San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
GOP exploits theft wave to inflame public safety fears
Allegedly coordinated on social media, last weekend’s wave of smash-and-grabs at high-end retail stores set the Bay Area on edge. But what officials describe as organized retail crime sprees aren’t the only orchestrated attacks taking place.
GOP politicians opened up the opportunist playbook and started their favorite attack: California is under siege and the left is to blame, partly because of Proposition 47, which voters approved in 2014. The initiative raised the dollar amount by which theft could be prosecuted as a felony from $400 to $950.
So what does a 7-year-old initiative have to do with allegedly coordinated retail thefts in the Bay Area? The right is using it as a smokescreen for a power grab, one that seeks to regress California to a Reagan-era police state. The first step is to take people’s rational fears about public safety and inflame them beyond reason.
State Republican leadership has been trying to do this by repeating the same two-dimensional messaging.
In a commentary this summer for the Daily Breeze newspaper in Los Angeles County’s South Bay region, failed conservative gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder opined that Prop. 47 “has given thugs free rein to calmly carry out whatever they want from any store.” In a Nov. 22 fundraising email, the party said Prop. 47 is one example of why Democrats “are the party behind crime and chaos, not law and order.” More recently, Republican Assembly Member Kevin Kiley of Rocklin (Placer County) described Prop. 47 as a “disaster from the start” on Twitter.
Over the years, a few studies have tested claims that crime
was rising because of progressive reform legislation, including Prop. 47. A 2017 study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and a 2018 one by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology both determined this to be false. Any fluctuations in a local city’s crime rate was more likely to be the result of “local policies rather than state policy reform,” the 2017 study concluded.
So what are the lukewarm attacks on Prop. 47 really about? They aren’t based on shoplifting data. According to a Chronicle analysis, there isn’t data enough out there for people to make sweeping conclusions one way or another.
Consider that much of the criticism is directed at Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who co-wrote the initiative and is opposed by the more conservative California District Attorneys Association. The association has been going after Gascón ever since the former San Francisco district attorney won election in L.A., even suing him during his first month in office.
Similar conservative forces are behind the attempted recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and campaigns to oust Attorney General Rob Bonta in next year’s election.
The intensity of the debate gets ratcheted up during election cycles, said Lenore Anderson, founder and president of Californians for Safety
Shoppers pass the boarded-up Michael Kors store near Union Square, one of several luxury retailers hit recently by mass thefts.
and Justice, which wrote Prop. 47.
“I think part of the blame game as it relates to crime in California is politically motivated and politically driven,” Anderson said. “When there’s attention to local electeds or state-elected officials, then all of the sudden we hear more about Prop. 47.”
That places us — the justifiably concerned Californians — in the middle of an unwinnable political war. Police departments
think this is their moment to push hard against criminal justice reform by saying they’re hamstrung by policies like Prop. 47.
But last time I checked, nothing in Prop. 47 said police should stand by and watch a cannabis dispensary get burglarized, which is what was apparently caught on security video in San Francisco last weekend.
And, as The Chronicle’s Rachel Swan
reported, Prop. 47 didn’t stop the office of San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe from “using conspiracy arguments to bolster a felony possession of stolen property case” against people who were allegedly planning to participate in organized theft at a shopping center. Prosecutors in Contra Costa County took the same approach with a retail theft case in Walnut Creek, where police say shoplifters
stole $200,000 worth of merchandise last weekend.
More prosecutors may start doing the same. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said police presence will immediately be increased at high-traffic local retailers, and his upcoming 2022-23 budget proposal in January will have more money allocated to the prosecution of retail theft.
Residents and local business owners have
every right to be angry about crime, especially when they’re the victims. But the concerns they have deserve to be heeded by law enforcement and conservative politicians focused on making the criminal justice system work, not sitting back and perpetuating the lie that it’s collapsing.