Bay Area DAs allied to combat organized retail theft

The district attorneys of seven Bay Area counties have each committed a prosecutor to their new alliance to combat the widespread surge in organized retail robberies. The joint effort will include cooperation with law enforcement and state agencies.

The intention of the collaboration among the San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Joaquin, Santa Clara and San Mateo county DAs’ offices is to share information, leading to better chances for arrests and accountability, according to identical statements issued by the prosecutors.

“Fencing and organized retail theft rings operate across jurisdictional boundaries,” said Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton. “As prosecutors, we must respond to the nature of these crimes and operate with our partners to more effectively meet this challenge. Those responsible for perpetuating these crimes are working together as a team, and to ensure accountability for their crimes, law enforcement needs to work together as a team too.”

San Joaquin County DA Tori Verber Salazar said in her statement, “Through a partnership with our neighboring counties, we will hold all parties accountable, including fencing rings and individuals who purchase stolen goods.”

“Retail theft crimes are affecting all counties in the Bay Area as well as across the nation. Collaboration and shared strategies with neighboring prosecutors and law enforcement partners are critical to both preventing and responding to organized retail theft,” San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin said in the announcement. “This alliance of prosecutors is committed to developing strategies to combat these organized crimes. Together, we are determined to stop those who participate in organized retail theft, including by dismantling the fencing networks that make this type of crime profitable.”

The announcements come in the wake of a recent rise in retail robberies that has rocked several regions. On Nov. 19, approximately 20 to 40 people robbed a Louis Vuitton outlet in San Francisco’s Union Square. The next day, some 90 people stormed a Nordstrom in suburban Walnut Creek, stealing approximately $200,000 worth of merchandise and assaulting employees with pepper spray, knives, guns and crowbars. Other mass robberies occurred in Hayward, Concord, Palo Alto, Oakland and San Jose.

“The recent premeditated retail theft mob action in multiple cities across Northern California is intolerable and will not be accepted by district attorneys, law enforcement officials and our community members,” said San Mateo County DA Steve Wagstaffe. “Anyone caught engaging in such criminal conduct should expect to find themselves facing prosecution, conviction and incarceration. There is no leniency for such behavior.”

Last Tuesday, Boudin filed felony charges against nine people who were arrested in connection with the Louis Vuitton robbery, and they appeared in court the following day. On that Wednesday, Becton also announced the arrests and felony charges against three suspects related to the Nordstrom mass looting. They were arraigned Monday.

“Those caught and arrested will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” she said.

Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said at a news conference on Nov. 22, “We do have intelligence that it’s a collective group of people, multiple groups coming together to commit these attempted burglaries.”

He also said this coordination is facilitated by social media, so law enforcement is taking steps to find the perpetrators by searching through social media and surveillance videos as well as trying to deter future incidents by increasing their presence at stores.

This recent rise in retail robbery has also rocked the regions of Southern California, Chicago, New York and Minnesota.

UC Berkeley School of Law professor Jonathan Simon said in an interview Friday he believes this trend arose from myriad factors, the biggest being the ongoing pandemic.

“This recent trend is a product of the fact that we’re still in the midst of a crisis,” he said. “Even though for many people some elements of normality have returned, for the people who are most potentially tempted by opportunistic crime events like this, the crisis deepened existing social deficits and their security and wellbeing to catastrophic levels.”

Simon also urged caution in how prosecutors and individuals respond to this phenomenon: “I think it’s important to emphasize and make clear it’s very predictable that these scary and sometimes deadly crimes will become the focus for public opinion and political responses. We’re so familiar with how to crack down on crime, but we have never succeeded in solving our problems with those solutions. I do think the DAs are in the best position, especially in the Bay Area where many of them have learned the lessons of over incarceration in the past, to be discerning. After all it was only a year ago when George Floyd was murdered by police officers sent there to deal with, essentially, a form of retail theft. So we don’t want to declare an overall war on retail theft.”