California’s 2014 “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” so named by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, transformed a number of felonies into misdemeanors, including thefts of property valued at under $950. Sacramento’s city attorney has warned Target that the retail chain could face public nuisance charges due to phone calls to police to report theft from one of its stores in the California capital.
City attorney Susan Alcala Wood earned a degree in “philosophy-ethics and public policy” from UC Santa Barbara and a JD from Whittier College, School of Law. Wood began credits her work as a law clerk with “embedding her with a deep desire to serve communities.” She has served as an assistant city attorney in Stockton, city attorney in Modesto, and calls the Sacramento job her “dream work.” At this writing, Wood has declined interview requests from local media on Target’s alleged nuisance calls.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta has not spoken out on the issue, and, based on his record, is not likely to do so. Bonta failed to bring charges against an illegal Chinese bio-lab in the city of Reedley, freighted with pathogens and hazardous chemicals. On the other hand, the attorney general, a Yale law alum, did go after Quest Diagnostics for “unlawfully disposing of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information at its facilities statewide.”
As California’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom supported Proposition 47 and recently came to witness its consequences. On a shopping trip to a Target store last December, Newsom spotted a shoplifter walking out with merchandise. When he asked employees why they didn’t stop him, they said “We don’t stop them because of the governor,” who went unrecognized. Newsom told the employees that Proposition 47’s $950 limit was the “10th toughest in the nation.”
As UCLA economist Lee Ohanian notes, Google “shoplifting in San Francisco” and you get “more than 100,000 hits” plus many videos of thieves in the act. Why is shoplifting so rampant? “Because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.”
A measure to reform Proposition 47, the Homeless, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, has qualified for the November ballot. Now-Gov. Newsom scrapped plans for a competing ballot measure and instead supports a raft of bills he thinks will do the job. Newsom, who is not a lawyer, has yet to speak out on Sacramento’s threat to fine Target for reporting theft.
According to the California Globe, in organized retail theft Los Angeles ranks first, Oakland second and Sacramento seventh. The Sacramento city attorney’s effort to criminalize Target for reporting theft could be a first, and for the Globe’s Katy Grimes, “We have officially entered George Orwell’s 1984.” It is true that in California all the clocks seem to be striking 13, but the author’s Animal Farm could be more pertinent.
Once the revolutionary animals take over the farm, they must decide what to do with the wild non-domestic creatures, so they agreed by an overwhelming majority that “rats are comrades.” In the view of “progressives,” criminals are victims of oppressive capitalist society, to be rectified by pro-criminal measures such as Proposition 47.
So-called “property crime” affects the people who own the stolen property, and drives up prices for consumers, so “people crime” might be more accurate. There’s no question that it’s totally out of control in the Golden State.
California Proposition 36, the measure to fix Prop. 47, will be on the November ballot. While the vote awaits, another issue has failed to get the attention it deserves. The 2017 Senate Bill 54, the “California Values Act,” protects illegals from deportation, but there’s more to it.
Through the “motor voter” plan, California automatically registers illegal aliens to vote when they get their driver’s license. Voting by illegals violates the law, but state officials won’t say how many illegals voted for the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” or for Newsom in the recall election of 2021.
Anyone who supports illegals voting in American elections has no claim to support the rule of law. In 2024 moving forward, Californians have plenty to ponder.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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