Category: San Francisco, California Local News

Gaza Ceasefire protestors have got into Biden's hotel in San Francisco. Chanting: Biden Biden you can't hide, we charge you with genocide ' pic.twitter.com/DnnALEot1m

— Rob Crilly (@robcrilly) February 22, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – A longtime San Francisco business is trying something new to curb what it says has been “rampant shoplifting.” 

Fredericksen’s Hardware and Paint in Cow Hollow is now offering a one-on-one shopping experience. The idea is to separate actual customers from those looking to steal from the store. 

During certain hours, Fredericksen’s is now blocking off part of the store’s entrance and having people wait for an employee to help them instead of allowing people to just roam the store. The store’s longtime manager says it’s a move that was worth trying for the sake of the business, their employees and their customers.

“It’s pretty bad,” said manager Sam Black. “I mean, the dollar amounts are pretty significant, and with the tools and now we’re getting snatch-and-grabs when they take whole displays, so it’s getting kind of dangerous for the employees and the customers.”

Black says for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening an employee will work with individual customers. A table at the front serves as a way to keep potential thieves from moving freely in and out of the store.

“We just want to make it uncomfortable for the thieves so they go somewhere else,” Black said.

Black said over his 24 years of working at Fredericksen’s the theft is the worst it has ever been. The staff has had to drill down pots and pans to keep shoplifters from swiping them.

They’ve also had to put in locking systems to keep people from pocketing tools and other household hardware. One customer told KRON4 off-camera that the situation is “just sad.”

“Yeah, people aren’t happy,” Black said. “The regulars can’t believe it like we can’t believe it, but they’ve been really understanding.”

Black says he and his staff had to try something because they have not had much success getting help from city leaders or police. 

At this point, the one-on-one shopping experiment has been going on for three weeks. Black says they’ll review the results after a month. 

Black is not sure how long they will continue doing the one-on-one shopping at the store. KRON4 reached out to supervisor Catherine Stefani who oversees Cow Hollow for comment. As of Wednesday night, she has not responded.

A private plane belonging to Google co-founder Sergey Brin crashed off Half Moon Bay last year, killing both pilots onboard, and one pilot’s widow is now suing Brin and Google for allegedly making improper modifications to the plane and obstructing the crash investigation.

Bay Area news headlines in January covered a tragic plane crash in Half Moon Bay that took the lives of two young couples in their 20s. It did not receive the same amount of media attention last May when a different small plane crashed off Half Moon Bay, killing both pilots onboard, Lance Maclean and Dean Rushfeldt.

What we did not realize at the time was that the plane belonged to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who still sits on parent company Alphabet’s board, and is the ninth-wealthiest person alive. Now Bloomberg reports that the wife of the pilot, Maclean, is now suing Brin in a wrongful-death lawsuit, blaming improper modifications to the aircraft.

The plane is seen above. It’s a Viking Air Ltd. DHC-6 Twin Otter Series 400. Brin was apparently fond of using the small craft so his guests could island-hop, as he owns a private island in Fiji. The suit claims the craft didn’t have enough fuel capacity to travel from the Bay Area to Hawaii, which is the first leg of the trip to Fiji. So Brin hired a maintenance company to add an auxiliary fuel tank, which reportedly malfunctioned and caused the crash.

The suit also alleges that Brin obstructed recovery efforts for the plane and the two victims.

“Brin is among the richest people in the world,” attorneys for the plaintiff, the widowed Maria Magdalena Olarte, said in the lawsuit. “If he wanted to recover the aircraft and the remains of those lost, it would be done.”

Aaaand for good measure, there is an Elon Musk cameo in the complaint.

The suit also names Google as a defendant, as the company was also a part-owner of the plane, as well as the maintenance company that performed the faulty fuel tank work. But it also singles out Brin for a lack of cooperation with the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the wake of the crash.  

“From the outset of the crash, despite publicly assuring Plaintiff that her husband’s remains would be recovered, Brin and his agents decided to leave him at the bottom of the ocean along with evidence that would establish that Defendants were responsible for the crash that killed the two pilots,” the complaint states.

The suit was filed in a Santa Clara County Superior Court. Representatives for Alphabet and Brin did not return comment to Bloomberg on the case.

Related: Small Hawaii-Bound Plane Crashes Into Pacific Ocean Off Half Moon Bay, Killing 2 Onboard [SFist]

Image: Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Director of Google X and Special Projects, attends an event debuting the new Google self driving car outside the Google X labs in Mountain View, CA. (Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. (KRON) — A man came to a Walnut Creek City Council meeting Tuesday night and made anti-Semitic comments during public comment before doing a Nazi salute and threatening another Holocaust.

On Tuesday night, the person who identified himself as “Scotty” said “Jewish supremacists” were attacking free speech, blaming Jewish people for the city canceling its virtual public comment section in October 2023 due to a rise in hate speech. “Scotty” then went on the use a Jewish slur and curse at city council members, then threatened “another Holocaust for real this time,” before doing a Nazi salute and saying, “white power.”

Councilmember Kevin Wilk, who is Jewish, apologized to the community.

“I’d like to apologize on behalf of the city council and anybody who had to hear that horrible, horrible speech. This is America and we do have laws that protect people from saying anything as you just saw. So I apologize on behalf of the humanity,” Wilk said.

KRON4 has reached out to the Walnut Creek Police Department and the City of Walnut Creek for comment but has not heard back at the time of publishing.