Tipsheet

'Experts:' Don't Refer to The Bay Area Looting as 'Looting,' Guys

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 23, 2021 1:01 PM

I'm just kidding, of course.  They didn't say "guys."  That's gendered and heteronormative.  But our wonderful "experts" are instructing us not to use the term "looting" to describe the mass looting and brazen shoplifting plaguing the San Francisco Bay Area in recent days.  In case you've missed this latest crime scourge, here are the latest examples from the region.  After a Louis Vuitton store was brazenly robbed in the heart of the city on Friday, this happened Saturday:

More than 80 people stormed and robbed a Nordstrom in California on Saturday night, according to a police report from the Walnut Creek Police Department. The robbery was over within minutes as thieves armed with crowbars and wearing ski masks streamed out of the Nordstrom into the dozens of cars lining the block. "Nordstrom employees began calling 911 when approximately 80 people entered the store and immediately began stealing merchandise," says the Walnut Creek Police Department in a press release. One employee was pepper-sprayed and two were punched and kicked, says the Walnut Creek Police Department. The incident took place around 9 p.m. right around Nordstrom's closing time, and the police began receiving calls about reckless driving shortly before 9 p.m. PST.

Then this followed on Sunday:

Looters targeting Bay Area businesses struck again Sunday evening, with smash-and-grab thieves hitting a mall in Hayward, California and taking merchandise from a Lululemon store in San Jose, CBS San Francisco reports. It was the third day in a row that large mobs of robbers went after retailers in the region. Hayward police told CBS San Francisco they responded around 5:30 p.m. Sunday to multiple calls from stores in Southland Mall. Witnesses said a large mob caused a huge disturbance inside the mall, with some briefly taking over a jewelry store. Witnesses described some 40 to 50 looters wielding hammers and other tools looting Sam's Jewelers, breaking glass cases and quickly fleeing. The Macy's store was also ransacked. In video taken during the robbery, workers can be heard inside Sam's Jewelers screaming in fear...Meanwhile in San Jose Sunday evening, police said a group of suspects entered the Lululemon store in Santana Row at about 6:30 and took merchandise. They fled prior to police arriving.

San Francisco's left-wing District Attorney is currently facing a recall, backed by several of his former colleagues, thanks to public outrage over his effective decriminalization of many crimes.  He's now feigning outrage over the results of his own pro-crime, "equity"-minded policies:


As I mentioned on Fox yesterday, Chesa "Defund the Police" Boudin -- remember, he's the city's top prosecutor -- doesn't get to talk tough about a crime wave he's directly and aggressively incentivized:


As normal people react negatively to mass looting, the never-defunded language police are out in force:

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I'm actually not opposed to eschewing a term that somewhat downplays these organized, coordinated mass criminal actions.  "Looting" may suggest mid-riot criminal unrest, which is also very bad and inexcusable, I feel compelled to add. The flagrant mass-robberies in the Bay Area and elsewhere are a different phenomenon.  But that's not why the "experts" are "cautioning," naturally:

Bay Area police departments have called what happened at various retail stores this weekend "looting." ... As the Bay Area grapples with a wave of seemingly organized smash and grab robberies this weekend, policing and journalism analysts are cautioning against the use of the term looting...To some, the distinction may be small, but Lorenzo Boyd, PhD, Professor of Criminal Justice & Community Policing at the University of New Haven, and a retired veteran police officer, emphasized that words matter. "Looting is a term that we typically use when people of color or urban dwellers are doing something. We tend not to use that term for other people when they do the exact same thing," said Boyd...To be clear, we don't know the identities or races of the majority of the thieves involved in this crime wave. But we do know there was no local emergency declared in the Bay Area cities that experienced smash and grabs this weekend. However, the crimes did follow the contentious verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial Friday.

"Don’t call it 'looting because that’s a term typically used for crimes by people of color/urban dwellers, but not white people -- because racism," snarks Mary Katharine Ham. "Also 'we don't know…races of the majority of the thieves,' which would make use of 'looting' here hard to attribute to racism, no?"  It's of course totally incoherent, which is the whole point.  The woke brigade capriciously embraces and discards terms as "acceptable" or "problematic," based on perceived, fleeting utility.  It's exhausting.  Even the word woke is now a problem, for some reason.  On that score, I'll leave you with this: