>Shoplifting is now legal

Wut?

They've taken stories about a very small number of cities, albeit large metro areas such as San Francisco, reapproaching how they prosecute shoplifters or how police prioritize responding to shoplifters. Not only is shoplifting not legal on a broad scale, but it's a very disingenuous interpretation.

Wasn’t there some city that said they wouldn’t pursue anything under $1,000? I swear I remember hearing that in the last couple of years.

EDIT: Found several stories about it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...

>said they wouldn’t pursue anything under $1,000?

When your iPhone gets stolen and the police does nothing does that mean stealing iPhones is legal?

Effectively, yes. Going ten over the limit here isn't "legal", per se, but it's not something you'll be pulled over for, so everyone does it. It's "legal".

Still illegal, but police don’t prioritise enforcement. This can be written precisely.

Eh, de facto legalised. When states legalise marijuana and the Fed’s don’t enforce, we freely call it legalised, even if that isn’t technically correct, because it practically is. Shoplifting is de facto legalised in San Francisco.

Plenty of people get pulled over for going ten over, some states are known for pulling over for anything over the limit. Hell, lots of people get profiled and pulled over for nothing at all. It’s so interesting to see this kind of privilege on display, thinking that pushing the legal boundaries is now technically “legal”.

You’re correct but you’re also missing the point. If law enforcement outright says that they won’t show up to enforce a law, there isn’t a difference between following that law and breaking it. You face the same consequences.

> Not only is shoplifting not legal on a broad scale, but it's a very disingenuous interpretation.

Disingenuous? You mean intentionally deceptive?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...

The subtitle says "Walgreens has closed 22 stores in the city, where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized." Refusal to arrest or prosecute, which is the reality on the ground, is de facto legalization. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not very helpful to say "no, that's disingenuous, you and I both know it's a harlequin mallard."

I mean, while we're talking "intentionally deceptive"...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...

... completely ignoring the part where I highlighted that GP said "shoplifting is now legal" in a broad sense, and I then specified that that is, in reality, limited to a handful of cities. It would be obvious that San Francisco is one of them, and that I never argued that it wasn't de facto legal there.

Hence the phrase, in the part you quoted, "on a broad scale". Bailing from one city is not a broad scale - I'm sitting in the parking lot of a busy Walgreens in a different state waiting on food truck tacos as I edit this.

It's ok, they're just repeating what the TV man told them.

Ignorance and sarcasm are an ugly combination. Try to be more informed and less snide in the future.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...

"San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise: Walgreens has closed 22 stores in the city, where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized."

Why are we still citing a WSJ oped trying to amplify a company's press releases that even they now admit were a made up narrative?

Can you please stop evading and engage in good faith?

San Francisco decriminalized thefts under a dollar value of $950. This is direct, object-level proof of the original point in question. It is an established fact independent of your opinion on the Wall Street Journal.

> San Francisco decriminalized thefts under a dollar value of $950. This is direct, object-level proof of the original point in question.

Even a cursory search will inform you this is false, so let's not swing around accusations of acting in bad faith. Shoplifting under $950 is a misdemeanor and still punishable by jail time.

The argument that the only way to stop shoplifting is to have tougher sentences is the kind of galaxy brain take that gave us five decades and counting of the War on Drugs.

And as I noted in another comment, there was no evidence of this rash of shoplifting these stories so breathlessly repeated, and Walgreens themselves now admit it

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...

>Even a cursory search will inform you this is false

I did a cursory search and instantly substantiated the WSJ's claim:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-san-francisco-sho...

>In an interview with NBC News last week, Scott suggested that California's Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014 and lowered criminal sentences for certain nonviolent crimes like shoplifting and check forgery, is being exploited by those who want to commit theft. The initiative set a threshold of $950 for shoplifting to be considered a misdemeanor, which doesn't prompt law enforcement to make an arrest, rather than a felony, which could incur harsh penalties like jail time.

Just give up the semantic games already. Walgreens is closing many of their stores in SF due to crime. Your last link pulls the trick of acknowledging objective reality in the first paragraph, then inventing fanfiction to handwave it away for the rest of the article:

>One of the stores set to close, on Ocean Avenue, had only seven reported shoplifting incidents this year and a total of 23 since 2018, the data showed. While not all shoplifting incidents are reported to police, the five stores slated to close had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.

Store owners aren't reporting thefts of under $950 to the police because the DA and police told them they won't do anything about it, which is the point I have proven that you keep trying to dodge.

And you're just repeating what DailyKos or OccupyDemocrats told you!

Welcome to San Francisco, where police would not be bothered by cases of theft that are too petty for them, which is below $950.

https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...