The agreement also establishes specific commitments for the brick-and-mortar merchants signing the pact, which include maintaining thorough records of incidents, filing police reports and training personnel to gather appropriate evidence.

“There was a long period of discussion between law enforcement and marketplaces and retailers where there wasn’t always agreement,” Bonta said. “We have agreement. And we have commitments for action going forward.”

So what we’re talking about here is that poor California law enforcement at all levels would love to be able to do their job and go out and arrest bad guys for stealing stuff, but doggone it, those impetuous retailers aren’t reporting all these thefts like they should. It’s essentially their fault.

Again, this story appeared in the Los Angeles Times, so there’s zero chance of the paper actually reminding people of a sequence of events leading up to this point that includes their explicit involvement in advocating for a state ballot measure that would inevitably result in the rising crime statewide that we’re now experiencing.

In November of 2014, California voters passed Proposition 47, which was endorsed and promoted heavily by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the ACLU. What did it do? It reduced from felonies to misdemeanors the following sets of offenses.

• Shoplifting, where the value of property stolen does not exceed $950
• Grand theft, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950
• Receiving stolen property, where the value of the property does not exceed $950
• Forgery, where the value of forged check, bond or bill does not exceed $950
• Fraud, where the value of the fraudulent check, draft or order does not exceed $950
• Writing a bad check, where the value of the check does not exceed $950
• Personal use of most illegal drugs (Below a certain threshold of weight)[3]

Once the initiative went into effect in 2015, the results were pretty dramatic. The Pacific Research Foundation studied crime stats in California from 2011-2021.

In a decade, the latter half with Prop. 47 in effect, here’s just a sample of what has happened here in what’s now the Gotham City State, not the Golden State.

• Homicides rose 31.6 percent;
• Aggravated assaults rose 34.6 percent; and
• Drug overdose deaths rose approximately 715 percent.

The funny part about the full list of stats in the PRF report is that larcenies and robberies show that they’ve actually fallen a bit. Why? Not because there’s less of them, but because they’re not considered to be felonies anymore, so there’s no point in reporting them or filing the police reports in the first place.

Bonta’s presser and new policy agreement with retailers will not put a stop to the thefts, robberies, larceny and shoplifting rampaging across the state. The only thing Bonta is doing is making darn sure that retailers, the actual victims of crime, don’t shirk on the paperwork after the crime has taken place. There’s always paperwork to be done. Retailers know what the law is, and know that even if they file the appropriate paperwork and report the crime, it’s foolish to think the perps will ever be arrested and/or prosecuted, or that they’ll ever see their merchandise again. Bonta doesn’t care. There are reports to fill out. It’s almost comical that Bonta is upset at retailers throwing their hands up and not bothering to go through the motions in a state that has literally thrown up its hands and is just pretending to go through the motions on law enforcement. It’s hard to get mad at retailers for not calling the cops to report a misdemeanor, as though they’re going to respond, Code 3. They’re not. And why won’t police respond?

Everyone – retailers, law enforcement, and criminals alike, know there’s no punishment for crimes below a certain dollar level, right? And no, it’s not just because of Prop. 47. Thanks to the seemingly endless supply of anti-American will and campaign dollars provided by George Soros to fund an endless parade of Marxist and lawless district attorneys all across the state (and across the country, actually), criminals know that even if they did get picked up by the police and charged for a lesser offense, it won’t get prosecuted, and they’ll be back on the street in time for the store to have finished restocking the shelves for the next theft. Law enforcement knows this, too. You don’t have to do internet searches very long to find stories of people getting arrested multiple times in the same day for stealing stuff, and they’re still back on the street to resume their activities because police know there’s no reason to hold them if there’s no district attorney willing to file charges and throw the book at them.

Now add into the mix Proposition 57 two years later, in November of 2016. This one emptied out the prisons in California, largely in response to the three strikes law a decade or so prior, and put people that had already proven to be more than willing and able to commit crime back on the street with the added benefit of now knowing they won’t be prosecuted or charged even if they did happen to revert to old form.

Bonta, in his press conference announcing his “partnership” with retailers, which could be compared favorably to the partnership Al Capone struck with Chicago businesses, was very careful to make the following distinction.

The initiative targets organized retail crime — not shoplifting, employee theft or fraud, which make up a substantial chunk of all retail losses.

“It’s not about the occasional smash-and-grab at the local big-box store,” Bonta said. “This is about a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise — criminal schemes that are complex, orchestrated and incredibly organized.”

First, the “occasional” smash and grabs? They aren’t occasional in many parts of the state. They’re a multiple times a day event now. I live in a fairly typical suburban city in Orange County. On the surface, you wouldn’t think there’s a lot of problem with that kind of crime here. You’d think that happens elsewhere, but not here. About five miles away is Santa Ana, which has the reputation of being a high-crime gang haven. I’m a do-it-yourselfer. My home away from home is the Home Depot. They know me about as well as the Cheers bar in Boston knew Norm (Okay, at least as well as they knew Cliff). I was in there last month to get some smart wall switches so I could tell Siri to turn my entire bottom floor into a disco if it mood suddenly struck my fancy. I changed them all out, but had to make a few trips as my project goals kept expanding along the way. Any do-it-yourselfer knows that any project doesn’t include just one trip to the Depot. It takes several.

On one of my resupply trips, I naturally couldn’t find what I was looking for in stock, even though the store’s computer said they were supposed to have them. “Damn thieves,” the employee in that section said to me. “We can’t keep anything of value in stock in this store anymore.” He looked in the computer and said the Santa Ana store shows they have them in stock.

I was stunned. I asked why would you guys keep getting hit more than Santa Ana? “Location, location, location,” he replied. This store was 2 stoplights and two right turns away from I-5. The Santa Ana store was further away from the freeway and made for a harder getaway. And these shoplifting thefts are happening so frequently now that stores can’t even keep track of how current their inventory is anymore. Often times, they don’t know they’ve been hit until a customer like me is looking for stuff they thought they had, but no longer do. And again, I’m in the burbs. It’s worse in big cities.

But A.G. Bonta is not concerned about individuals stealing stuff. Even with a discernible increase in shoplifting (again, don’t look at the reported stats, just ask any retailer in California and they’ll tell you they’re getting ripped off far more than they ever used to), who is Bonta worried about? The mob – the same organization the Democratic Party, speaking of mobs, enabled by pushing this stupid initiative onto the ballot in the first place.

Has the Los Angeles Times come out with a mea culpa editorial saying ‘boy, we certainly screwed the pooch on that endorsement, what were we thinking, this should be undone at the next election’? Nope. It’s those uncooperative retailers for not reporting stuff that won’t get prosecuted, and that at least Bonta is finally doing something about all this stealing going on. Victim shaming is a trait that’s been perfected to art form by Democrats here.

I read that Times story, something I very rarely do anymore these days simply because it’s in the L.A. Times, and immediately took on the pose of Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3.