Rash of car burglaries reaches ‘crisis’ level
on,” said Loftus, who leaves office in January.
Wiener said the loophole in state law that his bill targets has hindered prosecutions in San Francisco, where many car burglary victims are tourists who cannot easily return to testify that they left their car doors locked.
George Gascon, who stepped down as San Francisco’s top prosecutor in October to run for Los Angeles County district attorney, said the problem led him to ask Wiener to pursue the legislation.
“I was disappointed that legislators chose to kill a bill that would have closed a loophole that disproportionately impacts one class of victim,” said Gascon, who hopes legislators will again take up the proposal when they reconvene in January. “Tourists are disproportionately targeted because they are more likely to have valuables in their cars, and this loophole means justice may not be applied equally.”
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, whom Gascon is challenging in the 2020 election, said that although her office has not seen the same surge in car burglaries this year as in San Francisco, “We do share the frustration of having to prove a vehicle was locked as a factor in determining whether the entry was illegal.”
Los Angeles saw a 14.3% increase in thefts from vehicles from 2015 to 2017. So far this year, numbers are down 6.7% compared with the same period in 2017.
Wiener said he was never given an explanation by colleagues who decided to hold the bills in committee, but he said lawmakers have generally been reluctant to approve any measure that has the potential to put more people behind bars.
The solidly liberal California Legislature has tried to address prison overcrowding in the last decade by reducing the penalties for many crimes and blocking bills that might increase the number of people going to jail or prison.
“Bills that are perceived to expand criminal liability tend not to do well in the Legislature, although this bill closes a loophole — it’s not creating something new,” Wiener said.
The legislation was opposed by the California Public Defenders Assn., which tied the issue to the rise of homelessness in major California cities.
“In an era where our streets are filled with homeless people looking for shelter from the elements this expansion of the prosecution and incarceration time for individuals who have not damaged a locking mechanism of the vehicle to gain entry could negatively impact those with the least of means,” the public defenders said in a letter to lawmakers.
Chesa Boudin, who won the Nov. 8 election against Loftus after serving as a San Francisco deputy public defender, did not respond to a request for comment on the legislation.
Assembly Republican leader Marie Waldron of Escondido said the demise of the legislation this year is just the latest in a series of actions by Democratic lawmakers that hamper law enforcement efforts to stop criminals.
“We’ve got one more piece of evidence that for Democrats, victims come last,” Waldron said. “There’s no reason for someone to enter a vehicle that doesn’t belong to them, whether the door is locked or not. This was a common-sense bill to close a major loophole in our car burglary law, but Democrats have proved yet again that in Sacramento, common sense isn’t common.”
A study last year by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found evidence that the 2014 passage of Proposition 47, which reduced penalties for some low-level property crimes, contributed to an increase in some crimes, including thefts from motor vehicles.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), the chairwoman of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, declined to discuss Wiener’s bill when asked why her committee shelved it, saying in a statement that costs are always a concern with proposed new laws.
“With billions of dollars of new taxpayer costs being proposed through new legislation every year, the Appropriations Committee considers the merits of hundreds of bills before making very hard decisions about the fiscal priorities of our state,” Gonzalez said.
Number crunchers for Gonzalez’s committee estimated the bill would have cost courts “hundreds of thousands” of dollars for more prosecutions, while counties might face up to the “low millions” of dollars in expenses to handle increased jail populations.
California’s auto burglary problem received national attention in August when former Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez suffered a break-in to his rental car in San Francisco, resulting in the theft of an estimated $500,000 worth of electronics and jewelry. That case is still under investigation and no arrests have been made, police say.
In another high-profile case this year, authorities broke up a car burglary ring comprising dozens of Chilean nationals who entered the country on tourist visas and ransacked scores of cars, homes and businesses in Southern California.
Wiener said the issue is not going away.
“I think we will get it passed eventually,” Wiener said of the legislation. “It’s still a problem.”