Early Tuesday morning, someone passing by the Black Cat jazz club in Tenderloin, San Francisco, smashed the glass front door with a skateboard.
Afterward, burglars came in and stole whatever they could.
“Food, alcohol, our wine fridge was ransacked which had our like high-end champagne and so that was you know, thousands of dollars there. And they ended up stealing a bunch of our music equipment, guitars, congas, microphones,” said Adam Chapman, Director of Operations at Black Cat.
The incident stopped shortly after 2:00 a.m. when the police arrived. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to reach the owners and managers of the club, the police left the scene after the fire department took “temporary measures to secure the business.”
However, the measures were flimsy at best according to the Black Cat.
“Literally they put up three pieces of tape to hold a curtain and that was it,” said Chapman.
According to Chapman, burglars returned to the club, pushed through the curtain and ransacked the place again for the next 5 hours.
“It was a free-for-all and cars were driving by and seeing like that this was happening and would stop in the middle of the road, put their flashers on and then go into our business and take stuff. They’re making piles outside; they’re filling the cars. Mind you, you can see the police station from here,” added Chapman.
The management of Black Cat blames the police for not doing more to secure their business.
“We just want our [the] police that are block away to be able to fight for us like we fight for the district. You know, two minutes worth of extra work they would have been able to find out, get a number for us or just done something. Put up wood. They could have just taped the whole corner of our business off. Even taping it better would have been a better solution than what happened.” said Chapman.