Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Shoplifters get new trick of the trade
Some suspect surge tied to new penalties
ROCKLIN, Calif. — Perry Lutz says his struggle to survive as a small businessman became a lot harder after California voters reduced theft penalties 1½ years ago.
About a half-dozen times this year, shoplifters have stolen expensive drones or another of the remote-controlled toys he sells in HobbyTown USA, a small shop in Rocklin, northeast of Sacramento. “It’s just pretty much open season,” Lutz said. “They’ll pick the $800 unit and just grab it and run out the door.”
Anything below $950 keeps the crime a misdemeanor — and likely means the thieves face no pursuit and no punishment, say retailers and law enforcement officials. Large retailers including Safeway, Target, Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies say shoplifting increased at least 15 percent, and in some cases, doubled since voters approved Proposition 47 and ended the possibility of charging shoplifting as a felony with the potential for a prison sentence.
Shoplifting reports to the Los Angeles Police Department jumped by a quarter in the first year, according to statistics the department compiled for The Associated Press. The ballot measure also lowered penalties for forgery, fraud, petty theft and drug possession.
Public Policy Institute of California researcher Magnus Lofstrom noted a troubling increase in property crime in California’s largest cities in the first half-year after Proposition 47 took effect. Preliminary FBI crime reports show a 12 percent jump in larceny-theft, which includes shoplifting, but he said it is too early to determine what, if any, increase is due to the ballot measure.
The increase in shoplifting reports set up a debate over how much criminals pay attention to penalties, and whether law enforcement is doing enough to adapt to the legal change.
Prosecutors, police and retailers, including California Retailers Association President Bill Dombrowski and CVS Health spokesman Mike DeAngelis, say the problem is organized retail theft rings whose members are well aware of the reduced penalties.
“The law didn’t account for that,” said Capt. John Romero, commander of the LAPD’s commercial crimes division. “It did not give an exception for organized retail theft, so we’re seeing these offenders benefiting and the retailers are paying the price.”
Lenore Anderson, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, who led the drive to pass Proposition 47, said law enforcement still has plenty of tools, including using the state’s general conspiracy law and proving that the same thief is responsible for multiple thefts that together top $950.
Shoplifting rings generally recruit society’s most vulnerable — the homeless, low-end drug users, those living in the country illegally — to steal merchandise that can be sold for a discount on the streets or over the Internet, said Joseph LaRocca, a Los Angeles-based theft-prevention consultant and formerly the National Retail Federation’s vice president of loss prevention.
While misdemeanors, in theory, can bring up to a year in county jail, Fresno Police Sgt. Mark Hudson said it’s not worth it to issue a citation or arrest a suspect who would likely be immediately released because of overcrowding.
“We’ve heard of cases where they’re going into stores with a calculator so they can make sure that what they steal is worth less than $950,” said Robin Shakely, Sacramento County assistant chief deputy district attorney.
For his part, Lutz, the hobby shop owner, has provided police with surveillance videos, and even the license plate, make and model of the getaway vehicles.
“They go, ‘Perry, our hands are tied because it’s a misdemeanor,’” Lutz said. “It’s not worth pursuing, it’s just a waste of manpower.”
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont is poised to become the first state requiring drug companies to explain their price increases, and Bob and Deborah Messing think that’s a good idea.
The Messings live in Montpelier and are in their early 70s. She’s on Orencia, a Bristol-Myers Squibb product, for rheumatoid arthritis. He recently finished a course of Harvoni, made by Gilead Sciences Inc., to treat hepatitis C.
Both drugs are expensive, though for people of the Messings’ modest income, big manufacturers’ discounts and state assistance make their costs manageable. Harvoni lists at $1,125 per pill, or $94,500 for a 12-week course of treatment. Orencia’s list price tops $3,000 a month.
The Messings say they’re mystified by the high prices and worried about what would happen if either the discounts or state assistance disappeared.
“Then you’re faced with these wildly expensive costs,” Deborah Messing said.
Drug prices have been a big issue nationwide, highlighted by Martin Shkreli, a boyish-looking, early-30s executive dubbed “Pharma Bro.” He was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals when the company acquired rights to make Daraprim, which has been on the market since the 1950s and is used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection. Turing raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
At a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing in March, Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, called that move “pure evil.”
Bob Messing pointed to a Harvoni predecessor, also made by Gilead: Sovaldi. Information gathered by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in 2014 showed that the company that developed the drug, Pharmasset Inc., projected its price at $36,000 for a 12-week course of treatment. After Gilead acquired Pharmasset, the price jumped to $84,000.
Drug companies often counter that research and development of new medicines is costly, a view that got some support last month in a Boston Globe op-ed by Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the Harvard Medical School.
“New drugs require expensive research and development under tight regulatory oversight. The cost of developing a single new drug may exceed $2 billion when including the cost of failures,” Flier wrote.
Vermont state Rep. Christopher Pearson, a member of the Vermont Progressive Party from the state’s largest city, Burlington, and a key supporter of the legislation, noted prescription drugs often sell for far less in other countries and offered another reason for high prices: the inability of Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate better prices under federal law.
Priscilla VanderVeer, spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said Vermont is the first state to see a transparency bill pass both houses of its Legislature.
If the governor signs the bill, it wouldn’t be the first time one of the nation’s smallest states in both size and population has taken on big business. Vermont in 2007 passed a law to restrict prescription “data mining” by companies that track doctors’ prescribing habits and sell the information to drug companies, but the U.S. Supreme Court shot it down in 2011. The food industry has failed to block a Vermont law to require labeling of genetically modified food that is set to take effect July 1.
Several other states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Virginia, have had drug-explanation measures like Vermont’s under consideration this year and in 2015.
The Vermont bill calls on state health care regulators to develop an annual list of up to 15 drugs that have seen the biggest price increases. Their manufacturers would have to justify the increases to the attorney general’s office.