City isn’t really the shoplifting capital of America. Instead, Los Angeles had the highest rate of “organized retail crime” for the fifth consecutive year in 2022, according to a report from the National Retail Federation (NRF).

The study includes insights from 177 brands that accounted for $1.6 trillion in annual U.S. sales by 2022.

It found that shrink – the total losses suffered by retailers – rose by $20 billion in a year to an eye-watering $112.2 billion in 2022.

And since up to 70 percent of these losses are due to theft, that means shoplifters have stolen approximately $78.4 billion from businesses.

San Francisco came in second and was followed by Houston, TX, New York City, NY, Seattle, WA, and Atlanta, GA.

Sacramento, CA, and Chicago, IL tied for seventh place. Rounding out the top ten were Denver, CO, Miami, FL and Albuquerque, NM, all tied. The study did not specify how many crime incidents each city had seen.

Retailers have always been vulnerable to shoplifting, but recently there has been a rise in coordinated and organized robberies in stores.

The NRF report confirms that the trend is largely driven by large urban areas. The top five locations are also Democratic-led areas.

It has led to a drastic backlash from stores, with companies like Target and CVS locking down their products to deter shoplifters.

A recent Inside Edition survey found that customers now have to wait up to 40 minutes for employees to come and remove items from glass enclosures.

In addition, many retailers are leaving crime-ridden cities as rampant theft makes them no longer viable.

A report earlier this year found that the number of retailers in San Francisco’s Union Square neighborhood had been reduced to 107 from 203 in 2019.

The study found that shrink, the total losses suffered by retailers, rose by $20 billion in a year to an eye-watering $112.2 billion last year. And since up to 70 percent of these losses are due to theft, that means shoplifters have stolen approximately $78.4 billion from businesses.

And earlier this month, Target announced it would close nine stores in major cities due to rising theft.

According to the NRF, shoplifters also appear to be becoming more and more violent. The increase is attributed to the rising number of violent thefts. Overall, 88 percent of retailers say shoplifters will become more aggressive in 2022.

“Retail crime, violence and theft continue to impact the retail industry at unprecedented levels,” the report said.

‘The consequences of these criminal acts do not only apply to major national brands or major metropolises. Daily media reports show that no company is immune, and these issues impact retailers of all segments, sizes and locations in the United States.”