San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Democratic Mayor Matt Mahan supported a tough-on-crime ballot measure to reform the controversial Proposition 47, which reduced some drug and theft felonies to misdemeanors.
of measurementIt's called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Retail Theft Reduction Act. The country would expand on the 2014 law by increasing penalties for repeat fentanyl dealers and organized retail theft rings, as well as providing mandatory treatment for drug users, according to a proposed ballot initiative. It is said that it will be revised.
“While San Francisco is making progress on property crimes, the challenges we face related to fentanyl and organized retail theft require substantial changes to state law,” Breed said. “I fully support this measure and know it will bring meaningful change to cities across California.”
That support comes as Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters during his budget presentation in January that changes to Proposition 47 won't curb the state's wave of high-profile retail thefts. It was announced a few weeks after that.The Newsom administration proposed instead. six ways Lawmakers can expand criminal penalties for organized theft without taking the issue back to voters. Newsom agreed that tougher enforcement is needed and called for more arrests in these cases.
Newsom this week assigned 120 California Highway Patrol officers to fight crime in Oakland.
Prop. 47, a 2014 voter-approved ballot measure supported by Newsom, reclassifies some felony drug and theft crimes as misdemeanors and increases the amount that theft can be prosecuted as a felony from $400 to $950. I pulled it up. Newsom has often pointed out that some of the most conservative states in the country, including Texas, have high felony thresholds.
Breed's announcement comes as she is running for and facing re-election. low approval rating Additionally, real estate crime rates have been on the rise in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent years.
In 2022, San Francisco had the highest property theft rate of all California cities. According to the data According to researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California, an influential bipartisan group that studies crime trends and policy. There were also increases in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Mateo.
Mahan told the Times in a phone interview that he is not too aware of the governor's plan and is instead focused more on the outcome of this bipartisan effort.
“Without voters, Congress will be limited in what it can do,” Mahan said.
He warned that if Prop. 47 is not amended now, there could be support for repealing it completely in the future, but that would be “a mistake.” Mahan said she witnessed first-hand the snatch theft at a local grocery store.
“A sense of lack of responsibility is harmful to our society,” he says.
Greg Totten is the chief executive of the California District Attorney's Office. The campaign co-chair said that since 2015, Sacramento lawmakers have tried and failed to address the issue.
“We feel the responsible approach to this is to move forward with a ballot measure,” he told the Times.
Totten said the bill would make a third conviction for property theft a felony, expand the law to include a series of thefts of items totaling more than $950, and also make “accomplices” liable. said.
The proposed ballot measure has garnered 360,000 signatures, already more than half the signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.
In 2020, voters rejected Proposition 20. The proposal was a ballot measure that would repeal Prop. 47 by stiffening some criminal penalties.
