Videos appearing to show GardaWorld security guards at two San Francisco Safeways — in Mission Bay and the Castro — filming shoplifter confrontations on Meta glasses have gone viral, raising unresolved questions about whether contractor footage policies differ from Albertsons' own prohibition on recording customers.

At 4th and King in Mission Bay, the Safeway has spent the last year at the center of the city's shoplifting conversation. The intersection saw a 150 percent increase in theft reports in 2025, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, accounting for 30 percent of all larceny complaints filed in Mission Bay that year. Last week, it became the backdrop for something else: a viral video appearing to show a plain-clothed security guard chasing a man out of the store and across the street, then knocking him to the ground.

The footage — and a second clip from the Safeway on Market Street in the Castro, where a woman is shown being shoved to the ground — appears to have been filmed on Meta glasses, the Ray-Ban/Oakley wearables that record video from the wearer's point of view. Gazetteer SF, which reported the story Tuesday, found that the videos were first posted to TikTok by an account called woahwoa64, since deleted, before a Reddit user screen-recorded them and shared them to r/sanfrancisco. One clip was subsequently removed by moderators for "rage baiting"; the others remain.

The guards at both stores appear to be contracted through GardaWorld, not employed directly by Safeway. That distinction matters: Albertsons, which owns Safeway, told Gazetteer SF that its employees are prohibited from collecting or distributing footage of customers in stores. Whether that prohibition extends to third-party contractors is less settled — GardaWorld did not respond to a request for comment, and SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie told the outlet that whether footage captured on a guard's personal device can be shared is ultimately "controlled by a business's specific policies."

The response online tracked with the frustration that has been building around both locations. Reddit commenters pointed to shuttered nearby stores and locked merchandise cases; many expressed approval of the confrontations. Mission Bay, where the 4th and King Safeway sits, logged 292 service requests to 311 in the past seven days and eight eviction notices in the past 90 — two of those filings, from early June, came from the 1200 block of 4th Street, steps from the store entrance. In Castro/Upper Market, where the Market Street Safeway is located, 311 volume ran to 740 requests last week.

Meta glasses blink a small white light when actively recording. Whether a shopper in the chip aisle would notice the blink — or the camera at eye level — is a separate question from whether the footage can be posted. That question, as of this writing, remains unanswered by Safeway's contractor.