Newsom signs package of measures to curb burglaries, car thefts and shoplifting

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan package of 10 bills on Friday aimed at curbing burglaries and property crimes, as well as imposing tougher penalties for repeat offenders and those who operate professional resale schemes.

The Democratic governor was joined at a Home Depot store in San Jose by a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers, business leaders and local officials.

“Let's be clear: This is the most significant anti-property crime bill in California's modern history,” Newsom said Friday. “I thank the bipartisan group of legislators, our retail partners and stakeholders for putting public safety above politics. While some seek to return us to ineffective and costly measures of the past, these new laws represent a better path forward – making our communities safer and providing meaningful tools to help law enforcement arrest and hold criminals accountable.”

This comes as Democratic leadership demonstrates its tough stance on crime while urging voters to reject House Bill 36, which would charge repeat shoplifting and certain drug offenses with felony charges and impose harsher penalties for those crimes.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bipartisan package of ten bills on Friday to curb burglaries and property crimes. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Large-scale blitzes, in which groups of people storm stores and steal items in front of other people, have become a major problem in California and other states in recent years. In many cases, the incidents were captured on video and posted online, bringing national attention to the Golden State's rising number of shoplifting incidents.

The law allows prosecutors to add together the value of items stolen from different victims in different counties to meet the threshold for grand theft and impose harsher penalties for lightning strikes and large-scale resale.

“This gets to the heart of the problem in a thoughtful and prudent way,” Newsom said of the package. “This is the real deal.”

Although the package received bipartisan support in the House, some progressive Democrats did not vote for it because they were concerned that parts of the package were too punitive.

The law also aims to curb cargo theft and close a loophole to make it easier to track car thefts, regardless of whether the vehicle was locked or not. It also requires marketplaces like eBay to collect bank account and tax identification numbers from wholesalers.

One measure also allows retailers to obtain injunctions against convicted shoplifters.

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Although the package received bipartisan support in the House, some progressive Democrats did not vote for it because they were concerned that parts of the package were too punitive. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

“We know that shoplifting has consequences big and small, physical and financial,” said Democratic Senator Nancy Skinner, who authored the online marketplace bill. “And we know we need to take the right steps to stop it without returning to the era of mass incarceration.”

Earlier this year, Newsom and his fellow Democrats worked unsuccessfully for months to keep Proposition 36, a tougher crime initiative, off the November ballot. Democrats feared the measure would disproportionately criminalize low-income people and those with drug problems, rather than targeting the ringleaders who hire large groups of people to steal goods that they then resell online.

Newsom said Friday that the referendum would be “a devastating setback” for California, comparing it to the ongoing war on drugs, which aims to combat illegal drug use through harsher penalties and longer prison sentences for drug offenders.

“This initiative is about going back to the 1980s and the war on drugs,” he said. “It's about mass incarceration.”

The crime problem has seemed elusive for state Democrats in recent years, as many of them spent the past decade pushing progressive policies to decongest prisons and jails and invest in rehabilitation programs.

Meanwhile, Newsom's administration has spent $267 million to help local law enforcement agencies increase patrols, purchase surveillance equipment and prosecute more criminals.

Newsom said Proposition 36 would be “a devastating setback” for California. (Don Campbell/The Herald-Palladium via AP)

The issue reached a boiling point this year as Republicans and police have become increasingly critical, pointing to videos circulating online of grand thefts in which groups of people brazenly break into stores and steal goods in plain sight. Voters across the state are also angry at what they see as a lawless California, where retail crime and drug abuse are rampant while the state grapples with a homelessness crisis.

According to the California Retailers Association, it's difficult to quantify the retail crime problem in California because many stores don't release their data. But advocates of tough-on-crime policies cite the closure of large stores and the locking of products like deodorant and toothpaste behind plexiglass as evidence that the problem has become a crisis.

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According to a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area saw a steady increase in shoplifting between 2021 and 2022.

The California Highway Patrol has seized $45 million worth of stolen items and arrested nearly 3,000 people since 2019.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.