California Democrats put liberal ideology over public safety. Here’s how to fix that | Opinion
In recent years as California has become the shoplifting capital of America, the far left in the state Legislature has blocked stiffer sentencing designed to get addicts who are thieves the treatment they need.
It is the same reflexive refusal to consider a stiffer sentence in any limited circumstance that both Democrat and Republican lawmakers have faced as they have fought the human trafficking of minors or the dealing of deadly fentanyl. A majority of the influential Assembly Public Safety Committee says no.
This year it took the intervention of Gov. Gavin Newsom to make the sex trafficking of a minor a serious crime. That this committee blocks bills with widespread legislative support, however, is an unresolved issue that continues to this day.
The new Assembly Speaker, Robert Rivas of Salinas, only has a matter of weeks to announce his lineup of committee leaders for next year’s legislative session. He would be doing California a service by appointing leadership that respects the will of the majority. There is no greater example than this public safety committee.
The shoplifting issue isn’t going away.
Last April, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho told this committee about a shoplifter at the nearby Target, a drug addict who stole for 30 straight days. His crimes never amounted to a felony, however, because the thievery on any given day was below $950.
Ho asked the committee to lengthen the shoplifting sentence for a third conviction and to offer a substance abuse program as an alternative to jail.
The committee said no.
California’s shoplifting epidemic — a combination of organized crime, homeless people and addicts — has turned shopping into a criminal spectacle and created a fed-up public wanting Sacramento to do something.
“Theft can make the difference between staying in business or going out of business,” said Ho, whose parents immigrated from Vietnam and saved up money to start a grocery store in San Jose. “Thirty billion dollars a year is lost to retail theft. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The whole sentencing reform movement, then and now, is based on overwhelming evidence that stiffer sentences are not a deterrent to crime. Increasing the chances of getting caught, however, is a powerful deterrent.
This is where the shoplifting issue begins to get complicated. As much as stores want to catch shoplifters, they also want to protect staff and the customer experience. As one example of the friction, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper recently went to social media to complain that the giant Target and Walgreens chains were not cooperating with his proposed operations to pursue shoplifters.
Just as California is now leading the nation in the number of homeless residents, we are also the leader in organized retail crime. The Sacramento region, as an example, is 27th in the nation in terms of population but 8th in the nation when it comes to sophisticated criminal rings raiding stores.
Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association, sees a link between the homeless and organized crime. “These crime rings will prey on homeless individuals to commit some of these crimes of going in and stealing,” she said. And then there are other homeless and drug addicts who are simply acting on their own. “So what’s happening is people can go in and steal multiple times, and there’s zero accountability.”
She points to Proposition 47, which was passed by California voters in 2014 as part of a movement to enact sentencing reform and lower prison populations. It has since emerged for some in limited ways as a reform too far. It made shoplifting of goods valued under $950 a misdemeanor. And it prohibited prosecutors from lumping multiple misdemeanor offenses into a felony, even if the combined dollar amount constitutes a felony.
Organized crime has turned to shoplifting as an emerging industry to fund more crime because of the lack of consequences, said Michelin. Homeless people and drug addicts have turned to shoplifting “because they can utilize retail theft to fund that lifestyle and they don’t have to be accountable.”
Roseville, the site of one of the largest malls in Northern California, is among the cities with an intense focus on investigating shoplifting. Property crimes comprise 90% of all crimes in the city, said Police Chief Troy Bergstrom. Whether it is a freelancing addict or an organized syndicate, pursuing them all is crucial. “If you don’t do anything about the lower-end ones, the higher-end ones are going to happen way more often,” he said.
The reason to take the effort to catch the addict who repeatedly steals is to ultimately break the cycle. That has been the premise behind separate legislation in the past two years authored by a Democrat, Al Muratsuchi of Torrance.
This year’s Assembly Bill 1708 sought a stiffer sentence for a third petty theft (at least a year in jail) so that prosecutors could offer drug treatment through a diversion program as an alternative jail, something they cannot do under Proposition 47.
This April, Muratsuchi minced no words with the committee chairman, Democrat Reggie Jones-Sawyer of Los Angeles.
“This bill and this committee, frankly Mr. Chairman, need to quit being the deathbed of any effort to try to fix Proposition 47 to make it better,” he said.
Jones-Sawyer declined to vote on a bill that needed affirmative votes to survive. “Maybe it’s semantics, amending versus fixing versus improving Prop. 47, which I think every member here would love to improve it,” he said. He gave no specifics on what improvements he would support.
Michelin of the retailers association senses change in the air. “I think we’re going to see a new public safety committee chair,” she said of the Assembly. “I’m pretty confident we’re going to see some changes on the Public Safety Committee.”
Jones-Sawyer has every right as a legislator to vote against every stiffer sentencing proposal, even when it is designed to promote treatment over jail. But neither he as chairman, nor any committee majority, should kill reforms again and again that have the majority support of the broader Legislature. This committee needs new leadership. That is now up to Rivas.
This story was originally published November 20, 2023 at 5:00 AM.