Newsom Spending $267 Million to Tackle ‘Organized Retail Theft’

Newsom Spending $267 Million to Tackle ‘Organized Retail Theft’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $267 million investment to combat organized retail theft plaguing the state for 55 local law enforcement agencies in the state.

There have been many retail theft incidents in Commiefornia.

• Videos Show Beverly Hills Becoming a Ghost Town During Los Angeles Crime Wave
• Oakland, CA, Now Plagued by Pirates of the Bay Area
• Los Angeles: ‘Flash Mob’ Of Thieves Ransack Nordstrom, Use Bear Spray On Security Guards
• 7-Eleven Workers Who Beat Thief in Viral Video Will Not Be Charged
• Oakland NAACP: Declare State of Emergency After ‘Progressive Policies’ Like Defund the Police Cause ‘Public Safety Crisis’
• Cinemark Theater Closes in San Francisco Due to ‘Local Business Conditions’
• Nordstrom Closing Two Stores in San Francisco, Citing Crime and Safety Issues
• Smash & Grab on Wheels: Thieves Crash Car into Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus
• Los Angeles: ‘Flash Mob’ Of Thieves Ransack Nordstrom, Use Bear Spray On Security Guards

Those are just the retail crime stories. I didn’t link the attacks, home invasions, unsafe streets, etc. Commiefornia sucks.

Well, here comes Newsom.

“Enough with these brazen smash-and-grabs,” said Newsom in a press statement. “With an unprecedented $267 million investment, Californians will soon see more takedowns, more police, more arrests, and more felony prosecutions. When shameless criminals walk out of stores with stolen goods, they’ll walk straight into jail cells.”

I don’t know, leftists. Maybe not vilify the police and sympathize with rioters? Maybe don’t elect far-left prosecutors?

It all comes back to bite you.

The investment means:

• More police
• More arrests
• More takedowns
• More prosecutors
• More felony charges
• More accountability

That’s the opposite of what BLM, Antifa, and other leftists demanded in the summer of 2020.

Local law enforcement agencies went through “a competitive grant process.”

Forty-one sheriffs and police departments and one probation department will get up to $23,663,194 each.

The agencies will use the money “to create fully staffed retail theft investigative units, increase arrests, install advanced surveillance technology, train loss prevention officers, create new task forces, increase cooperation with businesses and the community, target criminals in blitz operations, as well as crack down on vehicle and catalytic converter theft.”

Thirteen district attorney offices will get up to $2,050,000 each. The money will “establish new vertical prosecution units — new teams dedicated to prosecuting organized retail theft — and to establish county-wide de facto ‘intelligence centers,’ prosecution hubs for all related investigations within a county.”

The funding impressed San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, who called it “a breath of fresh air.”

You reap what you sow.

The situation in Oakland is so dire that the local NAACP chapter condemned local officials for the rise in crime because of”‘the movement to defund the police,’ the ‘District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people,’ and ‘anti-police rhetoric.'”

“We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs,” explained the chapter. “Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too.”

In February 2022, then-Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf admitted that the “defund the police” movement “went too far:”

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Thursday called for more investment in addressing what she said are the root causes of violent crime that has spiked in big cities across the nation.

But Schaaf stopped short of echoing calls from activists to defund the police, arguing that the push “went too far and got convoluted.”

“It’s been particularly heart wrenching in Oakland because we had just made national headlines for cutting gun violence in half and sustaining those lower rates for five years,” Schaaf said in an interview with POLITICO for The Fifty: America’s Mayors summit. Schaaf added that “when we saw this surge come up during the pandemic, and let’s also be honest, after George Floyd, after this country just saw its faith in government justice compromised, we were just heartbroken.”

Los Angeles started to rethink its position on defunding the police in 2022. In 2020, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to slash $150 million from the police budget.

What happened? The obvious:

After years of decline, violent crime has begun to surge in LA. Last year, there were 397 homicides in the city, the most since 2006, and the trend has continued this year. There were 122 homicides in LA between January and April 30, which police have attributed to gang activity and the wide availability of guns. Other violent crimes, including rape and aggravated assault, are also trending higher.

“After an immediate shift in public opinion toward police reform [after Floyd’s murder] the base has almost completely reversed itself,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at the University of Southern California.

“At the time, it appeared we were witnessing a seminal shift in public thinking on these issues. If anything, the more traditional approaches to public safety and criminal justice are more popular now than they were two years ago,” he added.

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