Burglary, carjacking, shoplifting are targeted under California’s new anti-crime law

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a package of 10 bills aimed at combating robbery and property crime, making it easier to go after shoplifters and repeat car thieves and increasing fines for those who use resale schemes. .

The move comes as the Democratic leadership works to prove it is tough enough on crime while trying to convince voters to reject a ballot measure that would bring harsher sentences to repeat shoplifting and drug offenders.

While shoplifting has become a growing problem, grand theft, break-ins and robberies, in which groups of people brazenly rush into stores and take merchandise out of sight, have become a problem in California and elsewhere in recent years. Such cases, which are often recorded on video and posted on social media, have brought special attention to the shoplifting problem in the state.

The law includes the most important changes to address shoplifting in years, the Democratic governor said. It allows law enforcement to aggregate the amount of stolen goods from different victims in order to issue stiffer fines and make arrests for shoplifting using video footage or witness statements.

“This gets to the heart of the matter, and it does it in a thoughtful and logical way,” Newsom said of the package. “This is the real deal.”

The package received bipartisan support in the Legislature, although some progressive Democrats did not vote for it, citing concerns that some of the measures are too punitive.

The law also ends asset theft, closes a legal loophole to make it easier to prosecute auto theft and requires marketplaces like eBay and Nextdoor to start collecting bank account and tax numbers from top sellers. Retailers can also get restraining orders against shoplifters convicted under one of the bills.

“We know that retail theft has consequences, big and small, physical and financial,” said Sen. Nancy Skinner, who wrote one of the bills, said Friday. “And we know we have to take the right steps to stop it without going back to the days of mass incarceration.”

Democratic lawmakers, led by Newsom, spent months earlier this year fighting unsuccessfully to prevent crime during the November election. That ballot measure, Proposition 36, would make it a felony for repeat shoplifters and certain drug offenses, among other things. Democrats worry that the measure will unfairly prosecute low-income people and those with substance abuse problems instead of targeting leaders who hire large groups of people to steal goods to resell online. The lawmakers’ legislation instead would have allowed prosecutors to bundle multiple thefts from different locations into one felony charge and toughen penalties for burglaries and major resale operations.

Newsom in June even proposed putting a competing measure on the ballot but dropped the plan a day later. Proposition 36 is supported by a coalition of district attorneys, businesses and some local elected officials such as San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

Newsom, flanked by a group of state lawmakers, business leaders and local officials at a Home Depot store in San Jose, said the vote would be a “serious setback” for California. Newsom said last month he would work to fight the measure.

“That move is about going back to the 1980s and the war on drugs,” he said. “It’s about mass incarceration.”

California’s approach to crime has become increasingly difficult to navigate in recent years for the state’s Democrats, many of whom have spent the past decade championing progressive policies to eliminate prisons and jails and invest in correctional programs. The Newsom administration also spent $267 million to help dozens of local law enforcement agencies increase patrols, buy surveillance equipment and prosecute more criminals.

The issue has come to a head this year amid mounting criticism from Republicans and law enforcement, who point to videos circulating of mass thefts in which gangs of people brazenly enter stores and take merchandise at sight. Voters across the state are also concerned about what they see as a lawless California where retail crime and drug abuse are rampant as the state grapples with its homelessness crisis.

Since the issue could affect the composition – and control – of Congress, some Democrats have broken with party leadership and said they support Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure.

It’s difficult to quantify the issue of retail crime in California due to a lack of local data, but many point to mass store closures and everyday products like toothpaste being locked behind plexiglass as evidence of the problem. The California Retailers Association said it’s challenging to measure the problem in California because many stores don’t share their data.

Crime data shows that the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a sharp increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California. The state’s attorney general and experts say California’s crime rate remains low compared to decades ago.

The California Highway Patrol has recovered $45 million in stolen property and made nearly 3,000 arrests so far in 2019, officials said Friday.

– Trân Nguyễn, Associated Press