Theft wave and organized smash-and-grab shoplifting show California law needs change - Yahoo News

If any California proposition of the last half-century is an obvious candidate for a major rewrite, it is the 2014 Proposition 47, which made small-time offenses out of all thefts of more than $950 value unless the perpetrator had a prior history of violent crimes.

For sure, it is currently under threat. Alive right now in the Legislature are several efforts to cancel most of Prop. 47 or increase penalties for some crimes it deems minor.

Ask most police and they’ll say this law is a major factor behind the wave of shoplifting that has plagued cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Fresno and caused closure of many retail stores, especially in San Francisco.

They also attribute the so-called “smash-and-grab” robbery/burglaries during last fall’s Thanksgiving week to the same law. That might be a bit of a misattribution, as voters by a 60-40 margin in 2020 voted down the Proposition 20 attempt to make organized retail theft chargeable as a felony even if stolen goods amount to less than $950 per incident.

For now, under Prop. 47, this can only be charged as a misdemeanor, very likely one motivating factor in the group smash-and-grabs involving as many as 80 persons per-incident and about as organized as they could have been.

It’s true that a variety of police and media studies have shown crimes like larceny are up about 9% since the new value limits — up from the prior $250 petty theft limit — were raised eight years ago.

At the same time, because crimes that were formerly felonies suddenly became misdemeanors, police and prosecutors changed their practices, going from court hearings that set bail amounts to simple arrest, book and release if a crime involved less value than $950.

This went without much fanfare until the smash-and-grab crimes occurred en masse in many parts of California, highlighting the weaknesses of Prop. 47.

The incidents gave a boost to an impending recall election against San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, the son of two former Weather Underground members convicted of driving getaway cars in a deadly New York state robbery.

source: https://news.yahoo.com/prop-47-ripe-rewrite-wave-175043716.html

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