California Legalized Theft. Everyone’s Packages Were Stolen.
Porch piracy is what happens when stealing isn’t against the law.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
California legalized theft with Proposition 47. Since then pharmacies and small businesses have been forced to shut down by a wave of shoplifters with nothing to fear from the law.
But it’s not just stores that are reeling from the crime wave unleashed by criminal justice reform.
Proposition 47 was passed in 2014. LAPD crime data shows that package thefts shot up from 500 to 700 between 2014 to 2015. By 2016, they rose to 1,000, and 1,200 in 2017.
In Sawtelle, home to Little Tokyo and a historic Japanese neighborhood, package theft went from practically zero to a record high in only a few years after Democrats legalized stealing.
Legalizing theft didn’t just hit stores, but led to an epidemic of ‘porch piracy’.
In Los Angeles, brazen criminals took to driving behind delivery trucks and stealing the packages as soon as they were delivered. Others dressed up in Amazon uniforms.
But nowhere was the problem as bad as in the pro-crime metropolis of San Francisco.
Porch piracy has been growing across America alongside the Black Lives Matter riots and the election of Democrat mayors, council members, and prosecutors who support criminals.
In 2018, less than a third of people responding to a survey said that they had been ripped off, but by 2020, the number had shot up all the way to 43%. One survey estimated that porch pirates had been responsible for over $5 billion in thefts in cities across the country.
But San Francisco has topped the nation in package thefts for two years straight.
It’s no coincidence that California, which has led the way in legalizing crime, accounts for three of the top ten cities for porch pirates and that the state ranks third in the nation. But San Francisco has been unique in its tolerance for crime and contempt for crime victims.
Pharmacies have been shutting down across San Francisco due to the shoplifting epidemic, and as the nation’s Big Tech capital turned to online retail, the thieves turned to porch piracy. Big Tech companies have urged homeowners to adopt high tech solutions like doorbell cameras, but recording the thieves is next to useless when nothing happens to them.
One article chronicled a multi-year effort by a socialist union leader, a Google employee, and a lesbian BLM supporter to stop a heroin addict who was repeatedly caught stealing packages. The junkie blamed racism, and refused to show up in court. Police officers came, wrote her tickets, and she went right on stealing. Judges issued bench warrants, and then released her, telling her to report to drug rehab, and she went right back to stealing. While one of her victims was in court waiting for the case to be heard, the thief was stealing packages from his porch.
She was hit with a stay-away order, forced to wear an ankle monitor, and none of it helped.
When a trial finally happened, she was convicted and sent to a drug rehab program. She failed drug tests, refused to show up for hearings, went on stealing packages, and was sentenced to more drug rehab.
And that’s what happens when people spend a lot of time and effort to try and get justice.
San Francisco is both the epicenter of the tech industry and the pro-crime movement. Big Tech donors have fueled the rise of pro-crime prosecutors like George Gascon and Chesa Boudin, even as they have cashed in by selling doorbell cameras and package security systems. But surveillance technologies are useless when there’s no law enforcement to back them up.
A packaging supply company conducted a survey and found that the "four states with the lowest search rates of package theft (Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas came 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively) were all southern states.” The company concluded that “the south is safer from porch piracy than the north.” But California isn’t the north. The issue isn’t geography, it’s the law.
A bill to criminalize porch piracy was killed last year. It’s been reintroduced again this year.
"It doesn’t matter how many times somebody steals a package, it’s still only a misdemeanor. And in California right now, a misdemeanor is usually a citation. People aren’t showing up for their court dates or not paying the misdemeanors, and they just keep on stealing from people’s porches," Senator Brian Jones (R-Santee) noted.
Why shouldn’t porch pirates steal packages when all they come away with is a citation?
As long as the porch pirates steal less than $950 worth of packages, it’s classified as petty theft. The same decriminalization of theft that led to an epidemic of shoplifting, forcing stores and pharmacies to close, has also led to a boom in porch piracy. When brick-and-mortar stores close, that leaves people more dependent on online deliveries and vulnerable to porch pirates.
In an economy dominated by Big Tech, porch piracy, like everything else, has become a weapon in a rivalry between unfathomably huge companies. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his radical leftist wife, Patty Quillin, have been some of the biggest pro-crime donors.
The Netflix CEO was the sixth biggest donor for Proposition 47. The Big Tech boss vastly outspent pro-victim donors opposed to legalizing theft. While legalizing theft had little impact on Netflix, whose big product is an online subscription service, it’s hurting Amazon, one of its biggest video streaming competitors. Ordinary Californians are just Netflix’s collateral damage.
Homeowners are turning to locked delivery boxes and rigged packages. A cottage industry of companies provides doorstep security solutions and YouTube is full of guides to rigging up every type of package trap from glitter bombs to fouler concoctions to surprise porch pirates.
But no matter what homeowners do, the rates of porch piracy keep rising because glitter bombs will never be as effective a deterrent as a working criminal justice system.
Proposition 47 hasn’t just hurt stores. The thieves empowered by criminal justice reform have stolen birthday presents, prom dresses, and priceless heirlooms. They’ve destroyed special days and stolen moments that can never be replaced. And above all else they’ve robbed millions of ordinary people of their sense of security in their own homes.
California’s experiment in legalizing theft has been successful in stealing public safety.
Photo: CBS Sacramento
Ready for Soviet-style black markets?
A story is told (Who knows if it's true? It was long before the internet) about how residents of the former Soviet Union bought and sold vegetables. Comrades could buy them from government-run stores at state-mandated prices, but the produce there was scarce and unattractive. The other choice was the black market, which thrived as it always does under Marxist governments. Old Russian ladies kept gardens, a necessity in a land whose soil is not quite adequate to feed its population. They took their lovely produce to undisclosed locations everyone knew about, to sell at high prices. At the end of the day, they returned home with everything they didn't sell and ate it.
Markets are different under Marxism.
In modern-day California, run by Marxists, we find the city of San Francisco, run by Marxists, all of whom have chosen to hasten the Revolution rather than serve the public. Among the ways they do this is to allow theft. Granted, only theft of a certain dollar value is allowed (in contrast to the Eighth Commandment, which does not set a threshold), but the amount, about a thousand American dollars, is high enough that a thief could hardly exceed it unless he made off with a Harley or a diamond ring.
Perhaps you've seen the video of the bicycle-mounted thief ransacking a drugstore and carrying off his loot in a trash bag. He was not eligible for prosecution. Astonishing, is it not?
Perhaps you've also seen the video of the gang of thieves who smashed display cases at the prestigious Neiman Marcus and fled in a waiting Infiniti, each carrying a designer handbag? For all intents and purposes, they violated the law no more than you or I would have if we'd paid for those same bags with hundred-dollar bills.
The drugstore had security personnel, visible on camera. Neiman Marcus? Many, no doubt. They were as worthless an interpreter for the deaf at a Biden speech, because none of it made any sense in the first place. When theft is legal, retail commerce is impractical.
Here is what might easily happen: the stores in lawless, God-forsaken places run by Marxists, such as San Francisco, will close. Any small, family-owned ones still remaining will go first. No one can risk his future on the whims of socialists. Ask any tobacco-grower who fled 1960s Cuba. They will be followed by lower-margin corporate outlets: dollar stores, drugstores, and food stores. Even large supermarkets operate at less than 3% profit. That won't allow many $1,000 thefts. Finally, high-margin places like Neiman Marcus will shutter. Their profits are not unlimited, nor their patience infinite. The process is well underway. Security costs for retailers are unprecedented, yet theft is still at intolerable levels. What else could happen when it carries no penalty? The rule of law, for the store operator, at least, has ended, and barbarism is the inevitable result.
Should all those store closings occur, it will not deter Marxists in government — not in the slightest. For decades, "food deserts" have plagued Democrat-run cities that could not support honest enterprise. Total retail deserts? That's the next logical step. It's not a problem for the left. In fact, it's a blessing in disguise.
The first replacements for traditional retail as a source for food, medicine, and other necessities of life would be online retailers, already the largest in the world. Bezos and Co. are good socialists, despite their multi-billionaire status. Their unmatchable delivery network enables them to bring goods into the desert, like the camels of old. For a while, they would be the beneficiaries of legalized theft.
Thieves wouldn't be deterred for long, though. They have no intention of trading their labor for goods. They want the goods you have earned through your labor. If they can't steal them from stores, they will steal them from you: your doorstep; your mailbox; or, failing that, the delivery van bringing them to you. Stealing $1,000 from a UPS or Amazon truck won't be prosecuted, either. Perhaps you've already seen video of those trucks being picked clean en route. The drivers won't be permitted to defend themselves. Before long, there won't be any drivers, or trucks, in those cities.
Should even online retail become impossible, The Government, like that of the old USSR, will come to the aid of hapless residents with government-run stores, supported by rapidly dwindling tax revenue, at incredibly high cost. The merchandise there will be scarce and unattractive. Prices will be high.
There will be an alternative: the black market. The goods will be better quality. The prices will be even higher. The people who run it will not tolerate theft of $1,000 — or any amount. The black market knows how to deal with thieves.
It's all too familiar. As Soviet émigré friends once told us, "Train runs in only one direction."
Want to shop at either place? You don't? That's where your local Marxists are sending you. Make your choice about them before they choose for you.
Image via Public Domain Pictures.
A Tale Of Two People: Black Immigrants And Black Americans
Economist Walt Williams famously wrote, "The tensions are irrelevant to the effects." Does this describe the plight of black Americans?
Despite being the greatest experiment in the history of the world, the United States possesses plenty of stains on its coat of arms. Be it the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or “No Irish Need Apply” signs plastered across American cities, a diverse array of groups has fallen victim to prejudice and oppression. But no other ethnicity had it worse than black Americans, whether it was in the eras of slavery or Jim Crow. It has been a struggle for scores of generations of black U.S. citizens. Is this because America is a racist nation, or is it a result of both execrable and feel-good policy interventions that have eroded the living standards of so many black people of the last 50 years? Perhaps the answer is to study the prosperity of black immigrants.
Are Black Immigrants Thriving?
Suppose the assertions are correct and the United States is a systemically bigoted place. Should black immigrants be suffering the same fate as so many black citizens who might be fourth-generation Americans? And, if so, why are minorities migrating to the Land of the Free in immense numbers?
As of 2020, the median U.S. household income is $61,937. For white households, the median income is around $66,000, while black homes earn around $44,000. It is a massive gap between the two races. How about households comprising immigrants that come from predominantly black nations? Here is a look at their median incomes:
- Ghanaian Americans: $69,021
- Nigerian Americans: $68,658 (25% enjoy incomes north of $100,000)
- Trinidadian and Tobagonian Americans: $62,120
- Jamaican Americans: $62,044
- Haitian Americans: $57,451
Other studies also have compared immigrants and people with the same skillset who did not emigrate. Again, the results were astonishing: Relocating the average worker from his or her home country to the United States without any additional education or training immediately and significantly raises that person’s wages, whether that individual is from Ghana or Haiti.
Even on the education file, black immigrants take full advantage of America’s higher education system. A 2004 report highlighted that most of the black students attending Harvard University were not native-born Americans. In 2013, 25% of the 120 black students at the Harvard Business School were Nigerian. As The Economist noted in 2015: “Nigerians abroad are generally keen on education.”
Many measurements point to an inconvenient truth for the left: Black immigrants are ahead of American whites on a broad array of fronts, including economically and educationally. But if someone coming from West Africa or the West Indies can thrive under American institutions, why are American-born blacks falling through the cracks of these same pillars of U.S. society?
Legendary economist Thomas Sowell asked a critical question in his book, Wealth, Poverty and Politics, “If white racism is the cause of lower educational and economic outcomes for black Americans, why are black Nigerians exempt?” Could it be the inept century-old record of the government that has substantially hindered black Americans’ growth?
How Statists Devastated The Black Community
Slavery in America and throughout the globe already has been well-documented. It is an established fact that slavery is an abhorrent practice that has no place in a civilized society. It will forever be a scar on American history. But government policies of the last 100 years, from redlining to hourly compensation, have also inflicted pain and crippled multiple generations of black Americans. Measures with benevolent intentions manufactured a generational paralysis for a substantial portion of the native black population. Even when black families succeeded independently without a handout from bureaucrats and politicians, it was the state that put a stop to their flourishing lives, either directly or indirectly.
The history of minimum wage laws is not as gracious and munificent as progressives would pontificate. Labor wages – at home and abroad – possess sour histories.
For example, as the Cato Institute noted, “the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, requiring ‘prevailing’ wages on federally assisted construction projects, was supported by the idea that it would keep contractors from using ‘cheap colored labor’ to underbid contractors using white labor.” Sowell’s research with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution spotlighted that the province of British Columbia approved a minimum wage law in 1925 that would price Japanese immigrants out of jobs in the lucrative lumber history. During the era of apartheid, South Africa’s white labor unions pushed for a minimum wage law to be applied “to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale.” In 2010, South African workers complain about local labor laws that price them out of employment opportunities, according to The New York Times.
Fast forward to the present, and the wage floor is still disproportionately hurting black youth. By 1948, most places in the United States had a minimum wage law due to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Incidentally, this was the last time that the unemployment rate for black youth (16- and 17-year-old males) would be below 10%. From 1953 to 1970, the jobless figure for this demographic was never below 20%. From 1971 to 1994, black youth unemployment was above 30%. From then, it has been on an upward trajectory. Advocates of minimum wage laws might not consider this to be a component of systemic racism, but it is a policy that unintentionally impacts an inordinate amount of black people.
Economist Milton Friedman famously opined:
“The effects have been concentrated on the groups that the do-gooders would most like to help. The people who have been hurt most by the minimum wage laws are the blacks. I have often said that the most anti-black law on the books of this land is the minimum wage law.”
Over the years, the government has attempted to rectify its actions. Welfare, affirmative action, and, at the present moment, reparations are just some of the remedies that have turned out to be nostrums for native blacks. Once again, these efforts only further inflame their plight, whether welfare dependency through multiple generations or poor performances in the top universities.
The empirical data often point to a disastrous trend of academic miscarriages for minority students. Or, as Sowell calls it, “the human tragedy.” Instead of focusing on achievement, too many post-secondary institutions emphasize race. When black students who score high marks in mathematics in secondary school and are admitted to MIT or Stanford under the pretense of affirmative action, a substantial number were unable to graduate, despite the likelihood of graduating with honors at most other post-secondary facilities.
The unintended consequences of the panoply of progressive goodies have been on display for the last century.
The Failure Of The Welfare State
Welfare acolytes refuse to concede that their public benefits have unsuccessfully delivered social justice. Instead, the welfare state has served millions of Americans – and not only native blacks – with an abundance of cruelty. Malcolm X routinely stated that the white liberal, who had posed as an ally, failed the black community. But it is leftist orthodoxy that has failed native blacks and America as a whole.
Be it a booming Black Wall Street or a rising middle class in 1940s Harlem, when black Americans are left to themselves without the oppressive boot of the state or the Faustian bargain of the progressives, they do remarkably well. The same applies to every other group that had faced adversity throughout time, whether it was the Jews or Asian-Americans. The struggle of black Americans should be a cautionary tale for government, either as a friend or foe. When black immigrants come from broken and corrupt lands, they know well enough to refrain from trusting the authorities.
As former President Ronald Reagan quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
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