Sheriff’s Office says 50 people cited or arrested after stealing from Sacramento-area Target

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The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that deputies had cited or arrested 50 people last weekend at a Sacramento-area Target location during a retail theft operation.

Nearly $5,000 worth of electronics, cosmetics and other items that were not “of necessity” were returned to the Target at 5001 Madison Ave. in Old Foothill Farms during the operation, said Detective Ryan Drummond of the sheriff’s Property Crimes Bureau. Four people were arrested and booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail for charges related to felony theft.

Drummond said individuals between 15 and 54 years old were detained in the operation, nine of whom were juveniles. About half of the people cited were repeat offenders for retail theft, 15 of whom were previously arrested by Drummond’s team in earlier operations, he said.

“We are combating it, we are catching more, but the deterrence is still lacking,” Drummond said.

There are very few large-scale smash-and-grab retail theft cases in the capital region, according to Drummond, and all of the people cited last weekend either worked alone or with one or two others to grab items and walk out without paying. Multiple families brought children along when they stole items, he said.

“The main problem right now is individuals who are doing this as an opportunity and just not having repercussions to their actions,” Drummond said.

This operation comes a few months after recent retail theft operations in Sacramento County saw hundreds more cited in connection with shoplifting. In March, sheriff’s detectives arrested nearly 100 people across three Target locations in a large operation. Last year, the Sheriff’s Office launched a weeklong operation, known as Operation Bad Elf, that caught 285 shoplifters at 12 retailers .

Although Drummond said last weekend’s operation at Target was not as big as Operation Bad Elf, it was a larger operation than what the Sheriff’s Office typically performs.

“It’s not going to be the last one and it probably won’t be the biggest one this year,” Drummond said.

The Sheriff’s Office, led by Sheriff Jim Cooper, has repeatedly cited weak laws as the main reason operations aren’t effective at deterring theft. After Operation Bad Elf, Cooper said voter-backed Proposition 47, which was passed by voters in 2014, was a significant contributor to the “major problem” retail theft has become, according to previous Bee reporting.

Prop. 47 raised the threshold for theft to be considered a felony, from $400 to $950. Any theft totaling less than $950 is currently considered a misdemeanor.

A coalition of district attorneys have put Proposition 36 on November’s ballot to stem the rise in retail theft; Cooper supports the measure but many Democrats do not. California Gov. Gavin Newsom attacked the measure earlier this month, saying it was more of a “drug policy reform” than an attempt to address retail theft.

Newsom and lawmakers previously tried to get the California District Attorneys Association to remove Proposition 36 from the ballot. After various legislative maneuvers failed, the governor spent the final days before a month-long legislative recess negotiating an alternative measure to compete with the district attorneys’ initiative. But Newsom dropped it the night before lawmakers were to vote on it.

Newsom instead has promoted the Legislature’s theft and drug package , a series of 14 bills that lawmakers have been working on most of the year.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates Proposition 36 could increase state criminal justice system costs by hundreds of millions of dollars every year, mostly because it would grow the California prison population. It would also potentially hike local justice system costs by tens of millions of dollars annually by adding to court workloads and putting more people in county jail and under community supervision.

Drummond said the upward trend in thefts at Sacramento-area Targets over the past few years does not appear to be changing this year and Californians are feeling the effects. He said stores were raising prices and locking products behind glass cases to combat theft and attempt to regain lost revenue.

“These individuals are not having repercussions for their actions,” he said. “As much as we will try to do and we will continue doing, things won’t change or drop off until something is done differently in legislation.”