(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – California’s Democrat-dominated state Senate just adopted a bill banning retail staff from confronting thieves, which will result in the legalization of shoplifting.
[After reading the rest of this report, please share your opinion about what California is doing by emailing [email protected]. Thank you.]
Senate Bill 553, sponsored by Democrat state Senator Dave Cortese, has now advanced to the policy committees in the State Assembly, the lower chamber of California’s legislature.
Cortese hopes the draft law would prevent violence and defend staffers from being forced to tackle robbers, but the bill has infuriated store bosses, Newsweek writes in a report.
The California Retailers Association has mocked the legislation as an invitation “to come in and steal.”
The bill comes weeks after Blake Mohs, a 26-year-old Home Depot security guard, was shot and killed while trying to stop a robbery in Pleasanton, California.
“SB 553 is focused on protecting employees. The bill does not prohibit employees from stopping theft. It does prevent employers from asking non-security personnel to confront a person involved in criminal activity. We don’t want rank and file employees to be forced to place themselves in harm’s way,” Cortese told the news outlet.
“What we’re saying in the bill is it’s not ok for employers to take a rank-and-file worker, somebody whose job is really something else… and say, ‘Hey, you know, if there’s an intruder, we’re going to deputize you to intervene.’ People get hurt and often killed that way,” the Democrat legislator told Fox2/KTVU.
A statement by Cortese’s office said workplace violence was the second biggest cause of fatal occupational injury. It quoted a New York Times analysis from 2022 saying that grocery store assaults grew by 63% between 2018 and 2020 and convenience store assaults – by 75%.
The store theft crime wave that has gripped San Francisco has forced a Whole Foods downtown store to shut down. Nordstrom also left the city’s downtown last month.
In November, Target said in a statement that “organized retail crime” had incurred a $400 million loss in its profits in 2022.
“This bill goes way too far, number one, where I think it will open the doors even wider for people to come in and steal from our stores,” commented Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association.
