I suppose it's good of Walgreens to come out honest about what they think about their data in regards to inventory. I don't think they were necessarily wrong to attribute retail shrinkage to theft/shoplifting though. There was definitely a surge in shoplifting and reselling of merchandise within SF that we didn't see before the pandemic.

While the shoplifting per population may have gone down, it may have gone up in the aggregate since SF definitely had population influx from 2015+ (and before). http://www.cjcj.org/news/13219

I feel like these figures are also muddied since SF didn't really try to enforce the shoplifting laws that had value of $950 or less (Prop 47). Perhaps someone who's more knowledgeable about these laws & statistics could chime in?