A mob of looters ransacked a Nordstrom location in the Westfield Topanga mall in the San Fernando Valley on Saturday afternoon, prompting Mayor Karen Bass to condemn the chaos.
I was shopping at Topanga Mall when this happened!! They started stealing all the Designer from Nordstroms 😩 pic.twitter.com/VY3Z2P0E11
— Noel Escobar (@Noelskeez) August 12, 2023
Local news station KTLA reported:
Police said anywhere between 20-50 suspects are believed to be involved, although the exact number has not been confirmed.
The thieves were seen violently grabbing whatever merchandise they could carry, with many seen ripping the security devices attached to designer purses and luggage items. Store shelves and display racks were destroyed, knocked over and littered across the floor along with a ton of fallen merchandise.
At one point, a security guard who tried to intervene was attacked with a chemical spray, police said. It’s unclear what that person’s condition is.
Mayor Bass issued a statement on Saturday evening:
What happened today at the Nordstrom in the Topanga Mall is absolutely unacceptable. Those who committed these acts and acts like it in neighboring areas must be held accountable. The Los Angeles Police Department will continue to work to not only find those responsible for this incident but to prevent these attacks on retailers from happening in the future.
Bass has promised to hire more police — just a few years after then-Mayor Eric Garcetti promised to cut more than 10% of the police budget for redistribution to “communities of color” in the midst of the Black Lives Matter riots that shook the city.
Mass looting has been a phenomenon since the riots, and especially since mobs looted high-end stores in San Francisco’s Union Square in November 2021.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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