San Francisco business owners are furious after police responded to a robbery at their dispensary but failed to arrest the suspects.
On November 16th, police received a call about a burglary taking place at a cannabis dispensary owned by Tariq Mizyed Alazraie, who had also received a call about the robbery by a neighbor. When authorities arrived at around 4:33 a.m., they reported seeing a Mercedes-Benz parked in front of the dispensary with one male in the driver seat and another leaping over the metal gate and running to the front passenger side of the vehicle. They saw a third suspect carrying a “full plastic bag” get into the back seat of the car. At one point, the police car shined its spotlight on the getaway car but did not approach it.
Alazraie and his daughter Anisa are livid that law enforcement did not act despite witnessing the robbery.
“It was only one car. It was three people. They had no weapons. But for the observer, if you watched what took place, you would think the police were in on it,” Alazraie stated. The man says he is frustrated after his business has endured five break-ins recently, and each time, the police respond to the scene but do not make any arrests.
Anisa, who is the president of the Divisadero Merchants Association and a former intern with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, slammed police for failing to act despite their vehicle being “nose to nose” with the suspects. She says that officers were parked less than 100 feet away from the robbers and “chose” not to intervene.
The police tell a very different story, stating that there was no way they could have safely stopped the robbery from taking place. According to a police report filed by Officer Kamakana Alvaro, the driver of the car briefly backed up then quickly performed a U-turn before fleeing the scene at a “high rate of speed.”
“Due to our vehicle position and the erratic driving of the suspects, we were unable to safely attempt a felony traffic stop,” the report stated.
Alazraie estimates that the burglary caused about $5,000 in damage, though he could not definitively say how much marijuana was stolen.
