‘Smash and grab’: A growing crime problem
Organized, “smash and grab” shoplifting is spreading to cities throughout the country, said Kate Gibson and Megan Cerullo in CBSNews.com. The phenomenon was first seen in the San Francisco Bay Area, where gangs of young men rushed into pharmacy chains and looted the shelves; in a major escalation, about 80 criminals recently ransacked a Nordstrom of $200,000 worth of goods and 50 people armed with hammers shattered glass cases in a jewelry store. Organized thieves recently targeted two Minneapolis-area Best Buys, a Los Angeles–area Home Depot, and four chain stores in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Best Buy CEO Corie Sue Barry said last week that the robberies were “traumatizing” store employees and scaring away customers.
Welcome to “progressive misgovernance” in action, said Bret Stephens in The New York Times. Democrats “seem intent on reviving” their pre1990s reputation for abetting lawlessness, as city officials bow to the Left’s demands to constrain police forces and roll back “broken windows” laws that cracked down on petty crimes. It’s no coincidence that smash-and-grab capital California passed a law in 2014, Proposition 47, reclassifying the theft of goods worth less than $950 as a misdemeanor. Such policies “endanger us all” by trivializing crime and making punishment unlikely. Business owners “have every right to be angry about crime,” said Justin Phillips in the San Francisco Chronicle, but blaming a law passed seven years ago is an opportunistic right-wing lie. California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged to increase funds to combat retail theft and to “make an example” of perpetrators, many of whom have been arrested. Several prosecutors have used conspiracy laws to charge organized thieves with major felonies.
The mere perception of rising street crime remains “a political problem for Democrats,” said Jonathan Last in TheBulwark.com, even if the broader picture is more nuanced. The biggest jump in violent crime—mostly gun homicides—came from 2019 to 2020, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. “How many stories did you read in 2020 about voters holding Republicans responsible for the rise in homicides?” Or saying that rising crime is essentially “a gun problem”? Thanks to ruthless Republican messaging, voters invariably blame Democrats when crime rises. That perception depends on manipulating and omitting facts, but “politics isn’t fair.”