A bipartisan effort has been made in California to drop or amend Proposition 47, which labeled some felonies as misdemeanors. Disregarding the call to change Proposition 47, California Governor Gavin Newsom said, “We’re not walking back on our commitment in this state to advance comprehensive reforms.” Because crimes are only prosecuted if more than $950 is stolen, one Californian described ongoing crime, saying, “sometimes you’re in CVS or Walgreens and a guy comes in with a bag and grabs as many things as he can. The manager and security guard can’t do anything. By the time the cops arrive, they’re gone. They’re really fast.”
From The American Spectator:
[San Francisco resident Enrique Nascimento] said that he has seen robbers keep track of the prices of the goods they are stealing to ensure that their collective value does not exceed $950. “They pretty much do the math in the store, checking the prices and everything, and so the next day they do it again,” he said. “That’s why there’s a lot of stores closing.” “With the security guards,” Nascimento said, “they are instructed to not touch them and just wait for the police. And the police have so much to do that they never arrive on time.” ... [Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada William Sousa ] said that police in some communities in the U.S. are not able to do much about minor crimes because of policies put in place by lawmakers. He said that the problem is that if the police don’t have the ability to arrest individuals or issue citations, “people know there’s not a lot the police will do.” Sousa explained that security guards are also put in a difficult position. “If a security guard acts, they could potentially be in the wrong legally speaking,” he said. “If [minor crime] happens too often, you can have businesses closing and the fabric of the community can be impacted by it…. Citizens fear these types of things, they can lead to the downfall of certain communities,” he said. “Eventually, there would be a tipping point.” Newsom said that the perception that his party is poor at managing crime is a “messaging problem.”
