There’s a catchphrase, “criminalizing poverty,” which can mean many things. When fines and costs are imposed on defendants who walk into court destitute, the end result is a foregone conclusion. You can’t get blood from a rock, and they are rocks. When they fail to pay, not necessarily because they laugh at the law but because they’re broke, they get rounded up and put in jail as punishment for not paying. That’s criminalizing poverty.

Then there’s the other kind.

Not being able to make ends meet is certainly a problem. Stealing is not the solution. Stealing is not “criminalizing poverty,” but criminalizing stealing. If, and how, society chooses to address the ability of poor people to “make ends meet,” perhaps with a social safety net like welfare, that’s one thing, but how did stealing from CVS become an acceptable fix? When did CVS become a charity?

San Francisco is ahead of New York on this front. Want to buy some toothpaste? You might have trouble finding a Walgreens.

At a board of supervisors hearing last week, representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable.

Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime” and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous.

“We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Dugan said.

You can dispute his claims, but what you can’t dispute is that Walgreens closed 17 stores. And what he means when he says “organized retail crime” is that this isn’t about Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread, but people stealing for the sake of stealing and fencing their stolen goods.

We talked about the thefts we had witnessed in the city and the sidewalk thieves’ markets where steaks, bicycles and other stolen goods are fenced. Safaí said he had recently stopped to inspect one of these markets at 24th and Mission.

“Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,” Safaí said. “I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.”

Then again, Frisco has been on the cutting edge of empathy and transformative change. Not prosecuting shoplifting is one solution to end mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty, but it’s not the only paradigm shift in play.

San Francisco has suffered in a variety of ways during the pandemic. The city has had twice as many fatal drug overdoses as coronavirus deaths. Tents of legions of homeless people lined sidewalks during the lockdowns. But the hearing last week focused on something much more prosaic: One of the richest cities in America is struggling with sticky fingers.

Not the Rolling Stones’ kind of sticky fingers either.

He talked about what he called a laissez-faire attitude in San Francisco.

“It has become part of the landscape,” he said of thefts. “People say, ‘Oh, well, that just happens.’”

Thieves “are obviously choosing locales based on what the consequences are,” Safaí said. “If there are no consequences for their actions, then you invite the behavior. Over and over.”

There is an inexplicable belief that if you try hard enough, you can wish away people engaging in crime. Or you can redefine crime by making it non-criminal. Or you can rationalize why it’s not their fault, even if it is crime. But there are some things you cannot do, one of which is resurrect dead people, whether they died of an overdose or a shooting. You can’t make Walgreens or CVS keep its stores open when their shelves are being stripped without consequence. You can’t expect people not to be people, who will snatch stuff from stores if they know they can get away with it. Not all people, but enough people.

Soon after moving to San Francisco in 2016, I walked into a Walgreens in North Beach to buy an electric toothbrush.

As I was paying for it, a man walked into the store, grabbed a handful of beef jerky and walked out. I looked over at an employee, who shrugged. Then I went to Safeway next door for some groceries and I saw a man stuffing three bottles of wine into a backpack and walking casually toward the exit. On his way out he bagged some snacks. I asked the Safeway clerk about the thefts.

“I’m new to San Francisco,” I said. “Is it optional to pay for things here?”

These anecdotes don’t prove the point, but they are examples of what’s happening. What proves the point is that Walgreens closed 17 stores. Walgreens can’t make money without stores. Walgreens needs stores, for without them they have no business. Yet, Walgreens closed 17 stores, which is the commercial equivalent of voting with one’s feet. They walked away, not because they don’t like stores, but because a store that loses financial sustainability because of rampant theft is no longer a profit center, and that’s why Walgreens has stores, to make a profit.

But what about mass incarceration, poverty, the disproportionate impact on black and brown people? All valid concerns. Jailing people for shoplifting not only makes it impossible for them to hold a job, work and support their families. But fining them instead is untenable, as they have no money to pay and end up in jail anyway. And the impact on the communities is devastating, as they lack supermarkets and pharmacies to provide needed foods and medical supplies. But if these merchants can’t maintain a profitable business, stores close and poor neighborhoods become food and pharmacy deserts.

The best solution would be that people stop stealing, but if the the more fervent beliefs and wishes of the woke can’t make that happen, options shrink despite arguments by Cynthia Nixon. Jailing is bad. Fining is bad. Wishes don’t work. What’s left? Seventeen fewer Walgreens. And if it doesn’t stop, eventually there will be none.