Panic and nightmare in Philadelphia: in backpacks, with hoods on, their faces covered and usually wearing black clothing. For example, on the night of Tuesday, September 26, 2023, groups of young people broke into companies in the city to loot.

The scenes broadcast on social networks show moments of contrast: on the one hand, boys and girls break into and steal; On the other hand, as police try to arrest some under pressure and pin them to the ground, those who record go from shouting to laughing.

The looting extended the night in Philadelphia, where businesses were attacked, some of them upscale, according to versions on the X Network (formerly Twitter), Lululemon, Foot Locker, Apple Store, North Face, Wendy’s and Nordstrom Rack.

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Lack of control in Philadelphia

It is noted that a group of more than 100 people took part in this wave of nightly looting. The commercial property is located in the Central City area, El Mundo reports.

It was a lack of control lasting a few hours that ended with about twenty people arrested, according to NBC Philadelphia and reported by the aforementioned Spanish media. The losses due to theft are high.

In a video published on the @InformeOrwell account, they added: “The looters destroyed some iPads and items looted from the Philadelphia Apple Store.”

From Channel 26 they reported seeing people leaving with ‘large bags of clothing’.

In addition to telephone stores, the vandals loaded the stores with sporting goods, Antena 3 reports.

What caused this protest? what did the police say?

Antena 3 reports that the tense situation started “as a protests after a judge dropped murder charges against a police officer who shot and killed a driver during a check.”

A security guard at Wendy’s, Hakeem Russell, said according to El Universal that the store next to Wendy’s in Chestnut had been robbed and the security guard had been assaulted.

There has certainly been unrest here since the verdict.

Hakeem Russell quoted in El Universal

Meanwhile, El Mundo published comments from interim police commissioner John Stanford, who spoke about the possible cause of the mass looting.

According to the police chief, consulted by NBC Philadelphia, “the looting was not related to the peaceful protest that took place in the city hours earlier after the judge dismissed charges against the police officer who shot and killed driver Eddie Irizarry. car window.”

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“Lightning” looting

What Philadelphia experienced is not a new situation in the United States, where vandals have taken it upon themselves to destroy stores in other cities like termites.

For example, on August 14, 2023, CNN en Español reported that “a criminal gang had looted the Nordstrom department store in a Los Angeles shopping center. They took goods worth almost $300,000.” Other media said losses amounted to $100,000.

Reviewing this event in Infobae, he recalled that “a similar robbery was recently recorded at a Yves Saint Laurent store in the nearby Glendale area, where merchandise worth approximately $300,000 was stolen.”

They called these criminal raids “flash mob robberies” and “lightning looting.”

The aforementioned media also said that in early 2023, “a jewelry store in La Verne and a wine shop in Venice were targeted in similar large-scale robberies.” (JO)