No s***, Sherlock! - California edition

To nobody's surprise, another moonbat California initiative is bearing poisoned fruit.

A few years ago, California passed one in a series of bills aimed at emptying the jails and prisons. Proposition 47 carried the disingenuous name of "the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" and its stated purpose was to keep non-violent offenders out of jail. To achieve this goal, the state decriminalized a number of lesser offenses, including retail theft. The law raised the value of the amount of merchandise someone could steal while still only being charged with a misdemeanor to nearly one thousand dollars.

To the great surprise of the government, people noticed this change and began taking advantage of it. They have now recorded multiple years of steadily increasing, organized robbery. These plots are known as “mass grab and dash” thefts and they generally involve large numbers of young people all entering a store at the same time, grabbing armfuls of merchandise and dashing back out to their vehicles and hitting the highway. Not only are robberies on the rise, but arrests and prosecutions are down. Who could possibly have predicted this?

. . .

“It’s a boldness we’re seeing like never before and just a disregard for fellow human beings,” said Lieutenant Mark Donaldson, Vacaville PD.

He explained these crimes have evolved into more than just shoplifting. It’s organized retail theft and he says it’s happening across the state. Cities like Vacaville, with outlets and shopping centers located near major freeways, tend to be a target for these organized retail crime rings.

. . .

... when you make it easier and less risky to steal larger amounts of goods, people will steal more merchandise. Did it really take a rocket scientist to figure this out?

There's more at the link.

What can I say?  This is what happens when you let progressive far-left moonbats, with their heads in ideological clouds, make laws affecting the real world.  The consequences are always far less desirable than those they imagined - but they don't care about that.  Those of us who worry about such things are not "woke" or "enlightened" or "caring", like they are:  therefore, our thoughts, feelings and desires don't count.  We peons must just put up and shut up.  (Subtext:  "or else!")

Next stop:  Virginia Democrats' war on the Second Amendment.  What's the betting it'll have similar, unintended (and emphatically undesirable) consequences?  They won't believe that, of course.  They never do.  Their theories trump reality.  Just ask them.




Peter