California Pols in a Race Against Community Coalition to Pass Retail Crime Bills
California lawmakers are pushing hard to pass legislation aimed at tackling rising retail crime across the Golden State before a coalition of community members advances their own agenda.
State Assembly Democratic Caucus chair Rick Chavez Zbur announced this week that the California Retail Theft Reduction Act, introduced in February, was unanimously passed by the Assembly and is now on its way to the State Senate for approval.
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AB 2943, co-authored by Zbur, chairman of the Assembly Public Safety committee Kevin McCarty and speaker of the California State Assembly Robert Rivas, would create a new crime classification for possessing stolen merchandise with the intent to resell, carrying a prison sentence of up to three years. With an eye toward addressing serial offenders, the bill creates a framework for aggregating the value of multiple thefts from different victims to a charge of grand theft.
The proposal is just one in a bipartisan package of seven bills under the header of Californians Against Retail Theft. The other six bills have also advanced to the Senate, and if passed, will head to Governor Gavin Newsom for a final sign-off in June.
“We know that retail crime is an emotional issue for many of our constituents. Business owners fear for their livelihoods, workers fear for their wellbeing, and members of the public worry it may no longer be safe or convenient to frequent their neighborhood stores,” Zbur said.
“In developing these proposals, we have worked hand in hand with the Speaker’s office, the Governor’s office, the Public Safety Committee, and key stakeholders—including retailers, workers, criminal justice reform advocates, and law enforcement—to find effective solutions to address retail crime, while preserving reforms that have kept our communities safe,” he added.
The “reforms” Zbur alluded to include Prop. 47, a ballot measure passed in 2014 that reclassified certain felony crimes to lesser charges. Under the provision, also known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, thefts of property valued under $950 were reduced to misdemeanors, with the stated goal to “ensure that prison spending is focused on violent and serious offenses, to maximize alternatives for non-serious, nonviolent crime, and to invest the savings generated from [the proposition] into prevention and support programs in K-12 schools, victim services, and mental health and drug treatment.”
Some Democratic officials across the state who have watched retail crime escalate within their districts have grappled with how to address the issue without rolling back what they view as a necessary reform to the criminal justice system. Prop. 47 served to address the issue of prison overcrowding while also redirecting resources into community-building programs and preventative measures aimed at deterring crime, they believe.
But there are plenty of others who disagree. Lawmakers like Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat who represents the South Bay of Los Angeles County, has been adamant about “restoring balance” to the justice system by lowering the felony threshold for property theft. Muratsuchi has introduced several bills aimed at reforming Prop. 47 in recent years.
Law enforcement, too, has been vocal about the issue. “In 2014, Prop. 47 was packaged as a Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act, and for the last decade this disingenuous title has plagued California businesses by taking the punishment teeth from theft crimes,” San Bernadino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus said earlier this year. Others charged with chasing down thieves for a living have evinced similar sentiments.
As it turns out, many California constituents, business owners, local officials, law enforcement bodies and community organizations agree.
In January, a coalition known as the Californians for Safer Communities coalesced to take matters into their own hands. The advocacy group introduced a petition dubbed the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, which would, among other things, reverse Prop. 47.
The petitioners— including Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, Mayor Matt Mahan of San Jose and Assemblymember James Ramos of San Bernadino—number in the hundreds of thousands. In fact, Californians for Safer Communities has said it has garnered more than 900,000 signatures. A total of 546,651 signatures from registered voters is needed for the petition to qualify as a ballot measure in the November election. The deadline to qualify is June 27, and the signatures are currently being reviewed.
With the issue likely headed to the polls, pols against Prop. 47 reform are rushing to push their own measures across the governor’s desk—and they are likely to find a sympathetic ear, as Newsom too has sidestepped a full-on revision of the provision in his efforts to combat retail theft. According to Zbur, his bill preserves “the good elements of criminal justice reform so that we’re not putting people in prison needlessly.”