Criminal Justice Reform Legalizes Stealing From the Poor
The profound inequality of pro-crime policies.
22 comments
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
After Proposition 47 effectively legalized stealing anything under $950 in California, shoplifting, porch piracy, and all sorts of thefts took off. San Francisco became the epicenter of what the Wall Street Journal described as a “shoplifter’s paradise” with pharmacy chains and numberless small businesses disappearing from the city at a pace unmatched in the country.
But then the social justice looters went too far.
"Last night what we saw was horrible," Mayor London Breed declared. What she saw was gangs of thugs systematically looting Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale's, and Burberry to protest the Rittenhouse verdict.
"This is unacceptable," Chief Scott declared.
San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, who had yet to find a criminal he wouldn't release, claimed to be outraged by the looting.
"We are exploring every single possible criminal charge related to the conduct. We will use every tool in our tool belt," he blustered.
Those are harsh words from a progressive prosecutor who has been blamed for singlehandedly enabling the robbery craze in the city.
"We're gonna be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area," Mayor Breed vowed.
Why was looting luxury retail stores “horrible” and “unacceptable” while looting local pharmacies wasn’t? The cops showed up at Union Square guns drawn, smashing car windows, and taking down the thieves even while shoplifters routinely haul garbage bags of stolen goods out of CVS.
Without a police officer in sight.
Louis Vuitton handbags go for upwards of $1,000 to over $15,000. That’s well above the $950 limit. Rob a corner bodega of its stock and you get a slap on the wrist, but steal a pricey purse and laws actually get enforced. That’s the two tier system of social justice in San Francisco that protects Breed’s handbags while leaving small businesses exposed with no protection.
The legalization of looting means that San Francisco’s progressive elites will have their luxury boutiques protected even as seniors can’t get medications because the pharmacies are closing.
It’s not just San Francisco. In Chicago, Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx raised the bar for felony retail theft to $1,000. The city's big bout of Black Lives Matter looting led to 392 arrests and only 7 prison sentences.
An elderly Korean store owner had stood in the doorway, pleading, "Please, don't loot this store. I don't want to look -- my heart is broken."
There were no arrests and no consequences.
But when Magnificent Mile was looted, Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned, "Let's be clear. We are coming for you. We are already at work finding you."
With progressive prosecutors like Foxx, such threats were rather hollow, but they came in sharp contrast to the daily toll of ordinary burglaries which occasioned no such political grandstanding.
Pro-crime supporters and criminal justice reformers claim that they’re putting people ahead of property, but as the response to the looting of Louis Vuitton shows, the French Laundry Democrat elite put their own property ahead of the property of ordinary taxpayers.
It’s not that they’re incapable of being tough on crime or at least talking tough. Nor do they suffer from principles that leave them unable to be outraged at retail theft. They just differentiate between Korean grocery stores being robbed, and “horrible” and “unacceptable” robberies at luxury boutiques that turn even a pro-crime prosecutor like Chesa Boudin into Dirty Harry.
Stealing isn’t a problem. As long as you’re stealing from someone else.
“We will do what we need to do to put an end to this madness,” Police Chief Bill Scott warned.
The madness here was allowing California lefties to legalize shoplifting and then create a two-tier justice system in which crimes against ordinary people go unpunished.
The amount of a theft should factor into investigating and prosecuting a crime, but California’s criminal justice reform legalized stealing from poor people and criminalized stealing from the rich. That has been the overall effect of all criminal justice reform, from police defunding, which strips public safety from poor neighborhoods while its wealthy backers retreat behind gated communities, high walls, and private security, to setting loose criminals to return to their old minority neighborhoods where they shoot each other, and any women and children in between.
Minorities and the poor, the very people whom lefties claim to want to help, are more likely to be victims of crime and suffer disproportionately from the decriminalization of crime.
Under the pretext of creating a fair justice system, the radicals have turned the formerly democratic public safety systems of major cities into a medieval class system in which only the wealthy reformers who legalize crime deserve to be protected against those same criminals.
The noblesse oblige that impels political elites to set criminals loose doesn’t extend so far as tolerating the rabble when they look beyond the Korean markets to their own establishments.
In the name of progress, the Left has turned back the clock to the dark ages.
While Big Tech bosses, like Facebook’s executives, call for criminal justice reform, they’re protected by 1,000 security officers in the Bay Area alone. The San Francisco Police Department has less than 2,000 police officers. Facebook’s force is half the size of the SFPD.
And the social media monopoly even funded its own private police station.
Facebook's private army, whose Chief Security Officer is a former CIA agent, which uses one of Biden's former Secret Service agents to protect CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and which maintains a watchlist tracking anyone who criticises him, is why elites can promote police defunding.
It’s not their police that are being defunded, it’s yours.
And in the event that their security solutions don’t work, they know that the politicians, the police, and even the most cringingly pro-crime prosecutors will rush to their defense.
America’s public safety system used to be based around equality under the law. And that meant, among other things, that the same cops would answer your 911 call as anyone else’s. The destruction of the law also brought down equality and left a deeply unequal system.
While San Francisco elites have their private armies, Kenosha small businesses had Kyle Rittenhouse. When people can no longer rely on the systems of public safety and criminal justice to protect them, they buy guns and they turn to anyone who will protect them.
What does criminal justice reform look like? It’s the police rushing to stop luxury handbag thieves after doing nothing while the same thugs terrorized working class neighborhoods.
On first reading, looks like a perfect description of what is going on in large Democrat cities like San Francisco. Fine work Daniel. There seems to be some resemblance to some fictional world I vaguely remember, but I can't place it at the moment.
The Hunger Games? Just add the arena and you’re there.
Chaotic societies is a common theme in science fiction.
“ California’s criminal justice reform legalized stealing from poor people and criminalized stealing from the rich.”
Brilliant observation Daniel.
I am waiting now for one of the leftist elite trolls to attempt to defend their position and the dumb law.
Also note the typical government response is to spend your money on controls that won’t work:
"We're gonna be making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area," Mayor Breed vowed.
Leftoids make a desert and call it peace.
Equality under the law is the basis for a stable society and Nation. It is what Camelot was all about...remember? When the government or law favors any group over others the others are FORCED to defend themselves and the unity required for a stable society that works together for the safety and benefit of all is destroyed!
This is a founding principle NOT a theory! It is being removed from our nation to destroy us! Stop it or loose our Republic!
Violent robberies in California are really getting out of control.
Are they? I never pay attention to local news so I didn't know. I can't read a local paper and the local TV news is even more excruciating for me. I guess I should do a web search.
After nearly two years of federal and local governments crushing small businesses with Chinese covid restrictions while exempting big ones I guess we knew the same would apply to the petty crime wave they likewise produced.
Reportedly the smash and grab looting of high end boutiques in San Fran was a criminal operation. A crime boss type would send the little punks to loot the boutiques and then buy everything they'd stolen. The ringleaders would even rent the getaway cars. That makes sense because the first thing I thought when I saw the videos was "how can all those poorly dressed little rats afford late model cars? How can they afford cars at all? They're street level looters and most look barely old enough to drive." And looking back, many of the cars were white, which is the most common color of rentals. The makes and models were common rental types, too.
The SF police already know if that's true or not (I think it is) but don't expect those stalwart public servants to inform the public. Not in that city.
Ok, Look....we have already gone thorough this. When these "people from a certain community" steal from stores, assault security guards, and beat the people who work at the places being looted.....we don't call it looting, we don't call it theft, and we don't call it robbery. Today, I am going to introduce a new term that will allow you to know WHO the people are committing these acts, AND the people responsible for allowing it. From now on, we will call it "SHOPPING WHILE DEMOCRAT"....and leave it at that.
This "criminal justice reform" ruse couldn't gain traction under Obama--too obvious.
How ironic that it was brought to fruition under the law and order President Trump.
Of course, his motivation was completely opposite to Van Jones who actually was invited to the WH when PT signed the First Step Act! Sitting next to Ivanka and Jared, Jones, the commie, flashed his GQ smile.
I do not know who said it but if you mix poison with food, poison always wins.
PT should have listened to the Snake song before he let Jones anywhere near him or the WH. The fact that he asked Jones publicly during the signing for ideas was insane.
Now we have legalized theft and murderers and rapists being let out with low or no bail. Geez. What was Pres Trump thinking??
Don't be fooled that this is a Democrat City problem...
Our local news was reporting last night that Car-Jackings are on the rise... where Blacks are targeting Whites who look like they have money...
A also know a person who went to a Check Cashing store... cashed his paycheck and was followed and robbed with a gun, 10 miles from the store! Two cars working together... one following and another came from ahead and swerved in front to cause Him to stop to avoid a car accident where he turned unto a side road.
Gotta love those Blacks nowadays...
We have the same thing here in my small town in the U.K. but it’s not blacks it’s migrants from Slovakia and Romania
Romanian chicks are hot.
Destroying small business and the middle class is fundamental to the globalist plan, 1% (or less) ruling the rest (99%) who live in dependency.
One aspect of it that sprang to my mind, that is rarely discussed, maybe because few writers grew up in majority black cities: There, small business was the way blacks moved up into the middle class. When I grew up I used to walk home from high school (it was safer back then) and would see small black businesses of various types all along the way. That kind of small business has been particularly crushed by the scamdemic lockdowns, some large percentage of such businesses permanently out of business, their capital destroyed, etc.
The Dirtbagocrats and RINOs hate small businesses, that's for sure. Their actions belie their lip service. It also belies their feigned concern for blacks, who are just election tools to them.
I seem to remember a lot more small businesses around when I was young, too. There are a surprising amount of neighborhood businesses just north of my apt where downtown ends. They all seem to be liquor stores and mini marts. Restaurants too, which took a big hit the last two years.
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