The following is excerpted from an article previously published in the San Francisco Chronicle on 8/16/2024
Newsom signs retail theft bills as the fight over crime heats up
“This is the real deal,” Newsom said, before sitting at a Home Depot shopping-cart-turned-desk to sign the bills. “We still have more work to do more broadly in this space, but this is a demonstrable advancement of that collective effort.”
Newsom and legislative leaders say the crime bills strike a balance between targeting organized crime rings and prolific thieves with harsher punishments and keeping lower-level criminals out of jail.
Some Democrats with more liberal stances on criminal justice policies argued the bills are too punitive and will lock too many people in jail.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, who pushed to get the package of legislation done, celebrated the bill signings as a win for Californians who have been voicing concern with retail theft for months.
“I have a message for criminal gangs. Gangs who, as we know, have brazenly been preying on our stores, on our workers and on our communities,” Rivas said. “Your time is up. If you break these laws, you will pay the price. It is that simple.”
Legislators and Newsom said that more bills addressing retail theft will continue to be negotiated during the final weeks of the legislative session.
Rachel Michelin, is the chief executive officer of the California Retailers Association. Member companies have been the largest funders of the measure, but have held off since March.
“I can’t speak for individual member companies — and that’s their own decision — but I will say that the members I’ve heard from, and I’ve heard from a number of them, are very enthusiastic about this package,” Michelin said.
Newsom signed the following bills Friday:
- SB905 by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, eliminates the requirement that victims prove their car was locked to press burglary charges and also makes it easier to combine instances of stolen property possession into one crime.
- AB1779 by Assembly Member Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks (Ventura County), lets district attorneys coordinate to prosecute retail theft crimes across multiple counties.
- SB1144 by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, cracks down on people trying to sell stolen property by requiring more sellers to register their identities with online marketplaces.
- AB2943 by Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, cracks down on people who possess large quantities of stolen goods that aren’t for personal use and make it easier for police to arrest people for thefts they didn’t witness. It would also make it easier for prosecutors to aggregate multiple thefts by the same person or people across different counties to reach the $950 threshold for felony theft charges.
- AB1802 by Assembly Member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles, makes organized retail theft a permanent crime, a provision that would otherwise expire.
- AB3209 by Assembly Member Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, lets retail stores seek restraining orders against people who steal, vandalize or assault an employee.
- AB1972 by Assembly Member Juan Alanis, R-Modesto, expands the work of the California Highway Patrol property crimes task force to include cargo theft and working with railroad police.
- SB1242 by Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, increases punishments for people who start fires while stealing.
- SB1416 by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton (Orange County), increases punishments for large-scale organized retail theft.
- SB982 by Sen. Aisha Wahab, D-Fremont, makes permanent the crime of organized retail theft and the California Highway Patrol organized retail theft task force.