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.
The Walnut Creek Police Department called the incident “organized theft” and “clearly a planned event” by a “criminal mob” in a press release posted on Sunday.
The amount of merchandise stolen is still yet to be determined, and three people have been arrested for robbery and weapons charges by the Walnut Creek Police Department. The rest of the thieves have not been captured yet, and the police are reviewing surveillance footage.
“There was a mob of people,” a manager at the nearby P.F. Chang’s told CBS SF. “The police were flying in. It was like a scene out of a movie. It was insane.”
Witnesses captured the raid on Twitter as the robbers streamed out into the street with bags of merchandise and fled to their getaway cars, which clogged the streets.
Shoplifting cases in Walnut Creek have increased 10% in 2021, rising to 289 cases in the past year from 262 cases the year before, according to data from the Walnut Creek Police Department.
On Friday night, just 24 hours before the Nordstrom robbery, there was a series of lootings of luxury merchandise in the Union Square shopping area of San Francisco. 
Stores like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Bloomingdales, Hermes and Fendi were hit, as well as Walgreens and certain cannabis dispensaries, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The video on Twitter show the Louis Vutton store with shattered glass and empty shelves. Thousands of dollars in merchandise was stolen, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
“We will flood this area with police officers for the foreseeable future,”  William Scott, chief of police in San Francisco, told the newspaper. “We will do what we need to do to put an end to this madness.”
You can follow the author @michelle_shen10 on Twitter. 

source