Owner of trendy restaurant in crime-ridden city outraged after eatery robbed for the 7th time in 4 years: 'I'm really sick of it'

The owner of a trendy restaurant in crime-ridden Oakland, California says his eatery was robbed for the seventh time in just four years on Wednesday.

Surveillance footage from Kitchen Story on College Avenue obtained by ABC 7 shows an unidentified burglar already inside the restaurant Wednesday morning, walking around the tables and approaching a door in the back.

The suspect, wearing a dark hoodie and pants with a light strapped to his head, could then be seen trying to pry the door open.

When he is ultimately unsuccessful, he ran from the scene, the local news channel reports.

But restaurant owner Chaiporn Kitsadaviseksak says the door the man was trying to get into leads to an office, where he keeps cash and iPads.

Even though the suspect walked away without stealing anything, Kitsadaviseksak said he left the front door bashed in.

Shattered glass could be seen around its frame, and the owner says it costs him thousands of dollars each time he has to repair the door.

He is now calling on police to patrol the area.  

'You know, I'm really sick of it, because when I call the police, no one can help me,' Kitsadaviseksak said.

'... I can make a report with the police, I don't have no chance to do that. They just say, you know, I can do [it] online. What's the point?'

DailyMail.com has reached out to Oakland police about the matter. 

But the police department in the Democrat-run city has previously admitted that it has just 35 officers on patrol across the city at any given time.  

Oakland is a city of around 435,000 residents, meaning that there is just one cop on patrol for every 12,500 citizens at any given moment.

The department is made up of 705 officers, but is only authorized by the city to have 678. Similarly sized Miami has over 1,100 sworn members of its police force and Long Beach, California has 824 officers.

Oakland police's records department also uses obsolete software and a report management system not updated since 2006 - leading to woefully inaccurate crime statistics.

What has been reported, though, suggests the city is in a crime wave .

Robberies involving an unspecified dangerous weapons are up 23 percent from last year, the latest crime data shows.

Residential robberies have also almost doubled, from 24 reported at the same time last year to 46 reported so far in 2024, and burglaries of 'unknown' locations are up 152 percent.

Earlier this month, a female rapper and entrepreneur known as Tan DaGod was also tragically murdered at the grand opening of her new beauty store.

Oakland police said another person was also shot but survived.

Residents say the city has always been plagued by crime, but reports rose sharply since the pandemic and are only starting to inch down.

But a survey by the Koreatown Northgate Community Benefit District found 94 percent of businesses were robbed - and 92 percent didn't bother to report it.

In one instance, dozens of thieves were caught on camera looting a gas station of $22,000 worth of goods after crashing a car through the glass doors.

It took cops nine hours to show up on the scene.

This, some prominent Oakland locals argued, is the central problem - the police can't keep up and both victims and criminals know it.   

A Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice report in February found just 1.5 percent of serious crimes were solved, including only 6.5 percent of violent crimes.

This was despite the rest of California spending record amounts of money on policing and justice, and sending more accused criminals to jail than almost ever before.

Former police chief LeRonne Armstrong, whom Mayor Sheng Thao fired last year, blames City Hall for the downward spiral - noting that officials deliberately diverted money from the police department.

Last year,  Thao put a hiring freeze on police - despite how understaffed it was and still is - and critics like Armstrong claim the council deliberately wants to reduce the role of police without sufficient replacement.

'There's this sense of lawlessness. This sense of, we can do whatever, there really aren't any consequences - almost like a video game,' he told The Free Press.

'Our leaders are tone-deaf.'

Armstrong claimed the problem was so obvious that lawbreakers were coming to the city for 'crime tourism'.

'Oakland's free-for-all is now attracting criminals from outside the city, Armstrong told me, because they know they can get away with it,' the outlet wrote.

Tim Gardner of the Oakland Report had a similar view: 'You have a police force that's incapacitated and a criminal population that's smart enough to recognize it, test it, and realize they can do anything they want.

'It's 100 per cent self-inflicted.'

Thao will now face a historic recall election in November amid anger over her failure to get a grip on the situation.

The progressive Democrat lawmaker is the first mayor in the city's history to be up for recall, after a campaign to oust her gained more than 40,000 signatures.

Critics say they are angry that she missed an opportunity to apply for a $15 million retail theft grant, fired Chief Armstrong 'for no cause' without appointing a successor and lost the Oakland A's baseball team. 

Thao's opponents blame her progressive policies for the skyrocketing crime.

Among them was a bizarre proposal which suggested life coaching could help tackle homicides and other crimes.

The scheme was suggested as part of the city's ceasefire plan, which had been dwindling until Thao took office.

Also facing a recall in November is the progressive district attorney for Alameda County, which includes Oakland.

The DA, Pamela Price, has been blamed for policies that embolden criminals and prioritize their needs over those of crime victims.