SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A new policy at the Grocery Outlet on 54th Street in East San Diego has high school students in the area protesting age discrimination. No one under the age of 18 is allowed to shop indoors without an adult. As ABC 10News discovered, this follows a series of shoplifting incidents that appeared to have infected the entire mall.
Horace Mann Middle School students will be released early on Wednesday. After school, they usually walk down 54th Street to get a snack at the Grocery Outlet.
“All the kids want to come here to get water and juice because this is a very affordable store for us young people who don’t have jobs,” said Joanna Juarez, a 7th grader.
However, on this day they could not enter. That’s because a new store policy states that you can no longer shop there unless you are 18 or with someone who is.
ABC 10 News
“What the store owner said happened was that there were people stealing from the store and misbehaving,” said Ares Sosa, co-vice president of the school’s Cesar Chavez Service Club, which teaches students how to organize and can become community leaders.
ABC 10News spoke off camera with a store manager who said this is an issue they’ve been dealing with for as long as he can remember.
“We understand that,” Sosa said. “We understand that this is unacceptable behavior. We also understand that not every student is like this.”
Last Friday, students organized their first peaceful protest. When ABC 10News arrived on the scene for protest number two on Wednesday, we learned that shoplifting wasn’t limited to the grocery store.
Earlier that afternoon, the owner of Sonnie’s Beauty Supply next door said she caught a group of four young children and two adults stealing her products.
She followed them outside her store to take a photo of their car’s license plate. One of them, an adult man, violently kicked her phone out of her hand.
When I arrived on scene to cover their second protest, I saw that police were investigating a separate shoplifting incident at Sonnie’s Beauty Supply next door.
As you can see in the video, the owner was trying to take a photo of their license plate when they kicked her phone out of her hand. pic.twitter.com/4wvjY0MgNo
— Max Goldwasser ABC 10 (@MaxGoldwasser) November 21, 2024
The owner also did not want to comment on camera, but said she deals with shoplifters at least five times a week.
That’s why Grocery Outlet felt compelled to make these kinds of changes.
Dulcinea Hearn, the principal of Horace Mann Middle School, said, “I think there are other things that can be done other than banning all children under 18, or all students under 18, if you have a problem .”
Some solutions offered by students include:
- Leaving their backpacks in front of the store
- More guards in the store
- More cameras inside and outside the store
- Limiting the number of children allowed in at the same time
However, the store manager said he had already tried those things. They didn’t work, so he had no choice.
That won’t stop these students from fighting.
“We want to try to change this, not just for us, but for every kid in the school that’s not allowed in here anymore,” Juarez said.
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