[FoxNews] Kamala Harris inaugurated a heyday for shoplifters and created a new industry for stolen goods.Shoplifting in California has become so rampant that it’s no longer just a petty crime. It’s an $8 billion per year industry where organized "rip crews" strip an entire store, resell the goods, and return to steal again. Even while rates of other crimes have declined, reports of shoplifting have increased through the first half of 2024.
Why has California occupied the top position for retail theft nationwide? This decline of law and order in the state happened on the watch of its former attorney general and our current vice president, Kamala Harris.
Harris’ tenure as attorney general from 2011-2017 produced a poisonous cocktail of activist prosecutors, pro-crime initiatives and efforts to undermine police – all of which emboldened a culture of theft.
In 2023, the Golden State experienced what The New Yorker called "Flash Rob Summer" – a free-for-all crime spree that saw mobs pillaging stores like Yves Saint Laurent, Sunglass Hut, Gucci and Nike. Major cities across the country are at the forefront of this crisis, with Los Angeles and San Francisco scoring as the top two shoplifting cities in the country.
But for California, this November offers a chance to turn the tide. Though California’s electoral votes will all go to the Democratic candidate, a statewide ballot measure called Proposition 36 offers relief for the crime wave of the last several years.
Prop 36 is a strong law-and-order initiative aimed at rolling back Proposition 47, a policy passed in 2014 and overseen by Attorney General Harris that shortsightedly reduced penalties for theft and released thousands of criminals onto the streets.