By Vy Tran
SACRAMENTO, CA — Assembly Bill 1990 was first introduced to the California state legislature here at the beginning of 2024 by Assemblywoman Wendy Carillo. Now, as of July 2024, the bill “swept across the legislature” to be voted as amended, according to Digital Democracy.
If passed and signed, this law, according to Sacramento Bee Opinion Writer Robin Epley, would allow police to arrest shoplifters without a warrant, even if they did not witness a crime, and for courts to indict the accused with federal charges.
“Penalizing the petty crime of shoplifting in the same category as robbery or organized retail crime is a flimsy excuse to grow the police state,” Epley wrote. “And Sacramento’s police budget has already ballooned to over $225 million, a record high. I’m not saying shoplifting isn’t a crime, nor that it isn’t a problem. It’s simply not as bad as some people would like you to believe.”
Corporations like Target can report thirsty people stealing a single soda bottle or a pack of underwear as the same crime as a smash-and-grab robbery or organized retail crime, according to The Bee.
Epley writes “misleading rhetoric” and persistent lobbying from retailers and law enforcement have played a role in this escalation.
The point of concern for many unhoused activists is that “not all theft is created equal,” and people of color are the ones who suffer higher petty shoplifting charges and will be the future victims of AB 1900 if it manages to pass.
People of color, especially Black people, are arrested at a rate that is up to nine times higher than white people in some California counties, as reported by CBM Newswire from The Observer.
A 2017 analysis by a statistician at Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University estimated Black people were arrested and charged with organized retail theft more than twice as often as white shoplifters.
The Public Policy Institute of California reported the state saw a “28.7 percent jump in commercial shoplifting in 2022,” despite not accounting that shoplifting numbers actually “plummeted in 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID pandemic,” a time when it was known for people raiding stores.
Despite the increase in 2022, the shoplifting rate in California actually remains eight percent below the pre-pandemic level, PPIC reported.
“Petty shoplifting simply doesn’t happen as often as you think, nor is it as violent or disruptive as some people would like you to believe,” Epley argued. 
“Shoplifting has long been a rallying cry for both political parties… and this ire and focus on shoplifting may simply be a reactionary swing back to aggressive law enforcement after the city’s — and in fact, the nation’s — turn toward more progressive policing policies in recent years,” Epley added.
“While shoplifting is a misdemeanor with a punishment of up to six months in jail,” the PPIC reported, “district attorneys have the discretion to charge commercial burglary as either a misdemeanor or a felony; felony convictions can come with a sentence of up to three years.”
Even without the presence of AB 1900, the point made by this op-ed is that people of color already face the challenge of being more likely to face higher charges than their white shoplifter counterpart.
Instead of criticizing the few shoplifters, Epley turned their scrutiny toward Target, the retail corporation responsible for pushing AB 1900.
According to statistics provided by Senior Writer Sam McCann from Vera, retailers contribute $3.9 trillion to the nation’s annual gross domestic product and are the country’s largest private-sector industry.
With this data, Epley stated, “What they say has a lot of sway with politicians, whether or not it’s true. They throw around huge numbers about the rates of shoplifting, with questionable data to back it up.”
“Why are we even defending Target?” Epley turned the question back to the lobbying party. “This is the same business that has driven out mom-and-pop shops from our community without investing anything back into Sacramento… and cutting those now to replace checkout stands with robots.”
A 2019 study found more than 75,000 jobs had been lost to retail automation, forcing a majority of female workers out of jobs, reported The Guardian. Statistically, corporate wage theft is a far more rampant problem than shoplifting, and “Target is a serious offender,” claimed Epley.
Target has paid more than $187 million for its workplace crimes, nearly half of which was spent paying off consumer protection-related offenses alone, such as false advertising, fraudulent business practices, privacy violations and product liability—according to Violation Tracker.
In addition, Target currently faces a class action lawsuit in Minnesota for underpaying employees, and another filed in 2023 in Illinois for the same crime, according to Max Nesterak from Minnesota Reformer.
In 2020, the case concluded with Target agreeing to pay $5 million in cash and providing over $3 million in debt reduction to settle litigation alleging it “charged improper hidden fees for failed transactions in Walter v. Target.”
Target’s decisions on a local level with the Sacramento community also revealed a confusing methodology for motives of profit gain.
Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper criticized the Land Park Target location for preventing law enforcement from arresting the very shoplifters “they are so worried about.”
In a November 2023 post on X, Cooper wrote that Target contacted the county’s property crimes detectives and sergeant specifically to help the location with shoplifters and retail crime, but the project seemingly “didn’t go so well.”
“We coordinated with them and set up an operation,” Cooper wrote. “We were told by (Target’s) head of regional security that we could not contact suspects inside the store; we could not handcuff suspects in the store; and if we arrested someone, they wanted us to process (sic) them outside… behind the store… in the rain.”
He continued, “We were told they didn’t want to create a scene inside the store and have people film it and put it on social media. They didn’t want negative press.”
With these in mind, Epley slammed Target for being a “nuisance to the city.”
“If Target can’t handle the location or the business they chose to build and run at that location, then by all means, they should give it up,” Epley wrote. “Maybe Sacramento can turn the lot back into the popular baseball field it used to be (the minor league Sacramento Solons played on the site in the post WWII era). It would certainly be a better use for it.
“In the meantime, they need to stop calling the police if they don’t plan to utilize them, stop treating petty crimes as though they’re violent robberies, and stop persecuting and prosecuting poor and transient Sacramentans who are barely surviving, outside in a record heatwave.”
