Crime so out of control in San Francisco, stores are locking up candy

While Butterfingers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Starbursts, and M&M's are locked up behind bars, illegal drugs are readily available for consumers as they flow rampant down the city's streets that are plagued by urine, human feces, and homeless vagrants looking for their next hit.

In order to fend off thieves, San Francisco store owners have taken extra measures to combat rampant retail theft and are locking up merchandise up and down store aisles, which now includes candy.

A photo taken by the Daily Mail at a Walgreens store shows a mixture of America's favorite chocolate and gummy candies confined behind a sheer box with a lock on it. If consumers want to purchase a KitKat or a Hershey's Kiss, they will have to ring an alarm for a store associate to come and assist them in grabbing the item off of the shelf.

A security guard at the Walgreens on Powell Street which is home to San Francisco's famous cable cars told Daily Mail that, "Theft is constant."

"For my company, this is the busiest store in San Francisco. We used to have two guys here but now it's one so a lot of the time, I'll be dealing with one person and someone else will be taking things," he said. "I can't get them all."

He told the outlet that a homeless man who stole from the store earlier in the day appeared a few hours later only to commit another theft.

Major businesses and retailers have recently announced that they are shuttering their locations in the once-booming downtown corridor, with all citing similar reasons for the departures: rampant retail theft, loss of foot traffic, homeless vagrants attacking employees, and other safety concerns.

These businesses include Nordstroms, Whole Foods, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Old Navy, and now the entire Westfield shopping center.

While the San Francisco City Council has weaponized the local criminal justice system, turning it into a revolving door for repeat offenders and enacting laws that prevent police making arrests for petty theft, a Muslim immigrant and business owner, whose store was recently ransacked by a pack of thieves, said that crime in the city is now worse than it is in both Afghanistan and Iraq.