Criminals, Homeless And Drug Users Are Enjoying The Spoils Of California's Prop 47
As if California wasn’t plagued with enough problems, in 2014, the state went from bad to worse after the Democratic bastion passed Proposition 47, which severely reduced or eliminated legal consequences for the theft of merchandise below $950.
What Prop 47 immediately did was spark a lucrative, new opportunity for drug dealers, homeless people, fencers and other riff-raff, as these people can now walk into a retail store, blatantly steal whatever they want and have virtually no worry, whatsoever, of being prosecuted for their actions. In a majority of cases, police are never even involved, according to Fox News.
The proposition was, unsurprisingly, pushed by both Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union, with the initial goal of giving police officers time to focus on more serious crimes, such as ones committed by violent offenders.
It happens daily in SF retail shops. No one dared to stop them & sad to c our honest system is broken. Thx to #Prop47 that cops don’t even want to record it. No wonder we have empty front stores. Leniency to criminals, will make our crime rates dropped. U better believe ittwitter.com/SFPDTenderloin…
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But instead, what it did was take retail theft to unprecedented levels and it’s so bad that it has even attracted organized crime rings from outside of the country to run sophisticated theft operations all across the state, especially in large cities such as San Francisco where the boutiques have expensive goods and thieves now know that stealing merchandise on a daily basis will not land them in the slammer.
The founder of the non-profit Code Tenderloin, Del Seymour, explained that fencers — people who come in to buy the stolen goods to later resell them for profit — are setting up operations day and night around San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza area to purchase the stolen goods at a steep discount.
The opportunity to steal goods and immediately sell them give junkies an opportunity to fuel their growing drug habits, which is also an already out-of-control issue within the state as Democrat-controlled cities attempt to combat the drug problem by opening up centers where drug users can use more drugs.
If that’s not a prime example of Democrat logic, I certainly don’t know what is.
Why do you go to jail in Shepherdsville for misdemeanor, petty crimes? This. As most of you know my policy is if you offend you go to jail. If you can’t control the small things you sure as hell can’t control the big ones.#OldSchoolfoxnews.com/us/california-…
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Seymour’s suggested solution for city leaders is simple, which is why it will likely fall on deaf ears in San Francisco’s City Hall.
“My thing is – and I tell them this all the time – if we end the fencing, prosecute the fencing or do something with the fencing, people won’t have money to buy the drugs,” Seymour said. “Most of the drugs bought are from shoplifting and breaking into cars. If they don’t have a market for those goods, they won’t break into cars or (shoplift) anymore.”
Jassi Dhillon, owner of several 7-Eleven stores in the San Diego area, said the problem is so out of control that he has no choice but to accept it as the norm.
“It’s happening every day, hour by hour,” he said, with regard to the constant theft of goods. “It’s becoming a lifestyle for us now because we can’t do anything much except take the loss.”
Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association, said that black-market, international dealers who come in to buy the stolen goods also cause a public safety issue.
Not only that, but groups of thieves will actually bring calculators with them to avoid going over the $950 limit. After they plunder a store, they’ll go outside, empty their backpacks and come in and do it again.
California's experiment of effectively decriminalizing shoplifting under $950 seems to be going... not well: foxnews.com/us/california-…
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“They will go into a grocery store, steal alcohol and walk out the front door with it. They know no one is going to prosecute them,” Michelin explained.
There are a number of other negative effects of the proposition, including a growing divide between law enforcement officers and city prosecutors, as the prosecutors downgrade virtually every instance of theft to nothing more than a citation.
The fine men and women who make up the thin blue line in these cities are probably wondering what the point is anymore. If they do their job and round up thieves, only to have them get off with a slip of paper that says “don’t do this again,” that would naturally lead them to believe that it’s not worth picking up the next thief, which then leads to even more brazen theft — it’s truly a viscous, exponential cycle.
Michelin said that many retailers have had to reach into their own pockets to hire private security firms to guard their establishments, but it’s not much of a deterrent as security officers are only allowed to observe and report situations and nothing more. And the bad guys know it.
California’s Prop 47 is just another stain on a once-great state, which has been utterly and totally ruined by the Democratic establishment. If I were a retail store owner in California, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be for long.
