California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan package of 10 bills on Friday in an effort to reduce smash-and-grab robberies and property crimes, creating stricter penalties for repeat offenders and people running professional reselling schemes.
The Democratic governor was joined by a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers, business leaders and local officials at a Home Depot store in San Jose.
"Let's be clear, this is the most significant legislation to address property crime in modern California history," Newsom said on Friday. "I thank the bipartisan group of lawmakers, our retail partners, and advocates for putting public safety over politics. While some try to take us back to ineffective and costly policies of the past, these new laws present a better way forward — making our communities safer and providing meaningful tools to help law enforcement arrest criminals and hold them accountable."
This comes as Democratic leadership works to show they are tough on crime while at the same time urging voters to reject Proposition 36, a ballot measure that would impose felony charges for repeat shoplifters and some drug charges and create harsher sentences for these crimes.
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Large-scale, smash-and-grab thefts, in which groups of people rush into stores and steal items in plain sight, have become a huge issue in California and other states in recent years, as the incidents in many cases have been captured on video and posted online, bringing national attention to the rise of retail theft in the Golden State.
The legislation allows prosecutors to combine the value of items stolen from different victims across various counties to help meet the threshold for felony grand theft and enforce harsher penalties for smash-and-grabs and large-scale reselling operations.
"This goes to the heart of the issue, and it does it in a thoughtful and judicious way," Newsom said of the package. "This is the real deal."
While the package received bipartisan support from the Legislature, some progressive Democrats did not vote for it over concerns that some of it was too punitive.
The legislation also aims to address cargo thefts and to close a legal loophole to make it easier to prosecute auto thefts regardless of whether the vehicle was locked and requires marketplaces like eBay to begin gathering bank account and tax identification numbers from high-volume sellers.
Under one measure, retailers may also obtain restraining orders against convicted shoplifters.
"We know that retail theft has consequences, big and small, physical and financial," said Democrat state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who authored the bill on online marketplaces. "And we know we have to take the right steps in order to stop it without returning to the days of mass incarceration."
Earlier this year, Newsom and fellow state Democrats worked for months on an unsuccessful effort to keep Proposition 36, a tougher-on-crime initiative, off the ballot for November's election. Democrats feared the measure would disproportionately criminalize low-income people and those with substance issues instead of targeting ringleaders who hire large groups of people to steal goods for them to resell online.
Newsom said Friday that the ballot measure would be "a devastating setback" for California, comparing it to the ongoing War on Drugs that aims to combat illegal drug use through harsher penalties and lengthier incarceration for drug offenders.
"That initiative is about going back to the 1980s and the War on Drugs," he said. "It’s about mass incarceration."
The issue of crime has appeared difficult for state Democrats to manage in recent years, as many of them have spent the last decade pushing progressive policies to depopulate jails and prisons and invest in rehabilitation programs.
Newsom's administration, meanwhile, has also spent $267 million to help local law enforcement agencies increase patrols, purchase surveillance equipment and prosecute more criminals.
The issue hit a boiling point this year amid mounting criticism from Republicans and law enforcement, who point to viral videos of large-scale thefts where groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight. Voters across the state are also vexed over what they see as a lawless California where retail crimes and drug abuse run rampant as the state grapples with a homelessness crisis.
The California Retailers Association said it is difficult to quantify the issue of retail crime in California because many stores do not share their data, but tough-on-crime proponents cite major store closures and products like deodorant and toothpaste being locked behind plexiglass as evidence that the issue has become a crisis.
According to a study by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area suffered a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022.
The California Highway Patrol has recovered $45 million in stolen items and arrested nearly 3,000 people since 2019.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
