Since California Proposition 47, shoplifters stealing more and facing fewer consequences
Sacramento CA July 4 2018
Rudy Ruiz owns World 1-1, a video game store at the Santa Maria Town Center mall. Shoplifters hit his store so often, he said, that he stopped calling police two years ago.
Thieves know they’re “only going to get a citation, which is equivalent to a slap on the wrist,” he said.
The problem stems from Proposition 47, which was approved by voters in 2014 and reduced crimes like petty theft and shoplifting from felonies to misdemeanors, if less than $950 in merchandise is stolen.
Prop. 47 aimed to curb recidivism and reduce the state’s inmate population by making nonviolent, nonserious property and drug crimes misdemeanors unless a person has prior convictions for serious offenses. That means crimes like shoplifting, grand theft and receiving stolen property earn the offender a citation instead of jail time, as long as the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950 per incident.
The penalty for passing forged or fraudulent checks that don’t exceed $950 carries the same misdemeanor penalty.
Prior to the passage of Prop. 47, misdemeanor theft was capped at $400, and while research cited in the Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act shows prison inmate populations began to decrease statewide following its passage, business owners large and small are feeling the pinch.
Cameras, public shaming
Ruiz has experienced so much theft that he’s taken matters into his own hands — setting up hidden cameras around his store and even resorting to the “public shaming” of any shoplifter caught on his surveillance tapes, which he posts on his social media pages begging the public to help him identify them.
He said he catches a shoplifter at least once a week, but speculates that accounts for about 30 percent of the shoplifters that actually get away with stealing from his store.
“This is costing me way more money to deal with it, and I shouldn’t have to,” he said.
Tracy Ruiz, Rudy’s wife, helps run World 1-1 and said she believes voters who passed Prop. 47 didn’t understand the maximum theft threshold was $950 per incident, rather than per day.
“That value of $950 is not accumulated — it’s each separate incident, each time a shoplifter comes in,” said Tracy. “That means they’ll do it over and over again, and make off with a lot more than $949 per day if they’re given the chance.”
She added: “This legislation had a lot of social goals which is good, but unfortunately it hits retailers, big or small like us, really hard and people didn’t think about that. People also don’t realize that the more theft losses we incur, we’ll probably have to raise our prices which we don’t want to do for our community.”
According to Santa Maria Police Department statistics, burglary and larceny incidents steadily decreased between 2013 and 2017.
But the numbers don’t tell the real story, said Santa Maria Police Lt. Russ Mengel.
What really happened, he said, “was a change in the definition of what burglary/certain theft crimes were, which means that these crimes aren’t being defined in the same way anymore, which may explain the drop.”
“Petty theft is on the rise in Santa Maria,” said Mengel. “It’s gotten to the point where theft is so frequent that retailers have completely stopped reporting it, so the stats are perceived as having decreased.”
Mengel recalled one instance in which police apprehended a man three times in one day for shoplifting from the same store but had to let him go with a citation each time because he “met” the $950 cap each time.
“We take theft reports from big businesses like Walmart, Kohl’s, Target, Macy’s, JC Penney and department stores at the mall,” said Mengel. “For example, Macy’s reported an average loss of $1 million a year for the last few years. People walk in, steal, then come back and steal over and over again.
“Retailers are all frustrated, but don’t call because at the end of the day, what’re the consequences for these actions?”
Ruiz said on average his store sees about 100 customers a day, and each purchase averages between $25 and $30. His profit, he said, “is pretty decent — we have enough to pay the bills, our staff and still make a good profit.”
However, each loss is significant, Ruiz said, because he counts each dollar from every single sale he makes.
“Citations don’t scare anyone,” he said. “The majority of these shoplifters don’t get caught nor do they care, but to fix it, we have to get some system into place where there should be more serious consequences.”
Tracy Ruiz explained that World 1-1 usually matches the prices of a bigger company like Gamestop but often sets prices at least 25-percent lower than other stores in places like Ventura or Los Angeles counties to support the economic budget of the local demographic in the Santa Maria Valley.
“Obviously, there’s MSRPs (manufacturer’s suggested retail prices), but a lot of our items are set at the minimum price,” Tracy said. “We mirror prices for video games with Gamestop because video game prices are set no matter what, because you make no money off new video games.”
For example, she said, a backpack distributed by an outside vendor costs $50 at World 1-1 because $50 is the minimum, compared to the $80 it would cost elsewhere, according to its MSRP.
“That means I’m saving my customers $30,” she said. “But if the theft keeps happening like this, I’m going to have to change the status quo. Bigger places can afford the shrink, but we can’t.
“I don’t want to have to do that to our Santa Maria Valley customers,” she continued, “because our prices fit their budget. This hurts everyone.”
Theft is hitting small business owners like Rudy and Tracy Ruiz harder financially than corporate department stores because they don’t have the same profit margin and most can’t afford to hire security guards, said Glenn Morris, with the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Morris said hiring more security wouldn’t deter shoplifters, anyway.
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“I do understand what lawmakers were trying to do with this legislation — they wanted to decriminalize some of the social crimes, especially things like marijuana-related offenses, and wanted to fix prison overcrowding,” Morris said.
However, the chamber opposed the proposition because “it was a bad policy” from an economic perspective, he said.
“Our minds haven’t changed,” Morris said. “It played out exactly the way we thought it would — police will literally just catch and release shoplifters and it’s negatively impacting our local market. Unfortunately, it’s just become another cost of doing business anywhere and has become part of the economy.”
The Ruiz’s experience with shoplifters is not uncommon.
Terri Deasee, owner of the clothing store Deasees’ Boutique in Orcutt and Lompoc, has been hit frequently by shoplifters and is currently on the lookout for a female shoplifter who stole about $350 worth of clothes and accessories a few weeks ago from her Orcutt store.
Deasee, like Rudy and Tracy Ruiz, ended up publicly blasting the shoplifter on social media using video surveillance that caught her in the act, she said. The stolen items ended up being “anonymously returned to the police,” Deasee said.
“We’re a lot more vigilant now and you just have to be,” Deasee said. “That proposition definitely impacted a lot of the local retailers in town, and many of these crimes won’t even be prosecuted and people can walk out with whatever they want as long as they steal the minimum value of $950.”
“I know there are bigger, more dangerous crimes out there, and police don’t have time to look for shoplifters when there’s violent stuff that’s hurting people out there but at the same time, it’s not fair to businesses,” she continued. “It’s a double-edged sword.”
Like the Ruizes, Deasee is worried that the more losses she sustains, the more likely it will be that she has to raise her prices.
“I don’t want to do that because that’s not fair to our consumers,” she said. “The small businesses take huge hits and can’t afford to account for theft losses like the bigger businesses. Every single dollar counts for every small retailer.”
