The California Senate on Wednesday approved 15 bipartisan bills that would stiffen penalties for organized crime groups, expand drug court programs and close loopholes in the law to make it easier to prosecute auto thefts.
One proposal would require large online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon to verify the identities of sellers who make more than $5,000 a year in profits, cutting off an easy avenue for people to sell stolen goods.
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“This is not a game,” said Senate President Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the North Coast, adding that he hopes to get the bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk in the coming weeks. “We are putting politics aside, making sure we do the right thing for our communities, and working together to make California safer.”
In California, it typically takes lawmakers months to send bills to the governor, but the push for swift action is driven by a new election-year crime-fighting strategy that seeks to address voters’ growing fears while preserving progressive policies: policies designed to keep people out of prison.
California Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, right, speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Aug. 28, 2023. California lawmakers introduced more than a dozen bills aimed at crackdowns on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, as part of a new crime-fighting strategy that seeks to address constituent concerns while maintaining progressive policies to keep people out of prison. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Large-scale thefts, in which groups of people boldly break into stores and steal merchandise in public, have reached a crisis point in the state, but the California Retailers Association says many stores are not sharing their data. Therefore, it is difficult to quantify this problem.
A study of the latest crime data by the Public Policy Institute of California found shoplifting has steadily increased in the Bay Area and Los Angeles from 2021 to 2022. Statewide, shoplifting rates have increased over the same period but are still lower than pre-pandemic levels in 2019, while commercial thefts and robberies are more frequent in urban areas, the study said.
State lawmakers on Wednesday also advanced several other measures regarding retail theft. That includes a bill authored by state Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas that targets professional thieves. The bill would impose heavier penalties by combining the value of items stolen from multiple victims and expand police powers to use video footage and eyewitness testimony to arrest shoplifters. The bill also creates new crimes against people who sell or return stolen goods, requires online sellers to keep records to prove items are not stolen, and requires some retailers to report stolen goods data. Mandatory.
Lawmakers also passed proposals to crack down on cargo theft, restore district attorneys’ power to investigate thieves and resellers operating across jurisdictions and allow retailers to obtain restraining orders against convicted shoplifters.
All bills now head to the second chamber before reaching Newsom’s desk in June.
The progress of numerous measures adds to Democratic lawmakers’ growing rejection of growing calls to repeal progressive policies such as Proposition 47, a ballot measure approved by 60 percent of state voters in 2014 that reduced penalties for certain crimes, including theft of high-value items below $950 and drug possession offenses ranging from felonies to misdemeanors.
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The savings from the reduced prison population, totaling $113 million this fiscal year, have been funneled into local programs aimed at preventing recidivism, which state officials and advocacy groups say have been a big success. But the proposition also makes it harder to prosecute shoplifters, encouraging more emboldened criminal gangs to operate, law enforcement officials said. Attempts to change the bill failed in 2020.
As major national retailers and local businesses in California say they continue to face rampant theft, a growing number of law enforcement officials, district attorneys, Republicans and moderate Democrats are saying California needs to consider all options, including repealing the bill. A coalition supporting the bill submitted more than 900,000 signatures last month to put the measure on the November ballot. The signatures are currently being verified.
