California’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force (ORCTF) is on track to surpass its total enforcement metrics from 2023 following heightened property crime arrests and stolen merchandise recoveries in August.
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Governor Gavin Newsom last week announced that the ORCTF, led by the California Highway Patrol (CHP), facilitated 171 arrests and reclaimed 26,415 items worth about $547,000 from thieves. Last month saw the task force’s total number of annual investigations grow to 573, surpassing the number seen throughout the whole of 2023.
“Month after month, the CHP’s tireless efforts to crack down on organized crime continue to yield results,” Newsom said in a statement. “The state has no plans on letting up soon, and will continue its progress in protecting California’s businesses and communities while holding criminals to account.”
Since the beginning of the year, ORCTF has been responsible for a total of 1,055 arrests and the recovery of $7.8 million worth of stolen property. Launched in 2019, the statewide law enforcement initiative has been involved in almost 3,000 investigations that have resulted in the collaring of over 3,100 suspects and the unearthing of over 878,000 stolen goods worth about $46 million.
Since that time, Newsom has funneled $1.1 billion into funding the development of localized retail crime task forces, which have hired more officers and invested in technology, training and prosecution. The governor’s Real Public Safety Plan has also seen CHP deployed en masse to retail crime hot spots like Oakland, Bakersfield, San Francisco and Los Angeles, resulting in a 310-percent increase in proactive operations targeting retail crime as well as special operations related to public safety.
And last fall, Newsom announced a historic, $267-million investment into 55 local law enforcement agencies for the purpose of developing such capabilities. During the first six months of the grant cycle, agencies across the Golden State reported over 6,900 arrests for retail theft, motor vehicle theft and cargo theft offenses.
August’s favorable retail crime data coincided with the historic signing of a 10-bill bundle of retail theft legislation that included new penalties for stealing with the intent to resell, regulations for online marketplaces, aggregated charges across jurisdictions and retailers, higher penalties for repeat offenders and an elimination of the statute of limitations for prosecuting organized retail theft.
At the time, Newsom said the bills would “strengthen” and “enhance” existing laws with provisions that go beyond the scope of the controversial Prop. 47 , which was passed by voters in 2014 as a means of addressing mass incarceration. The ballot initiative reclassified certain drug- and property-related crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies and set the felony threshold for theft at $950.
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But the state’s new and unprecedented retail theft package, however robust, may not be enough to save Prop. 47 from being targeted in November.
Prop. 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act , would roll back certain provisions of Prop. 47 and up jail time for certain crimes like selling drugs and shoplifting. A number of California lawmakers, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, support the voter-led proposal.
More importantly, Prop. 36 appears to have the support of a majority of Californians. A Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll released last week showed that a whopping 71 percent of voters plan to cast their ballots in favor of Prop. 36, while 26 percent said they would vote against it.
According to PPIC research, the initiative has broad bipartisan support, with 85 percent of Republicans, 73 percent of independents and 63 percent of Democrats on board with the measure. What’s more, it has diverse regional appeal, with counties and regions across California from the Inland Empire (79 percent), Orange County and San Diego (74 percent), the Central Valley (73 percent), Los Angeles (71 percent) and the San Francisco Bay Area (64 percent) all showing a majority approval rating.
In fact, over one-quarter of voters polled by PPIC said Prop. 36 is the ballot measure they’re most interested in voting on this fall.
“Proposition 36 on crime sentences currently leads in support, interest, and importance among the ten state propositions,” PPIC Statewide Survey director and Miller Chair in Public Policy Mark Baldassare said upon the release of the data. “Seventy-one percent would vote yes, and 41 percent think the outcome is very important.”
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