Around noon every weekday, the shopping center off of Mt. Rose Highway and Wedge Parkway is abuzz with Galena High School students using their 30-minute off-campus lunch to get food from local businesses.
At the beginning of September, a blog post drew attention on Nextdoor, alleging that students were using their off-campus time to flock like a “swarm of locusts” to commit “mob robberies” at the Raley’s in the shopping center, citing thousands of dollars of loss.
Businesses, the school board, and local law enforcement agree that claims made within the post are incorrect and misleading.
“We are looking into the ongoing theft issue during the lunch hour," said Chelsea Minor, Raley’s Vice President of Community Impact and Public Affairs. "The numbers stated in the blog are overestimated, but the issue does remain. We have been working with the Washoe School District officials, and we feel confident that together, we will identify solutions to mitigate the situation.”
The Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and Reno Police, who share a patchwork of jurisdiction in the neighborhood, both say that they have no reports of juvenile theft happening in the area.
In fact, Reno Police say that the only recorded incident involving a juvenile in the last two months was a caller who said that teenagers were being rowdy with shopping carts in the Raley’s parking lot, riding and hopping the carts off curbs.
The president of the Washoe County School Board said that until the blog was posted to social media, claim of student theft had not been brought to the district’s attention.
"Making criminal allegations against children let alone large groups of children is really serious," Beth Smith told 2 News, standing in the Raley’s parking lot as students parked and entered the store. "We really need to demand that anyone in the community that sees or has these concerns really escalate this to the right people."
She later added, “When people see things on social media, I would ask them to first consider where did these allegations come from and who have they been escalated with?”
Students themselves don’t seem to appreciate allegations that they are behaving badly during off-campus lunch hours. Upon seeing a news crew in the parking lot, some pulled out their receipts and started waiving them at the camera.
