We all hate retail theft, right? We’re all pissed that security guards aren’t allowed to stop shoplifters. We’re all appalled at the brazenness of thieves who walk into Whole Foods or CVS, load up on whatever they want, and walk out knowing they’ll get away with it. Right?
Well, apparently not all of us are pissed and appalled. Over in Sacramento, where Democrats control both houses of the Legislature, half of the Dems in the Assembly didn’t even bother to vote on a bill that would have made it easier to arrest shoplifters.
Assembly Bill 1990, authored by L.A. Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles) was a bipartisan effort that would have allowed police officers to arrest shoplifters “provided there is probable cause the individual has engaged in shoplifting.”
This is so logical, so common sense, you’d think it would have passed unanimously. But no: 32 of the Assembly’s 62 Democrats (as well as the Democratic Speaker, Robert Rivas) refused to cast a vote. What was their motive? “Progressive Democrats, leery of increasing incarceration rates for minor offenses, were uncomfortable with the bill,” explains Cal Matters. Their discomfort stems from their uneasy and unhealthy dependence on woke voters, especially people of color, who view any attempt to crack down on crime, including shoplifting, as a racist assault on “the community.” A woke politician such as Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), whom I wrote about the other day as sponsoring the catastrophic California Racial Justice Act (CRJA), was the only Democrat in the Assembly to actually vote “no” on AB1990 (for which I suppose we have to give him credit). Kalra, who is a former Chair of the Legislature’s Progressive Caucus, has long pandered to Black activists (he himself is Indian-American) by finding “racial discrimination” virtually everywhere in California, and then crafting legislation to combat it. Even after the Governor signed his CRJA bill into law, Kalra declared, “While passing last year’s bill was a major step towards addressing institutionalized and implicit racial bias in our courts, the work is not done.” That work includes defunding the police. Kalra went to a George Floyd protest rally in 2020 at which “defund the police” was a major theme and declared,“It’s important that the energy on the street be channeled into lobbying and political change.”
It’s safe to state that we know where Kalra is coming from because we’ve seen his type in Oakland. As I said, at least he had the honesty to vote “No” on AB1990. As for those other 32 Democrats who refused to cast a vote, those crime enablers are in thrall to the racist power blocs that control the California Democratic Party, including the unions, and are terrified of upsetting wokes. Ask yourself, If you were in the State Assembly and were asked to vote for a law to make it easier to arrest shoplifters, would you vote Yes? Or would you think, “Sheesh, I don’t want to piss off the California Legislative Black Caucus and have them call me a racist”? If you had any backbone, any decency, any respect for your constituents, you would choose the former. Sadly, too many Democrats have abandoned their duty in favor of the politics of re-election and pandering to Black extremists who support criminality over law enforcement.
Steve Heimoff