On Monday at 5:00 p.m., thieves robbed the stylish Union Square’s Yves Saint Laurent shop and stole expensive purses worth approximately $54,000 in total. According to witness accounts, the thieves pushed the store’s security guard on the floor and robbed the entire place. Store manager Stanley Chin recalled the moments when the act took place.
According to Chin, he was in the shop’s storeroom when a commotion broke inside the premises. He saw at least five people enter through the doors suddenly. Within 90 seconds, the robbery was over.
In the past four weeks, the hit at Geary Street’s store is the third grab-and-run robbery.
The police record detailed that the store’s security guard got into a physical brawl with the criminals that injured him. While they pinned the guard down, several of the suspects grabbed store products and exited the store in a hurry. Furthermore, the suspects rode a waiting car and sped westbound quickly on Geary, taking advantage of the light downtown traffic occurring the past few days. Authorities determined the estimated value of the 20 robbed purses worth $54,000 in total.
The Saint Laurent policy reminds its employees to avoid engaging in such incidents for safety purposes. Deputy Police officer David Lazar noted that the shop has excellent security arrangements, locking the door every time one person enters the store. According to Lazar, the security guard may unlatch the door to let one person in but suddenly shove it open to help his accomplices raid the shop’s interior. Additionally, the store’s CCTV cameras captured the whole robbery footage.
According to Lazar, who spearheaded the Investigations Bureau, the robberies often happen in the downtown district. Additionally, they are all the same suspects from previous thievery acts wearing ankle bracelets, indicating that they already got arrested before for burglary cases but remained in pending status. The Saint Laurent incident progresses as they already identified several suspects of the crime. Lazar also noted that burglary acts often happen across the Bay Area and not only in San Francisco.
During early November of this year, a man and a woman entered the YSL shop, took four bags, and bolted outside the door. For the third burglary incident, a group of young women came in and allegedly inquired about a birthday gift. They grabbed two bags as they leave the shop. Currently, the store has an armed guard standing by the door entrance.
Before the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis, Union Square frequently experiences grab-and-run robberies. Most victims of these crimes include high-end shops like Christian Dior, Ferragamo, and Louis Vuitton.
Out of all the thieves infiltrating the area, the “Rainbow Girls” group is the most troublesome. Authorities gave them that name to emphasize the robbers’ wearing bright clothes and sporting dyed hair whenever they commit burglaries. According to Chin, the same thieves are back to continue their robbery schemes.
However, high-end shops are not the only ones victimized by burglars. For instance, the Walgreens at Eddy and Van Ness shut down this month after thieves emptied their shelves daily. According to the victims, the thieves would load the products into their bags and walk away.
As of late, the Union Square area installed at least 430 private security cameras around. Due to the number of surveillance cameras, police used these by identifying the thieves and gathering additional evidence for the area’s robber cases.
Moreover, armed robberies also happen within the Union Square area. In early October of this year, criminal Vermond Jones got killed during an armed robbery attempt near San Francisco’s Union Square. According to the local police, Jones was also the suspect in a May home invasion burglary in Fremont.
