California Announces Retail Crime Crackdown Progress
California continues its crackdown on organized retail crime with 621 investigations statewide so far in 2024, leading to 1,123 arrests and $8.1 million worth of stolen goods recovered.
The state’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force (ORCTF), led by California’s Highway Patrol, recovered more than $300,000 of stolen items in September 2024 alone, according to a press release from California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office.
Newsom has made combatting retail crime a priority for his current term, especially after high-profile spikes in retail crime across major Californian cities contributed to stores shuttering and perceptions of higher personal risk in urban centers.
The state distributed $267 million to 55 law enforcement agencies in California in 2023 to address organized retail crime.
“These funds have enabled cities and counties to hire more police, make more arrests, and secure more felony charges against suspects,” the press release said. “In just the first six months of the grant cycles, local law enforcement agencies that received the grants reported more than 6,900 arrests for retail theft, motor vehicle theft, and cargo theft offenses.”
Meanwhile, in August, Newsom signed into law 10 new bills designed to make it easier to catch, prosecute, and punish property theft offenders.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law 10 bills that address retail theft from a variety of angles, all designed to make it easier to catch, prosecute, and punish offenders, with the ultimate goal of enhanced deterrence. https://t.co/shyFQXIo8a
— Security Management (@SecMgmtMag) August 23, 2024
“One feature of the laws is to make felony prosecutions easier to undertake. Thieves had caught on to the fact that to reach felony level in the state, the value of stolen goods had to exceed $950,” Security Management reported. “Stay below that in any single theft event, and the crime remained a misdemeanor. In general, law enforcement and district attorneys shy away from pursuing such low-level crimes because the results were not worth the effort.
“The new laws allow prosecutors to aggregate the value of stolen goods no matter how many different theft events occurred in order to get over the $950 threshold, including events that occurred across county lines—another loophole in current law that thieves often knew and exploited.”
In addition, AB 2943 expands probable cause, enabling law enforcement to arrest individuals based on sworn statements from eyewitnesses, video surveillance footage showing a person shoplifting or committing another crime, or possessing “a quantity of goods inconsistent with personal use and the goods bear security devices affixed by a retailer that would customarily be removed upon purchase.”
