The CEO of the world’s largest industrial real estate firm and his wife were mugged by two gunmen outside their $15 million home in crime-ridden San Francisco and is calling on Mayor London Breed to end an ‘unacceptable level’ of crime and violence.
Hamid Moghadam, president of real estate giant Prologis which has $58 billion in assets, revealed that he had been robbed and assaulted by two armed men outside his Pacific Heights home on June 26, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
Shaken up by the incident, Moghadam said he has sent a letter to Breed, the city’s Board of Supervisors and California Governor Gavin Newsom, calling on elected officials to crackdown on soaring crime in the city.
‘I recognize we live in an urban environment, but the level of crime, including violent behavior, has become absolutely unacceptable,’ Moghadam wrote.
‘I am deeply concerned that our city may be so far down the path toward decline that we may never recover — or at least not for a long, long time.’
‘I would say, right this second, San Francisco is probably the most dysfunctional city in America,’ he added.
Hamid Moghadam (above), CEO and president of real estate giant Prologis, revealed he and his wife were robbed by two gunman outside their home on June 26
He said the thieves assaulted him in front of his $15 million home and took his coveted Patek Philippe watch. The luxury watches can go anywhere from $12,000 to $2 million
The incident took place in the northern area of San Francisco, in wealthy Pacific Heights
Moghadam said the incident has inspired him to advocate for the city, which has seen homelessness and violent crime run rampant over the last two years
Speaking about last month’s robbery for the first time, Moghadam told the Business Times that it happened just outside his home while he was with his wife, Christina, and that it lasted just 30 seconds.
‘This car comes out. The guy jumps out with a hoodie and a gun,’ Moghadam told the publication, adding that he fell back and re-injured his back and knee. ‘His friend comes out with another gun.’
‘They were using a bunch of choice words. Mostly starting with ‘m’ and ‘f,” he added.
‘They were attacking me. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to get scared.’
The brazen thieves made off with Moghadam’s coveted Patek Philippe watch. The luxury watches can go anywhere from $12,000 to $2 million.
The wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood where the incident took place has housed several elite individuals, including Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, tech investor Peter Thiel and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
The Prologis CEO, whose net worth is at least $207 million, said his wife still has nightmares about the robbery, and the incident has inspired him to advocate for the city he founded his company in four decades ago.
Moghadam warned Breed that the reputation of The Golden City was in peril, and that it could see a fall like the ones experienced by Detroit and Cleveland.
‘I told the mayor very, very directly, ‘Look, I’m sure in the early ’60s, Cleveland and Detroit were wonderful communities with the auto and steel industries going strong, and they were the center of the universe. Obviously, something happened,” Moghadam told the Business Times.
He added that the current state of San Francisco might also push away businesses that caused the city to boom in the first place.
‘Ten years ago, we acquired a larger company that was headquartered in Denver, but I insisted we keep our headquarters in San Francisco,’ Moghadam wrote in the letter. ‘Today, I am not sure I would make the same decision.’
Moghadam, pictured with wife Christina, said she still suffers nightmares over the robbery. He warned that rising crime has diminished the reputation of The Golden City
Last month, citizens fed up with the state of their city – more than 70,730 people out of roughly 118,000 citizens – voted to oust woke District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose anti-incarceration policies have been widely panned as causing the ongoing crisis.
He was originally elected on a platform of criminal justice reform, but his notoriously progressive laws have been widely blamed for rising crime and homelessness in the Bay Area since the start of the pandemic.
During Boudin’s time in office, ‘smash-and-grab’ robberies became commonplace, with thieves brazenly raiding store shelves in broad daylight, only to avoid charges thanks to Boudin’s lax policies.
He has since been replaced by Brooke Jenkins, 40, who cleaned house after taking her old boss’ job as both she and Breed vowed to crack down on soaring crime and increasingly prevalent open-air drug markets in the city.
Chesa Boudin (left) was ousted from his position as District Attorney in June, after critics accused him of not doing enough to keep residents and business owners safe amid a crime wave. Brooke Jenkins (right) has since taken over and fired 15 members of Boudin’s team
Earlier in the summer, Breed announced that the city’s official open-air drug market, at the heart of San Francisco’s civic center, will close at the end of the year.
It came after it was revealed that the facility that’s said to have cost $19 million in taxpayer cash treated just one in every 1,000 users and failed to cut fatal overdose numbers.
But while the site is being shutdown, public drug use appears to be on the rise as a shocking video posted in July shows school children navigating through streets filled with homeless people, with some of the men doing drugs out in the open.
The video, posed by Ricci Wynne, showed the elementary school kids filing off the 14 transit line in the Golden Gate City at 8th Street and Mission by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company building past dozens of sickly users nodding out on the sidewalk.
‘This is no back ally,’ Wynne wrote in the tweet. ‘This is the main artery of the city that has been hijacked bye [SIC] drug dealers and now is Pure filth,’ Wynne said in the tweet.
‘I’m just trying to bring the images of the streets and the conditions to [the public],’ he said in a separate video. ‘Bring the awareness up…I’m trying to push for a change and try to see if we can get the streets back because we’re losing out here.’
A shocking video released earlier this month showed school children having to navigate their way through one such market, a filthy, open-air drug den of homeless addicts, after getting off a school bus at the end of the day
The video, posed by Ricci Wynne, showed the elementary school kids filing off the 14 transit line in the Golden Gate City at 8th Street and Mission by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company building past dozens of sickly users nodding out on the sidewalk
School children were forced to file passed homeless addicts who gathered on the sidewalk at 8th Street and Mission to do drugs
Earlier this month, it was revealed that office vacancy in the Bay Area has risen to a startling 24.2 percent in the most recent earnings quarter – up from 23.8 percent in the prior period.
The statistic illustrates the city’s failure to recover following the initial spread of the coronavirus, with homeless encampments and open-air drug markets becoming commonplace on its streets the past two years.
As crime continues to surge, office workers continue to feel increasingly unsafe, electing to work from the safety of their homes instead of venturing outside for a conventional commute.
That recent gravitation toward remote work – coupled with mass firings – while saving money for big tech, has left small businesses in the region struggling, as they rely on the presence of the now-absent workers to turn a profit.
Deepening the struggle are recent hiring freezes implemented as of late by some of the region’s biggest companies, such as Google – leading to even less foot traffic in the city’s now crime-ridden hubs.
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