Neighbor claimed prop 47 is why stores lock up everything, I think it's more complicated

I overheard a guy at the coffee shop in Santa Monica blaming prop 47 for every locked shelf at CVS, but I feel like that ignores how online theft rings and corporate loss prevention policies have changed since 2020. He didn't mention the actual theft data from the California Board of State and Community Corrections that shows retail crime rates are mixed across counties, not a straight line up. Has anyone else looked into the actual numbers from the 2023 report and found something different?

3 comments

3 Comments

jake_torres6810d ago

Have you noticed that the same people blaming prop 47 are also the ones who think shoplifting just suddenly got bad in 2015? The actual police reports from different cities show a much messier picture. I see it at my local Target where they locked up the toothpaste but left the expensive hair dye out in the open. That's not about any law, that's just corporate bean counters deciding what's worth protecting. They figured out it's cheaper to secure a few high-theft items than to pay more security guards, and prop 47 is just a convenient excuse to blame.

grantp2810d ago

Hear me out on this one thing I noticed. At my grocery store in LA, they locked up the salsa verde but not the expensive steaks, and that tells you everything about how random their decisions are (like, seriously, who's stealing salsa?). It's all about whatever loss prevention software flagged that month, mixed with whatever insurance adjuster has a grudge against burrito ingredients, not some grand prop 47 plan. The whole locked shelf thing feels like a game of corporate whack-a-mole where nobody's actually looking at the real crime stats.

laura_allen10d ago

Jumping in because @jake_torres68 hit it exactly right. I saw the same thing at my local Rite Aid in Fresno last week - they had the $3.99 deodorant locked up tight but a rack of $40 perfume bottles just sitting out in the aisle. It's totally about what the insurance companies and regional managers decided to target, not some blanket crime wave. The data from the 2023 BSCC report shows property crime actually went down in like 12 of 22 counties, but nobody talks about those numbers because it doesn't fit the "everything is broken" narrative prop 47 gets blamed for.