SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan bill package Friday meant to crack down on retail crime and property theft.
Newsom signed 10 new public safety laws. The new laws establish new penalties for repeat offenders, provide more tools for felony prosecutions and crack down on serial shoplifters, retail thieves and auto burglars, according to Newsom's office.
“While some try to take us back to ineffective and costly policies of the past, these new laws present a better way forward — making our communities safer and providing meaningful tools to help law enforcement arrest criminals and hold them accountable," Newsom said in a statement.
The move comes as Democratic leadership works to prove that they're tough enough on crime while trying to convince voters reject a ballot measure that would bring even harsher sentences for repeat offenders of shoplifting and drug charges.
While shoplifting has been a growing problem, large-scale, smash-and-grab thefts, in which groups of individuals brazenly rush into stores and take goods in plain sight, have become a crisis in California and elsewhere in recent years. Such crimes, often captured on video and posted on social media, have brought particular attention to the problem of retail theft in the state.
The legislation includes the most significant changes to address retail theft in years, the Democratic governor said. It allows law enforcement to combine the value of goods stolen from different victims to impose harsher penalties and arrest people for shoplifting using video footage or witness statements.
A measure to reform California Proposition 47 will go before voters in November.
As the issue could even affect the makeup — and control — of Congress, some Democrats broke with party leadership and said they supported Proposition 36, the tough-on-crime approach.
What new bills did Newsom sign?
- Assembly Bill 2943 by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas — Crimes: shoplifting
- Assembly Bill 1779 by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin – Theft: jurisdiction
- Assembly Bill 1802 by Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer —Crimes: organized theft
- Senate Bill 982 by Senator Aisha Wahab — Crimes: organized theft
- Assembly Bill 1972 by Assemblymember Juan Alanis — Regional property crimes task force.
- Assembly Bill 3209 by Assemblymember Marc Berman — Crimes: theft: retail theft restraining orders
- Senate Bill 905 by Senator Scott Wiener – Crimes: theft from a vehicle.
- Senate Bill 1144 by Senator Nancy Skinner — Marketplaces: online marketplaces.
- Senate Bill 1242 by Senator Dave Min — Crimes: fires
- Senate Bill 1416 by Senator Josh Newman — Sentencing enhancements: sale, exchange, or return of stolen property.
“We know that retail theft has consequences, big and small, physical and financial,” state Sen. Nancy Skinner, who authored one of the bills, said Friday. “And we know we have to take the right steps in order to stop it without returning to the days of mass incarceration.”
Newsom is expected to sign Assembly Bill 1960 by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas soon, though it wasn't included in Friday's announcement.
It’s hard to quantify the retail crime issue in California because of the lack of local data, but many point to major store closures and everyday products like toothpaste being locked behind plexiglass as evidence of a crisis. The California Retailers Association said it’s challenging to quantify the issue in California because many stores don’t share their data.
Crime data shows the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022, according to a study by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California. The state attorney general and experts said crime rates in California remain low compared to the heights decades ago.
The California Highway Patrol has recovered $45 million in stolen goods and arrested nearly 3,000 people since 2019, officials said Friday.
Watch more on ABC10 | Political experts weigh in on Newsom's future with Kamala Harris' presidential run
