In November 2020, Californians will vote to either keep changes they made to their criminal justice system in 2014, or undo some of them.
Five years have passed, in which Californians have seen the negative impacts of Proposition 47, says California Police Chiefs Association President Ronald Lawrence. Among those negative impacts, he said, is the rise of marauding bands of shoplifters terrorizing stores across the state.
He is confident that, although 60 percent of Californians voted “yes” on Proposition 47 in 2014, a majority of Californians will vote to reverse it this year.
One of the effects of Proposition 47 was to make the theft of goods worth $950 or less a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Criminals involved in organized retail theft roam from store to store and city to city, never exceeding the $950 limit in any one place, said Lawrence.
There have even been rumors of these thieves carrying calculators with them into the stores and adding up the prices of the items they take to stay under $950. They know they will only get a ticket for a misdemeanor even if they’ve raided multiple businesses, Lawrence said.
“They will go in in packs or groups. They’ll storm a store, take stuff quickly, and leave,” Lawrence said.
“They will go up and down Interstate 80, for example,” he said. They hit multiple cities along the way. “These are not just your local crooks. They are organized crooks taking advantage of a weakened criminal justice system and weaker laws in California.”
Many stores won’t confront these shoplifters, even in cases where they are so brazen as to openly shove merchandise into bags, smile at the camera or cashier, and head out the door. Videos posted on YouTube show such cases.
“This is true. It’s not true of all of them, but it is true of some,” Lawrence said. “Some stores have policies that prohibit their employees from intervening.”
Part of the reason for such policies, he explained, is to avoid liability if a fight ensues and someone is injured. But part of the reason is also that there is practically no consequence anyway if the thief is caught.
“I will tell you firsthand I know there are stores that have given up and stopped calling,” Lawrence said. “Stores that get ripped off all the time certainly give up.”
Proposition 47
Proposition 47 was intended to keep nonviolent criminals out of state prison by downgrading some crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, thus saving money on housing inmates.Law Enforcement Calls for Change
The initiative to counter Proposition 47—called Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act of 2020—has made it onto the November 2020 ballot. Lawrence’s CPCA, representing 332 police chiefs across the state, is one of the groups supporting it.It’s not only organized shoplifting rings that have become a problem after Proposition 47, said Lawrence. It’s also about making theft easier for drug addicts as a way to fund their habits. And it takes away law enforcement’s ability to arrest drug users for possession, which used to be a path for rehabilitation.
After Proposition 47, Lawrence said, “There was no more drug court, and there was no more ability to put them on probation and get them into mandatory drug rehab. So now, when we find somebody in possession of opioids, methamphetamines, cocaine, or ecstasy—name your drug—because it’s a misdemeanor, they get a citation. They get a ticket.”
Law enforcement groups led a similar initiative against Proposition 47 in 2018, but it didn’t make it onto the ballot. “Not enough signatures were turned in by the deadline. I’m not sure how that happened. We had enough signatures, but they weren’t turned in by the time they needed to be turned in,” Lawrence said.
But he thinks the two-year delay has only drawn more support for the initiative. “The truth of the matter is I think now being on the 2020 ballot works in our favor because our citizens are frustrated, our retailers are frustrated, and come [November] 2020 I think that our ballot measure has a pretty good chance of winning,” he said.
Rise in Crime
Before Proposition 47 was enacted in 2014, smash-and-grab burglaries had been on the decline for several years in California, according to the Independent Institute. In 2015, they jumped 15 percent over the previous year.In 2017, there was a record number of car burglaries in San Francisco—about 30,000, representing a 24 percent increase over the previous year.
For victims, Lawrence said, it can be traumatic to have thieves breaking into their cars or homes, rummaging through their personal belongings, and stealing their computers, TVs, or golf clubs. “If you’re the victim of one of these crimes, it’s very invasive. It feels dirty,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate reality that we’re faced with here in California.”
It’s hard to tell precisely how much Proposition 47 is directly responsible for these spikes, since many factors can influence a rise in crime. For example, Lawrence said, “The opioid crisis certainly has fed into the rise in theft crimes.” But it’s a chicken-and-the-egg scenario, because he feels Proposition 47 has also fed the drug crisis.
The 2020 ballot initiative aims to rollback not only Proposition 47, but also aspects of 2011’s AB 109 and 2016’s Proposition 57.
AB 109 shifted the responsibility for certain types of offenders away from the state, making counties responsible for jailing them or monitoring their parole. Lawrence said this has overloaded the county system and led to the release of criminals because there’s simply no room for them in the jails.
Opposition
Former Governor Jerry Brown vehemently opposed both the 2018 and 2020 calls for rollbacks to these laws.The parole restrictions he mentioned were related to the ballot initiative’s call for parole review boards to consider additional factors—including a felon’s age, attitude about the crime, and mental condition—before deciding to release a prisoner on parole after he or she has completed the maximum sentence. It would also redefine some crimes as “violent,” thus excluding them from the parole review program.
What the 2020 Initiative Could Change
The 2020 intiative’s reforms include changes to the parole system with the aim of stopping the early release of violent felons, expanding parolee oversight, and strengthening penalties for parole violations.It would reclassify currently “non-violent” crimes—including rape of an unconscious person, sex trafficking of a child, and 14 other crimes—as “violent” to prevent the early release of inmates convicted of these crimes.
It would expand the collection of DNA from criminals for the state database.
Those For and Against
Aside from the CPCA, groups that opposed Prop. 47 in 2014 included the California Republican Party, California State Sheriffs Association, California District Attorneys Association, California Peace Officers Association, California Correctional Supervisors Association, National Association of Drug Court Professionals, Crime Victims United, and the California Retailers Association.Proponents of Prop. 47 included the California Democratic Party, American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Open Society Policy Center, American Federation of State, and many labor unions, including the powerful California Teachers Association.
U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich broke party lines on the issue.