As organized theft rings have continued a violent crime wave on California businesses and consumers in recent weeks, policymakers and industry leaders are calling for a cohesive response to find solutions to the problem.
The surge in coordinated smash-and-grab crime has shaken businesses already struggling to recover from the pandemic economic downturn, ensuing supply chain crisis, and led industry leaders to urge action from lawmakers, Rachel Michelin, president and CEO of the California Retailers Association (CRA), told the Northern California Record.
“The biggest key takeaway is for all of us to come together and find solutions,” Michelin said. “Collectively, legislators, law enforcement, criminal justice advocates, the business community, we all have to be willing to sit down and have productive conversations.”
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose district includes most of San Francisco, told reporters last week that lawlessness had to be addressed, but did not offer the same level of frustration as San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who called for less tolerance “of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city,” the Daily Mail reported.
More than 20 CEOs have signed a letter to Pelosi and other Congressional leaders asking for legislative crackdown on organized retail crime.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday unveiled a new Public Safety Plan, and Attorney General Rob Bonta has announced similar efforts to combat organized retail theft.
Both have also defended Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, reducing felony theft to a misdemeanor offense if it’s less than $950.
But seeing the results of recent crime-prevention developments will take time. Meanwhile, daily footage of violent robberies is hurting residents and neighborhoods.
“It’s really because consumers in California aren’t feeling safe,” Michelin said. “In some instances, people are being followed from shopping centers, being robbed of their bags and their belongings at gunpoint, and when you have employees and customers in a store shopping, and suddenly 80 people run in with sledgehammers and crowbars, that impacts our communities, that impacts our state.”
With some of the theft being organized using social media, Michelin said it’s essential those companies are part of the conversation on crime prevention.
“We need to engage the social media platforms as well,” Michelin said. “No one entity can solve this, and no one entity is responsible; we all have to work together to come up with solutions, and all of us have to be willing to be part of the solutions, and I think the social media companies have a responsibility too, to make sure that they're not becoming a conduit to allow these groups to organize on their platforms, and I think they have to be part of the conversations as we move forward.”