Sacramento Ranks 7th Worst in Nation for Organized Retail Theft – Tying With Chicago!

“Public policies and partnerships with law enforcement are crucial,” the National Retail Security Survey says. “In terms of public policy, 72% of respondents reported an increase in average value per incident in areas that increased felony thresholds. Initiatives to reduce or eliminate cash bail also make an impact; 67% reported an increase in repeat offenders in these areas.”

In September, the Globe reported that Sacramento ranked as the 2nd dirtiest city in America, with only Baltimore coming in dirtier than California’s State Capitol in sanitation-related 311 complaints.

This does not bode well for Sacramento, the Capitol of California.

Here are the results for the Top Cities and Metropolitan Areas Affected by ORC, 2017 – 2021

As the Globe has consistently and repeatedly reported, this didn’t happen in a bubble. Proposition 47, passed by tragically misinformed voters in 2014, and flagrantly titled “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” reduced a host of felonies to misdemeanors, including drug crimes, date rape, and all thefts under $950, even for repeat offenders who steal every day. Prop. 47 which also decriminalized drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, removed law enforcement’s ability to make an arrest in most circumstances, as well as removing judges’ ability to order drug rehabilitation programs rather than incarceration.

There were two other big legal changes that fostered the anarchy, violence and chaos in California today.

Assembly Bill 109, in 2011, was then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature legislation he sold as “prison realignment.” However, AB 109 only served to overwhelm county jails by re-housing “nonviolent” state offenders from prison. AB 109 has been a failure. “Governor Brown had a choice. He could have built more prisons, but instead he reduced the population by releasing or pushing inmates to local county jails, which are not designed to house someone past a year and prevents law enforcement from taking low-level offenders in,” Ronald A. Lawrence, the Citrus Heights Chief of Police and President of the California Police Chiefs Association, told the Globe in 2020.

Proposition 47, as we describe above, decriminalizing theft. Notably, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) opposed Prop. 47, concerned that it would reclassify a wide range of crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor, and would result in the re-sentencing and release of thousands of individuals already convicted of these crimes. She was correct, as her concerns came to fruition.

Proposition 57, shamelessly titled “the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act,” now allows nonviolent felons to qualify for early release, and parole boards can now only consider an inmate’s most recent charge, and not their entire history because of this proposition. Notably, both Prop. 47 and 57 were given their ballot titles by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Crimes now considered “nonviolent” under Proposition 57 in California include:

• human trafficking of a child
• rape of an unconscious person or by intoxication
• drive by shooting at inhabited dwelling or vehicle
• assault with a firearm or deadly weapon
• assault on a police officer
• serial arson
• exploding a bomb to injure people
• solicitation to commit murder
• assault from a caregiver to a child under eight years old that could result in a coma or death
• felony domestic violence. 

The Study said, “For the purpose of this study, Organized Retail Crime (ORC) is defined as ‘theft/fraud activity conducted with the intent to convert illegally obtained merchandise, cash, cargo or cash equivalent into financial gain (no personal use), typically through their online or offline sales.’ ORC is also defined as typically involving a criminal enterprise that organizes large scale thefts from a number of retail stores and employs a fencing operation to sell illegally obtained goods for financial gain. These gains then fuel other, more dangerous, illicit activity (guns, drugs, human smuggling, etc.).