Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a proposal Friday to allocate upwards of $300 million over the next three years to curtail organized retail theft and violent crime across the state.
Speaking at the California Highway Patrol’s Dublin office, Newsom pledged to infuse local law enforcement agencies and district attorney’s offices with funding to crack down on retail, gun and drug crime.
The plan would make $255 million in grants available to law enforcement agencies over three years, enabling them to expand the number of officers they station at retail locations and hone in on organized retail theft.
“We recognize this moment requires us to do more and to broaden and deepen our efforts throughout the state of California,” Newsom said, referencing the retail theft operations in recent months in the Bay Area.
Newsom’s proposal would make permanent what is currently known as the Organized Retail Crime Task Force within the CHP. Since its inception in 2019, the task force has recovered nearly $20 million in stolen goods.
The renamed Smash and Grab Enforcement Unit already operates in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, and would expand to include Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley under Newsom’s proposal.
It would also provide $20 million in grants to small businesses that have been affected by smash-and-grab operations and organized theft.
State and local prosecutors and investigators would have access to nearly $50 million in combined grants over three years to combat retail crime, with $30 million allocated for district attorneys and $18 million to support the creation of a dedicated investigative team within the state attorney general’s office focusing on retail theft.
“The resources and funding announced today, they’re a game changer,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
The proposal “provides the (Department of Justice) with additional funding to bolster our existing efforts, taking down the perpetrators at the top of these crime rings and shutting down the pipeline of stolen merchandise, freezing out the illicit market and ensuring serious criminals face serious consequences.”
As part of the funding proposal, Newsom also included plans to create a statewide gun buyback program, fund gun violence research at the University of California at Davis and allocate $20 million to the National Guard to target drug smuggling, particularly internationally via the state’s southern border.
“I’ve traveled across the state as attorney general … to rural, to urban, coastal and inland communities,” Bonta said. “I have yet to meet a single Californian who does not want to be protected from crime.”
Newsom is expected to include the crime prevention funding in his 2022-2023 budget proposal to the state legislature, which he is set to fully unveil next month.
“I hope people will feel more confidence that the state is doing its part to help support local government and local agencies address this very, very serious issue of crime and retail theft here in the state of California,” he said.
Big deal.
Nothing will happen until it’s all approved by Legislature.
The Legislature can make any changes it wants before sending it to the Gov for his slime print.
This is nothing more than posturing for the 2024 run for Prez.
Little too late buddy, your state has gone down the toilet and there ain’t no way you are going to plunger it back out..
So he’s obviously gonna grab funds from something else to pay for this..
Newscum is a tool..
Throw the freaking book at them all! We need to go back to when people knew not to do bad things because of the consequences. Right is right! Wrong is Wrong! Work for it.
The problem with throwing the book today is that it’s usually a comic book, or a virtual book. I suggest Webster’s 2nd dictionary. I own two copies. Now that’s a book!
Hip Waders
First they create the problem. Then they want to piss away more of our tax money on trying to fix the mess they created. Get rid of all these democrats, they have destroyed this state
Agree 100%!
The Commie-Dem Way: Make those who work for a living pay for a snatch&run living for those who don’t… and refuse to admit it is all due to his poor management. Kill San Francisco…then the whole state! Is America his Next Target?👿
Gonna take more than that Newson. Here’s Walnut Creek near the recently looted Nordstroms last night:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CXnnTL_Pz0X/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Still lawless!
The unlimited bread at Cheesecake Factory will make you do things like that 😋 😅
I see all that additional security is paying rich dividends.
Geez! Be quiet or you’ll wake up the police!
This must be that increased presence and enforcement the police were telling us about…. not very impressive.
Many thoughts while watching that, First, I used to do that as a teen with my old 1970s street boat chevy back in my home town, but in the driver’s ed course range at the high school, with just me and friends, only 1 or 2x around (cutting cookies is what we called it), stopped at 18. Stupid then as now, just with less expensive car (my car i did that in cost me $100). Then, I saw Century Theatres, and TBH, did not know there were theatres in WC (nor a Cheesecake Factory, talk about a shut in). But most striking to me, the police arrived, the crowd created a barrier, and various cretins continued. Complete apathy, in fact disregard, to any kind of law enforcement, And this is just for something as innocuous (compared to all the other detritus going on in this state/country) as that shown in the linked ‘gram. Also, nice Gavin is so free with the money…we all know the money will go somewhere, just not to law enforcement.
Wow, that’s right by the movie Theater and Cheesecake Factory. That’s so dangerous, a lot of pedestrians hang out in that area. Walnut Creek has turned into a Hell Hole.
It’s interesting how little press this has received. One of the few articles claimed the police were “monitoring” the sideshow. So it seems this sort of activity is the new normal, and will likely escalate until something really awful happens.
Until then, welcome to “Ghetto Creek”.
Wow, look at all of the removed and blacked out license plates……the First signs of someone up to No good.
And then the Pathetic response from the police, should have pulled right into the intersection instead they kept their sideshow going.
Maybe ramming the perps vehicles would help.
Went to work this morning and decided to go one block over from my usual route, down Locust Street, to see the tyre-tracks.
Yes, they were there – I wonder if they’ll get cleaned up.
It must be soul crushing for one human to have so many different faces.
More money laundering
LMAO you jerk when you catch them you let them go.The answer is when you catch them use a 9mm.After awhile they will get the message.
Just blatant ramshacking of malls, stores and any where the bill is. Newsom probably told his family, I got this, while they walk through their vineyards and dine at the unmandated restaurants. lol
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Idiocy.
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Attempting to “solve” a problem of your and your party’s creation.
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The Democratic Party has destroyed California.
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$300 million taxpayer dollars to fight smash & grab crime?
It’s like we’re being pre-looted.
Do we need special allocations for each kind of crime?
It just sounds like another new racket to me…. throw money at it & raise taxes.
Did the police ever show up? If they didn’t that is worse than what the idiot driver was doing.
Well………… eventually the police showed up and just popped some tear gas into the crowd. It didn’t look like they tied to arrest anyone tho. Just watch the whole video.
Pandering, at its finest by Gavin. The guy will say and do anything in an effort to make himself look good and to feather his nest.
Somebody’s running for re-election soon!!! Put this moron on the streets…
Let me help save tax payers 300 million. We have a law on the books for organized crime it is called the RICO Act. Use what we have today and stop releasing these criminals.
Newsum is a disgrace. He did not mention the one thing that will solve the rising crime and that is JAIL. Nothing is going to change until you take criminals out of society. We need to build more prisons and fill them up. We need to stop looking at the criminal’s color of their skin and stop making excuses for their behavior. You comit a crime, you will be punished. It doesn’t matter where you came from or what you look like. The punishment is the same for everyone. No more no less. Crime has to get a lot worse before the California voters wake up so everyone do what you can to protect your family. There is no help for us.
What a moron
Recall Prop 47 and let the police do their jobs.
Problem solved.
Doing my hometown legacy proud! It’s encouraging to see a new generation of youthful miscreants taking the dub-see back from the square-crows.
Seriously folks, these idiot kids spun some doughnuts along the main drag on a Saturday night. (Ever seen American Graffiti?) A couple got arrested; several cars got impounded. That’s the legal remedy, and sanctions for reckless driving have actually become more — not less — severe over the last few decades.
WTH does the governor’s office or any particular political party have to do with these knuckleheads’ shenanigans? Walnut Creek has a rich history of automotive delinquency. Do you really think your own kids are (or were) above this? You’re wrong! We were just smart enough not to record ourselves!
When this idiot runs for President will people remember why California is the laughing stock of the country?
Not the Democrats. They’ll vote for his hair.
There was a time where you couldn’t put one foot out of line in Walnut Creek for fear of the Police. WTH happened?
When the city of WC caved in to the Miles Hall crowd, all was lost.
108RS
What happened? Democrat run California is now a state where criminals have more rights than honest law abiding citizens.
@DD – There was also a time when kids in WC weren’t so soft. We used to handle our business. We kept the WCPD in check, but we knew the limit between mischief / mutual combat and predation: We mostly civilians out of our funk.
Now the square crows in Walnut Creek just snitch and expect the cops to run to their rescue when trouble comes knocking.
Probably going to promise the thieves money NOT steal, like a monthly stipend. I’ll need $10K a month to quell my desire to loot stores.
addressing this issue will put a disproportionate number of brown and black men in prison, it is therefore a disgusting racist ideal to punish organized retail crime.
It is defacto racist because more black and brown men commit the crime, as you can see in the videos.
We can never accept any form of racism.
Let them walk free.
Newsom has come up with supposedly another brilliant way to discourage the type of behavior which resembles a mad max movie (only for real) in the heart of downtown Walnut Creek. Like others have said, he will spend another 300 million dollars of the remaining working taxpayer dollars to supposedly fix the problems from which the non taxpayers and his policies have created. It still baffles me and I’m sure others too, how people could vote for a person that is destroying our once great state so rapidly?
Newsom plans to really come down on the rubber companies that manufacture the tires used by these nice young lads. It’s not their fault the tires are available for screeching. The rubber companies are the real culprits, and they are tied to petroleum, and systemic racist climate change. Having an ID to vote is racist, and so are license plates. Ohhhh the humanity……Vote Newsom in 2024, he plans to bring the petroleum companies (and select others) to their knees…….
Does Walnut Creek have a Police organization that protects the public?
ZERO Leadership…
RECALL ALL THE CITY OFFICIALS !
Maybe time for a no confidence vote….
Stop waiting for a tragic death before you act!
Newsom should be made to pay for this out of his own personal funds since it was his own personal stupidity that unleashed this wave of mayhem on the people of California.
Thank you Governor!
Never should have released all those criminals. Could be using $300MM for something else. Bring back the three-strikes law if you want me to think CA is doing its part to fight crime.
A few years back we all voted to raise the fines on car owners, who modified their cars to their loudest capacity. The car clubs had a meeting with Gavin, and Gavin over turned the new fines. The California peoples vote was erased. So I doubt that money will go to anyone. Gavin is for the car clubs. I wonder what the car clubs offered Gavin? We all know it’s true, listen to all the cars on the road who have modified their exhaust. It gets louder everyday.
Newsom is for any act of Hooverism that benefits him financially or otherwise. See also Lindsey Cobia.
As far as the smash-n-grabs go, I can not figure out why the A.G. does not use the RICO act. As far as the sideshows go, this isn’t just W.C. Many cities throughout California are just observing for fear of racial profiling or causing a riot with the thugs. This will be the new normal when dinning out with your family. If you haven figured it out, the drivers and spectators are giving a middle finger to law-enforcement. As I said before, things will not change until a high-ranking politician becomes a victim to one of these episodes.