Starbucks Coffee, Downtown Santa Ana. (Photo: Steve Cukrov, Shutterstock)
Sacramento Starbucks Closes Over Crime and Safety Issues
Starbucks is now paying for its wokeness, prioritizing homeless drug-addicted transients over locals who paid for their designer coffee drinks
By Katy Grimes, September 1, 2022 2:33 pm
The latest Starbucks casualty is in Sacramento, along the Broadway corridor, wrought with blocks of homeless transients, escalating crime, and legitimate safety concerns for the residents and business owners who live and work there.
“The growing crime wave in Los Angeles and Southern California claimed a new retail victim on Tuesday when Starbucks announced that 6 stores in the LA area would be closing due to crime and safety issues,” the Globe reported in July.
This is the first Starbucks in Northern California to close for safety concerns.
This is in my neighborhood, so I know the issues well, and have not been inside this Starbucks in several years – for good reasons.
Next door to the Starbucks is a just-closed Jamba Juice.
A friend said the nearby Walgreens will probably close next. “Then that entire shopping center will look like a Safe Ground Site. It already had daily camping and drug use. But it will get bigger and destroy Tower and Sampinos business.”
The Broadway business district separates downtown Sacramento and the Land Park neighborhood. The Broadway business association has pleaded with the city to help eradicate the businesses of the drug-addicted, mentally ill transients who leave piles of used drug needles near their businesses, camp inside doorways, defecate on the sidewalks, harass and terrify shoppers and employees, and break in and steal from them.
The now-closed Starbucks repeatedly had problems with the homeless transients coming in demanding to use the restrooms. They harassed patrons and their kids. They stole food. They attacked patrons, stabbed a patron, and another was stuck with a used needle.
Land Park is one of Sacramento’s oldest neighborhoods, with tree lined streets, beautiful old architecture and charm, and home to a 160-acre regional park which houses the Sacramento Zoo, Fairytale Town, Funderland amusement park, and the William Land Park Golf Course.
KCRA reported “The Sacramento Police Department said it has responded to six narcotic-related calls in that area in the last month.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There are shootings every weekend on Broadway.
We’ve written many times about the daily crime and vandalism by homeless transients/vagrants… here, here, here, and more.
Last November the Globe reported, “The crime wave across California has come to the front doors of millions in once-safe cities. As the Globe recently reported, in the once sleepy cow town of Sacramento, California, there are now regular (daily) shootings, stabbings, even machete attacks, bank robberies, assaults and homicides.”
“Sixteen months since Sacramento County lifted COVID-19 restrictions and allowed indoor seating at restaurants to resume, the 15th and Broadway Starbucks in Land Park is still take-out only,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Even the outdoor seating has been removed. Bathrooms have also been closed. ‘This is a high incident store,’ explained several store baristas to a customer inquiring about using restroom facilities.”
Starbucks was part of the problem allowing homeless to use the restrooms inside the store. That chased away a lot of regular customers, and put others in jeopardy. The Broadway Starbucks management was also resistant to neighbors offering advice and help to make the store more safe and appealing to paying customers.
The woke company is now paying for its wokeness, prioritizing homeless drug-addicted transients over locals who paid for their designer coffee drinks and snacks. Some Starbucks in the chain offered used-needle disposal boxes for their local homeless.
Last December the Globe reported, “Lining many streets in Sacramento are battered old RVs, campers and trailers, vans, and passenger vehicles, which have become homes for many of the city’s drug addicted and mentally ill transients. Despite spending millions on futile ‘solutions’ like tiny homes, FEMA trailers, and renovated hotel rooms for the city’s growing homeless population, it’s grown to more than 11,000 transients living on Sacramento streets.”
And last fall “homeless” transient Troy Davis, out on the streets despite his recent parole violation, raped and murdered downtown Sacramento resident Kate Tibbitts, in the Land Park neighborhood, killing her dogs and setting her house on fire,” the Globe reported.
At a December 2021 city council meeting, “the Mayor was yelling and scolding the heartless citizens in the crowd because they are not willingly sacrificing their quality of life,” despite the alarming November crime stats for just for one street in Sacramento, Broadway, we reported. This only validates what city residents and business owners have been telling council members for the last year – a 400% increase in burglaries of businesses.”
Neighbors formed an unofficial group a few years ago to assist Sacramento police and help neighbors report as many of the crimes as possible. It was mostly a success and trained many locals how to file a police report, and to report every violent episode, harassment, attack, threat, and crime observed. However, too many neighbors accused the group of being heartless toward the homeless transients.
The problem is not that the homeless transients are “unhoused” as the Mayor and members of the City Council would have us believe. The street transients are drug addicted and mentally ill and are not just “unhoused,” but they are “unsober” and untreated. As business owners and area residents know, until we address that issue, the crime, addiction, and growing trash and filth problems will continue to grow.
“No amount of housing will fix drug addicted criminals who do not want services,” the resident said.
Another commented, “We’ve been relegated second class citizens behind the homeless in Sacramento. What about our rights and quality of life?”
Is it any wonder the Sacramento Starbucks shut its doors forever on this disgusting street?
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Sometimes I think if I let myself do it I could weep for a week straight over our ruined California cities, which belong to all of us, and which were once so clean and safe and free to roam and explore and enjoy. The people who run them now are money-obsessed power addicts who seem brain-damaged and mentally ill; to call them Marxists seems almost to give them too much credit (for actually believing in something), but nevertheless they call themselves Democrats and Sacramento’s Darrell Steinberg is a perfect example of the worst of the worst. Meanwhile ALL the CA big city ‘leaders’ are the worst of the worst now.
Apparently we haven’t suffered enough pain yet from this mess to upend this state of affairs, or maybe their endless election cheating prevents our being able to change it anyway. What has never made sense to me is that THEY, the politicians, have to live with the nightmare they have created, too. No more pride in your city, in your state! And their legacy is that they started with a charming city like Sacramento and turned it into an increasingly dangerous, dirty, disgusting hellhole that is held hostage by violent criminals and drug addict vagrants.
If the people who first settled this state were to return now, they’d have it cleaned up in a month, no matter what body count it took. Remember, the Vigilance Committees were invented in California — specifically, San Francisco. They worked, too. Something about losing one’s life to make folks think twice about unwise decisions, including who we collectively ELECT to govern us.
Ca seems to have a surplus of money, that they are dying to give away, how about taking a few billion, witch is nothing for the state, and buy some property’s around Sacramento and get these folks off these folks off the streets, then start enforcing the laws, this crap is out of control, and homeowners are sick of it.
If homeowners start getting real pissed off, some bad crap is going to happen.
I weep along side you @ShowandTell.
My city has become so overrun that I think at this point there is no longer a local solution, other than, quit feeding the problem. No more handouts, stop looking the other way when petty crime happens, arrest those doing drugs in public, halt the home-key program, tow away inoperable RV’s! I could go on, but basically no more accommodations, the local governments have become co-dependents. Enough is enough.
Starbuck liberal woke advocacy has contributed to the problem, so they reap what they sow!
Fed Up to Fed Up: In my community the elected politicians are simply part of the Bum Industrial Complex. They wring their hands and proclaim that more needs to be done. That “more” includes more money to “solve” the problem and bigger bureaucracy to spend that money. Of course their plans accomplish nothing, which creates endless opportunities to plead for more money. These clowns are about as effective at curing homelessness as they have been at saving us from “climate”.
To Fed Up and Fed Up: We know the govt. bums can do it because every year they clear out ALL the vagrants and their mess and they shine up the Hollywood and L.A. Union Station areas before slapping down the red carpet for their stupid celebrity award shows! What does that tell you? (Well, I know YOU, the Fed Ups, know.) 🙂 So what happened to all of that money? As if we didn’t know…..
One Fed Up to Fed Up and ShowandTell,
Yes, it happens here to. They can clear for an event and days later they are back. I have been told in my city Social Services pays each camper in cash to leave for a certain time and hands out vouchers for rooms! It really all is a racket otherwise it would be cleaned up.
Okay we need a So Fed Up and Really Fed Up to join the team????
Sounds good CG —– the more Fed Ups the merrier! Ha ha
What say The Pandering Yarmulke Steinberg? No…let me guess…something like “too effin’ bad, you tax-paying, law-abiding, citizen goy!”
Democrats are giving us a real time view on how Rome fell/how a great country can dissipate into 3rd world.
Nothing has improved since Joe came on board to do everything that could harm, divide the country
“ However, too many neighbors accused the group of being heartless toward the homeless transients.” That is the problem right there. Too many people think that compassion requires a passive attitude. The reality is that getting people into treatment, including against their will, is the compassionate and truly caring thing to do. If people can connect with internal feelings of dignity and self-control then they will choose to pursue a more successful and respectable life. Mental illness needs to be treated with medication and therapy to give these struggling people hope and options for a fulfilling life. It’s really difficult to find these options in California and elsewhere, but they are vital in helping homeless and hopeless people to see and grasp a new future.
What is the rebuttal – we now know their contrarian tactics well. How do we push back against their fake virtue signaling comments, so those with the authority to make decision can proceed with the community fully behind them?
There is no compassion leaving people to live on the streets.
“Unsober and untreated” – so much better than the useless term “unhoused”.
Define the problem; then you can solve it. And stop pretending all they need is a free house.
Watch out for the Homeless Inc grifters who suck most of the “treatment” money for themselves, demanding each client needs five new social worker hires (SEIU) to provide 24/7 care once they get a ‘house”.
The only response, after trying everything else more than once and repeated failure – re-open large state care institutions and beef up due process protections that allow involuntary confinement.
What to do what to do? Maybe send them to outskirts of town, offer medical and mental care and if they refuse they must leave. Done.