Sacramento warns Target to stop calling police or face public nuisance charge

(The Center Square) - The Sacramento City Attorney’s office allegedly warned a Target store that its phone calls to police for rampant theft could result in a public nuisance charge, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee.

The Bee reports Target stores in the city of Sacramento placed 375 theft, robbery, and shoplifting calls in 2023, with 175 in 2022 and 87 in 2021.

The warning led Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, to amend their crime bill allowing prosecutors to aggregate property crimes to reach the $950 threshold for felony theft to include a clause preventing retaliation against businesses “solely for the act of reporting retail crime, unless the report is knowingly false.” With the backing of the Speaker, the bill, part of a bipartisan crime package, is likely to soon pass the legislature and head to the governor’s desk for codification into law.

Last year, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, a Democratic former member of the State Assembly, said local Target stores had requested assistance from his department to “help them with shoplifters, mostly who were known transients.” Cooper said the department could not contact, handcuff, or arrest individuals within the store, and would have to do their work “behind the store” and “in the rain” because corporate management did not “want to create a scene” for people to put on social media and cause “negative press.”

Target crime reporting in California has been the subject of national attention. When one Target location in San Francisco began reporting all of its crime, the county's shoplifting doubled, with the single store responsible for half of shoplifting reports. This incident suggests underreporting of theft could be significantly obscuring the extent of theft in the state.

Target, along with Walmart and Home Depot, are the top financial backers of November ballot measure Proposition 36, which would reform the state’s reduced prosecution of drug dealing and theft to more strongly prosecute serial thieves and drug dealers. It also would create a "treatment-mandated felony" crime class that allows individuals to get treatment for mental health or behavioral issues and receive shelter instead of going to prison. Proposition 36 is endorsed by the California District Attorneys Association, the California State Sheriffs' Association, the Republican Party of California, and some top Democrats including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, opposes the measure, and attempted but failed to get the legislature to put a competing measure on the ballot.

“It’s really drug policy reform that brings us back decades,” said Newsom in a press conference. I’m very concerned about that.”