This is what extreme leftist governments gets you
- Thread starter Knight In TN
- Start date
San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge (Published 2021)
Friday: The mundane crime of shoplifting has spun out of control in San Francisco, forcing some chain stores to close.
Why would Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky, have anything to do with a reclassification of criminal theft in California? Where’s your source?
He was the only sitting senator to officially support the measure. It was also supported by your buddy Newt.
California Proposition 47, Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative (2014)
Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics
Also before you claim that is a liberal hoax source, here is anotherHe was the only sitting senator to officially support the measure. It was also supported by your buddy Newt.
California Proposition 47, Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative (2014)
Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politicsballotpedia.org
Rand Paul and B. Wayne Hughes Jr.: Republicans should back Prop. 47
We’re surprised at how many people ask why we, as Republicans, are working to change our criminal justice and prison systems. Why wouldn’t we? We must change our current system – …
www.ocregister.com
Note the author of the article.
Oh no! How will CVS or Walgreens ever recover?
The end result of prop 47 is the state has more money to incarcerate violent criminals who pose a safety threat to society because of the reclassifying of lesser crimes to misdemeanors. This has the predictable side effect of making theft of under $950 more attractive as the punishment is far less. And during Covid many of these cases were not pursued as well which only exacerbated things.
“My buddy Newt?” Where do you come up with this shit?He was the only sitting senator to officially support the measure. It was also supported by your buddy Newt.
California Proposition 47, Reduced Penalties for Some Crimes Initiative (2014)
Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics
I have no problem with saying Newt and Paul have clearly been wrong about this. You can’t watch that video and say there’s nothing wrong with what’s happening and that guy shouldn’t go to jail.
Blatant theft of property without any regard for the law is a sign of serious social degeneration. “I will take what I want from you, because you don’t have the will or means to stop me” is a dog-eat-dog, primal attitude that isn’t anything remotely progressive.
We can try to be optimistic about what will happen if we relax our punishments or enforcement of crime, but it’s naive. Relax penalties for crimes and they increase. We see it over and over and over again.
It’s nice that you’ve pointed out a couple republicans who supported this measure on the grounds of it reducing incarceration rates, but don’t pretend it’s not an example of another failed left-wing policy of permissiveness with regards to “nuisance” crimes. Deciding not to enforce shoplifting laws has a similar effect to not enforcing laws to keep the homeless off the streets. You always get more of what you allow, and you make your local area an unlivable shit-hole.
Interestingly enough, the so-called “poor tax” is a phenomenon caused by dishonest people in low income areas shoplifting.
If your shrink rate is higher, you have to raise prices to cover your additional costs. Then everyone pays more, while the store owner doesn’t make any more money. The only person coming out ahead is the thief.
I don’t have to pretend. It was a bi partisan bill. The whole basis of this BDS thread is “lefties bad”. In reality, both parties agree that there are far to many incarcerated in this country for minor infractions at an exorbitant cost to taxpayers. If a guy shoplifts a few hundred worth of merchandise, how much do you think is spent in totality trying him and (pre prop 47) incarcerating him for a felony? Probably 100s of times that amount. It’s not rocket science.
You don’t know anything about retail or insurance if you think this is covered.
Read The Article.
The policy is bad. The cost to taxpayers isn’t just a savings when you stop punishing thieves. They’ll bear the cost of every item thieves steal in higher prices and closed retail stores.
That doesn’t make any sense. If it costs 100 times more to prosecute and incarcerate somebody than the amount of their theft, it is a bigger burden to the taxpayer to do that than any hypothetical price increase you think would ever happen. If petty theft is a major issue at a retailer then that retailer can hire private security. There are still laws that apply. But law enforcement aren’t going to dispatch officers on emergency call to a scene of a petty theft. Particularly during Covid. This is nearly always the case, not just in San Francisco. Instances of shoplifting everywhere are almost always resolved by local monitoring and security presence that is already on premises.
You have to be smart enough to know that the guy in that video isn’t only going to walk into one Walgreens once and fill a bag with items and leave, don’t you?
There are markets that have sprung up where these gangs (and yes, this is organized) are selling this stolen merchandise.
He’s a supplier for black market products. It’s his job.
So if someone steals a used car worth $8500, should we only prosecute and incarcerate them if we can do so for less than $8500? That’s essentially what you’re suggesting, which is shockingly dumb.
Never mind the toll it takes on people as they see these things happen in their neighborhoods and watch them get increasingly dangerous. Some things are worth paying taxes for, and seeing that society stays civilized and doesn’t degenerate into one where it’s ruled by gangs of violent people taking what they want from more agreeable people is certainly worth it to me.
Walmart had loss prevention staff to detain shoplifters. Either police are called or the shoplifter is given a notice to appear. If they steal more than $950 it is a felony charge which is a different ballgame. The enforcement mechanism for shoplifters has always been primarily on the retailer with localized security. Unless it is a situation where people are endangered, there is not going to be an emergency response from the police. The main difference in this case is you have a made for tweeter video to stir you up. In reality the vast majority of shoplifting occurs by people secretly leaving with merchandise. This has always happened. But feel free to focus your attention on the blatant shoplifter and why liberals are bad. Meanwhile ten times that amount was just stolen discretely.
Anyone caught stealing should be prosecuted. That video illustrates the problem with that policy. Even if they detain him (which is risky) and the police show up and arrest him, he’ll only be charged with a misdemeanor. That’s why they’re not even bothering to call the police. The criminal doesn’t care about getting caught for a misdemeanor, and the staff knows how seriously the police would pursue it knowing they don’t have prosecutorial power behind them to actually put the criminal away.
And it’s already costing the people of San Francisco. 17 Walgreens stores have closed (this is just Walgreens) because the shoplifting rate is 4x their national average, and with their disappearance, so went all of the employment they offered. Now local people have to go somewhere else to find what they need, and there’s less competition in the area as well.
Discreet shoplifting is the way the vast majority happens because it’s the best way to not get caught. What we’re seeing in San Francisco is what happens when the risk/reward of getting caught leans way too far towards reward. There’s no fear of getting caught, so why not just go fill a yard bag full of items and walk out the fûcking door with it?
There are plenty of crimes where the police don’t initiate an emergency response. Even in Florida, local security at the retailer can detain you and police may or may not eventually respond. Chances are you won’t be arrested and simply given a notice to appear. There is a threshold for misdemeanor shoplifting in Florida as well. It’s not just in San Fran. This threshold was simply raised in California due to prop 47. It does make it harder for the retailer to operate as losses from a shoplifter can be several hundred dollars compared to $100 which is the threshold in Florida. I’m not saying $950 vs $100 is the perfect amount either.
Also retail store closures while potentially partially related to shoplifting, it is far more likely that it is related to the turn of society from a brick and mortar to online shopper. Particularly during Covid.
Law enforcement does respond quickly to active calls of theft if they are not prioritized elsewhere. They aren't running code (lights and sirens) but they are getting there expeditiously. BLUF is that it's just not as simple as the cost of prosecution/incarceration of the criminal vs the cost of the item.
By not prosecuting them, your society is implicitly accepting their behavior, which is ultimately that they are depriving people of their rights to property and the ability to earn a living. It is also a slippery slope as many of these people escalate their behavior until they end up committing that unforgivable crime. It dehumanizes both the victim in the eyes of the criminal and the criminal from human societal conformance. We aren't doing them any favors.
This is the same thing that my wife sees all the time with minors that get away with so much because politicians and activists don't want them to have records and then the minors are screwed when they turn 18 and the things they were doing last week have now landed them in adult jail. So many of them think they've been unfairly wronged because their society is accepting their bad behavior to the point where they don't really internalize that it is bad and criminal behavior.
Finally, there are all kinds of secondary and tertiary effects from non-violent crimes. The thieves are causing businesses in their neighborhoods to close or run at a loss. Those business owners that are making it are either taking advantage of the good people to make up for the losses or they are at high risk of health issues, suicides, or falling into criminal acts themselves. It's a serious loss of income; the Dollar General in my wife's zone experiences theft loss from 50 - 100% of it's sales totals every month. Along with that loss is the loss in sales taxes and business/income taxes. Not to mention that no one accounts for the dollar value of the items they aren't stealing while they are incarcerated.
There's a gas station that continues to turn over because thieves steal them blind. It's now owned by a group from Tampa that has had experience in these situations. When my wife introduced herself, noted the people that were hanging around, mentioned the history of theft and let them know that all they needed to do was call, they said they would take care of their security alone. Somewhat ominously, TBH. I'm all for people taking their own security and defense into their own hands but that's something that is frowned on in man pockets of our society today.
Can you post where you found the $100 limit? The state changed the threshold between misdemeanor and felony from $300 to $750, which is probably appropriate and was supported by research showing that property crime rates didn't change when this happened. Which allows for reduced sentences, early parole, and discretionary charging of first time offenders. There's still a limit of aggregate theft over a 30-day period to escalate organized crime.
Sorry. You are right. It is a $750 threshold in FL. $100 is the threshold between first and second degree misdemeanor.
950 is good # as you can now get a pretty decent flat screen TV for that, or Computer. No reason anyone should have to actually pay for such things.
Well in FL the amount is $750. In fact the actual laws are very similar between the states. As @sk8knight attested to earlier, this issue is not exclusive to San Francisco or “lefty” areas. Any time you have a threshold you are going to have people test the limits of it. You can either come up with creative methods of deterring criminals or you can incarcerate people for stealing a pack of gum.
$750 is far from a stick of gum, then again with inflation blowing up we may be there by September 1.
You missed the point. Short of incarcerating people for stealing gum you are going to have to come up with some threshold that is sufficiently “bad” enough to incarcerate people for. The crux of the issue is what that exact number is.
I think we need to go to requiring community service for non-violent misdemeanors. Find some way to show people the other side of their crimes and maybe even get them to feel it. For a lot of criminals, they just don't care about societal norms at all. I don't know how you change that, TBH.
I think @OLearyLastCall was posting 'tongue-in-cheek.' I thought it was funny.
However, @Knight_Classes_begin_7pm didn't, which was expected as he's utterly clueless.
I'm still with Rand Paul guys. We're over-prosecuting, even though petty theft does really cost companies, and they aren't compensated at all. Sorry, but that's just how it is.
Despite @Knight_Classes_begin_7pm believing Maddow et al. who have never run a small, let alone retail, business.
Again, California's biggest issues are it's organized crime economy that pretty much nukes all but the biggest GDPs in the world. That has nothing -- while everything -- to do with its attitude towards 'amnesty cities' which aren't really about 'immigration' but, again, organized crime.
That said, @Knight_Classes_begin_7pm should be forced to do a homework assignment on the NRA, USCCA and NSSF so he doesn't look like a bafoon to the aware ...
Please tell me that's 'tongue-in-cheek.'
Otherwise ... the NRA's liabilities are with only its members because, unlike Planned Parenthood, they aren't taxpayer funded at all. And I support Planned Parenthood, but ... geez, this level of hypocrisy of bringing up the NRA in comparison. The NRA are utterly and privately funded in comparison!
I don't understand how the NRA has fiscally harmed the taxpayer. I really don't. The state of New York has a case against them, even a Texas judge agreed, but that's still on-behalf of it's members, not the taxpayer. I think 80% of what the state has said is BS, but 20% is very much applicable.
I.e., you're painting it as they want you to believe, with invalid application, ignoring the valid facts.
Because, like every 'Blind Faith Leftist Church Going Spew Machine,' you're ignoring the far, far more powerful (over the last 20 years) USCCA, as well as the actual 'gun lobby' in the NSSF. The USCCA is so powerful the entire state of New Jersey virtually made it illegal to fund them at all, even though they are utterly legitimate in their product offerings.
So, again, the USCCA thanks you for being so focused on the NRA. I do too as an USCCA insured member, even though I don't have a concealed carry permit. It protects me with knifes and my bare hands, or just 'knocking over' a guy who is attacking people. My homeowners insurance doesn't, and my umbrella policy is extremely limited in that regard too.
But in the state of New Jersey, it's illegal to have liability insurance where you defend yourself, even without a gun.
Three straight responses without any significant contributions made to the conversation. Well done.
@Knight_Classes_begin_7pm is like watching Maddow.
I cannot stand her, or Hannity for that matter ... their 'inertia' is utterly laughable.
At least Tucker will 'go against the inertia' at times, as much as I disagree with him often.
Heck, Bill O'Reilly used to admit he was wrong, repeatedly, despite his slinging crap often.
And now you guys understand how a small minority of inner-city groups cause -- often heavily -- minority businesses to go bankrupt or otherwise move out, especially if they cannot get insurance, or didn't have any as a result of prior riots or crime.
And people wonder why they won't invest in inner-city areas?
