New Grocery Outlet policy leads to protests from middle schoolers

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — A new policy at the Grocery Outlet on 54th Street in East San Diego has middle schoolers in the area protesting over age discrimination. No one under 18 is allowed to shop inside without an adult. As ABC 10News found out, this follows a series of shoplifting incidents that seemed to have infected the entire shopping center.
On Wednesday, the students at Horace Mann Middle School get released early. After school, they typically walk across 54th Street to grab a snack from Grocery Outlet.
“All kids want to come here to get water and juice because this is a very affordable store for us youngsters that don’t have jobs,” said 7th-grader Joanna Juarez.
On this day, however, they couldn’t go inside. That’s because a new store policy says that unless you’re 18 or with someone who is, you can’t shop there anymore.
“What the store owner said happened was that there were some people who stole from the store and misbehaved,” said Ares Sosa, Co-Vice President of the school’s Cesar Chavez Service Club, which helps teach students how to organize and become community leaders.
ABC 10News spoke with a store manager off-camera who said this is a problem they’ve been dealing with for as long as he can remember.
“We understand that,” Sosa said. “We understand that it’s unacceptable behavior to happen. We also understand that not every student is like that.”
Students organized their first peaceful protest last Friday. When ABC 10News arrived on the scene Wednesday for protest number two, we learned that shoplifting was not limited to the grocery store.
Earlier that afternoon, the owner of Sonnie’s Beauty Supply right next door said she caught a group of four young children and two adults stealing her products.
She followed them outside her store to snap a photo of the license plate on their car. One of them, an adult male, violently kicked her phone out of her hand.
The owner didn’t want to comment on camera either, but said she deals with shoplifters at least five times a week.
That’s why Grocery Outlet felt forced to implement this kind of change.
Dulcinea Hearn, the principal at Horace Mann Middle School, said “I think there are other things that could be done other than to ban all children under 18, or all students under 18, if you’re having a problem.”
Some solutions offered by students include:
However, the store manager said he tried those things already. They didn’t work, so he was left with no choice.
That won’t stop these students from fighting.
“We want to try to change this for, not just us, but for every kid in the school who are not allowed in here anymore,” Juarez said.