General
The California Shoplifting Law That Trump Says Is Too Lenient
Donald J. Trump has said that California allows thieves to steal goods in the state’s stores and falsely blamed Vice President Kamala Harris for it.
As Donald J. Trump tests lines of attack against Vice President Kamala Harris, he has claimed that shoplifters in California are allowed to steal up to $950 from stores with no consequence — and that Ms. Harris is to blame.
Mr. Trump, the Republican former president, has increasingly focused on policies in California, Ms. Harris’s home state, as a way to portray her as too liberal for the national electorate and try to blunt her efforts to appeal to moderate voters. Ms. Harris, a Democrat, served as the San Francisco district attorney and the attorney general of California before she became a senator in 2017.
“You’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in New Jersey this month. “Has everyone heard of that? You can rob a store, and you have these thieves going into stores with calculators calculating how much it is. Because if it’s less than $950 they can rob it and not get charged. That was her that did that.”
Mr. Trump, who repeated the claim at a rally in North Carolina, was referring to Proposition 47, a landmark criminal justice measure that California voters passed overwhelmingly in 2014 to reduce penalties for some theft and drug possession crimes. The changes came as crime rates were falling in California compared with those of previous decades and as the state was being ordered by federal courts to reduce its prison population.
The measure established that shoplifters who steal $950 or less in goods can only be charged with a misdemeanor. Previously, prosecutors had the discretion to charge suspects with either a misdemeanor or a felony.
Harris Was Not Responsible for the Law
Mr. Trump has tried to pin the change on Ms. Harris, who was California’s attorney general at the time it went into effect. But she never publicly took a position on the measure, saying that she wanted to remain neutral because she was responsible for crafting the language of the summary and title of the measure that would appear on the ballot.
