I’ve never heard of this but it actually makes a lot of sense.

Yep! That’s def what happened to us before. He doesn’t wanna risk it.
We actually don’t have patio furniture because it gets stolen so often.

That’s seriously messed up.

It’s a potential safety hazard. As someone else commented, some areas are high incident areas (usually meaning there are confrontational incidents between partners and customers, often the homeless customers) and so extra safety measures are taken. Like how some stores have locks on their bathrooms.