Last month I wrote about a Portland clothing retailer who decided to close shop permanently after 15 robberies in 18 months. The owner’s insurance had refused to stop covering stolen merchandise and broken glass after the 3rd break-in. “It’s just not sustainable,” the owner said.

A Seattle restaurant owner announced last week that his business, Serafina, has been broken into 18 times since the start of the pandemic. He posted a statement on Instagram, along with the photo of the robbers seen above.

The owner, Christian Chandler, shared the bad news on the restaurant’s Instagram account.

“Sadly, not a warm, comforting food post today. We were broken into … again,” he wrote.

Chandler tells the Jason Rantz Show that the thieves used a crowbar to get passed the locked doors and then stole between 30 and 40 bottles of wine.

“They knew what they were doing. They knew what to look for and they grabbed the good stuff,” Chandler explained…

“Serafina has been around since ’91. In the first 29 years of us doing business here on Eastlake, I think we’ve recorded maybe five break-in attempts. And since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve been hit 18 times. So it’s crazy, you know, something needs to be done,” he explained.

Armistice Coffee is located across the street from Serafina. The shop’s owner says her business is being broken into about twice a month. She had to stop accepting cash in an attempt to discourage the thieves.

“We were getting broken into every two weeks,” owner Rebecca Smith told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.  “And realistically, we still are, but the problem we face is that they smashed our window, which is a minimum of $1,000 to fix.”

Ironically, the policy to go cashless upset some progressive activists who criticized Smith for making it harder for the homeless to shop at her coffee shops. The homeless, however, don’t shop at her stores; they steal.

The constant low-level theft by the homeless is another problem Seattle businesses are struggling to deal with. One company started blasting classical music outside in the hopes it would lead a nearby homeless camp to move somewhere else.

“Classical, all classical, all day long,” said a body shop manager named Tyler. “They came and asked us, ‘we’re thinking about playing some loud music, see if we can get them to move away.’”

Nearby business owners told KOMO News they don’t mind the loud music because they too are frustrated about the theft, drug trafficking, and garbage piling up, which they believe are a result of the encampment.

“They turned up the music, but as you can see it didn’t make a difference,” said business owner John Yang. “It’s unsafe for our employees to park their cars near Comcast, it’s also a deterrent for people to visit our businesses and it’s a safety issue with a nearby high school.”

Apparently, the music stopped a couple weeks ago:

People living in that encampment told KOMO News the music stopped blaring the day after Thanksgiving…

“You know we’re human too,” said Andie, who lives in a tent under the area where the music had been blaring. “We’re not monsters we have family, children.”…

Yang, like others in the area, is just looking for a change for the better, from the city.

“And you know it’s like we’re on it, but they’ve been on it for three years. You know what I mean,” said Yang.

There’s actually a “tiny homes” camp site being built right near the current tent camp. It’s unclear whether the plan is to simply move the people into these new homes. Whatever the case, the problems associated with having a homeless camp next door will continue. People need to feed their habits and that means stealing whatever they can from whoever they can to come up with daily fentanyl money.

Update: Here’s a video about the blaring music story.