Sacramento Warns Target to Stop Calling Police or Face Public Nuisance Charges – California

(The Center Square) – The Sacramento city attorney’s office reportedly warned a Target store that calls to police about widespread theft could result in a public nuisance charge, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee.

According to The Bee, Target stores in the city of Sacramento handled 375 reports of theft, robbery and shoplifting in 2023, 175 in 2022 and 87 in 2021.

The warning prompted Rep. Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, and House Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, to amend their crime bill, which would allow prosecutors to aggregate property crimes up to the $950 threshold for aggravated theft, to include a provision preventing retaliation against businesses “solely for reporting retail crimes, unless the report is knowingly false.” With the speaker’s support, the bill, part of a bipartisan crime package, is likely to pass the Legislature soon and head to the governor’s desk for signing into law.

Last year, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly, said that local Target stores had asked his department for help “to help them with shoplifters, most of whom were known homeless people.” Cooper said the department was not allowed to contact, cuff or arrest people in the store, and had to do its work “behind the store” and “in the rain” because management didn’t want to “create a scene” that people could post on social media and cause “negative press.”

Target crime reporting in California has been the subject of national attention. When a Target location in San Francisco began reporting all of its crime, shoplifting in the county doubled, with one store accounting for half of all shoplifting reports. This incident suggests that underreporting of theft may be significantly masking the extent of theft in the state.

Target, along with Walmart and Home Depot, are the biggest financial backers of the November ballot measure Proposition 36, which would reform the state’s reduced prosecution of drug trafficking and theft offenses to more harshly prosecute serial thieves and drug dealers. It would also create a “treatment-related misdemeanor” class of crimes that would allow individuals to receive treatment for mental or behavioral health issues and receive housing instead of going to prison. Proposition 36 is supported by the California District Attorneys Association, the California State Sheriffs’ Association, the California Republican Party and several prominent Democrats, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria.

California Governor Gavin Newsom opposes the measure and has tried unsuccessfully to get the Legislature to put a competing measure on the ballot.

“It’s really drug policy reform that sets us back decades,” Newsom said at a news conference. “I’m very concerned about that.”