The California sheriff who ripped Goal for stopping shoplifters from being handcuffed in the shop blamed “out-of-touch” big-box executives for not pushing to alter the state law in an effort to curtail rampant retail theft.
Jim Cooper, the longtime sheriff of Sacramento County, said the deep-pocketed execs “don’t have the heart” to try and reform Prop 47, the ballot measure passed by California voters in 2014 that reduced theft of things valued under $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor.
“They don’t want anybody going to jail or to prison,” Cooper said in an exclusive interview with The Post on Thursday. “That’s only a belief they’ve.”
Retailers including Goal, Walgreens, CVS and Home Depot have blamed organized retail theft for successful to their bottom lines this 12 months.
Yet the retailers refuse to fund a campaign to get a measure in front of voters within the November 2024 general election that might tackle Prop 47, Cooper insisted.
“They’ve a track record of not engaging,” he said.
Sheriff Jim Cooper of California’s Sacramento Country blamed “out-of-touch” executives at big box retailers for not using their funds to campaign for change.Sheriff Jim Cooper / Facebook
“Shoplifting is rampant,” Cooper lamented.
It’s prompted a “cultural shift where the brand new normal is I’m going in, the whole lot’s behind glass and I push the button and wait for somebody to return over,” he said.
Cooper laid into Goal earlier this week in a lengthy X post that read: “We couldn’t handcuff suspects in the shop; and if we arrested someone, they wanted us to process them outside… behind the shop… within the rain.”
“We were told they didn’t need to create a scene contained in the store and have people film it and put it on social media,” Cooper added. “They didn’t want negative press. Unbelievable.”
“We don’t tell big retail the right way to do their jobs, they shouldn’t tell us the right way to do ours,” he concluded.
Democratic lawmakers have stood firmly of their belief that Prop 47 must remain as-is. In September, California Senate Democrats rejected a vital measure that proposed to reform Prop 47 that might have punished repeat offenders.
The suggested change would’ve made the fourth theft-related conviction a felony offense.
“The brand new normal is I’m going in, the whole lot’s behind glass and I push the button and wait for somebody to return over,” Cooper said of shopping at big box retailers like Goal, Walgreens, CVS and Home Depot.Inside Edition
If the amendments were passed, the change would’ve appeared on the November 2024 ballot for voters’ approval, which Cooper said he was confident would pass.
“Legislature has also proven that they’ll not pass any latest bills or will hold anyone accountable,” he told The Post.
Cooper’s ideal situation can be to reform Prop 47, a ballot measure passed by California voters in 2014 that reduced theft of things valued under $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor.Sheriff Jim Cooper / Facebook
Cooper tweeted out against Goal earlier this week, where he shared an “unbelievable” situation by which Goal seemed more afraid of bad press than rampant theft.@SheriffJCooper / X
Crime-battered Goal said earlier this 12 months that it expected to suffer as much as a $1.3 billion hit to its bottom line due to “theft and arranged crime.”
The “cheap-chic” discount chain said its profit might be squeezed by “$500 million greater than what we saw last 12 months” – when the corporate lost as much as $800 million from “inventory shrink.”
“While there are lots of potential sources of inventory shrink, theft and arranged retail crime are increasingly essential drivers of the problem,” the corporate said. “We’re making significant investments in strategies to forestall this from happening in our stores.”
“That’s not the reply,” Cooper said of anti-theft cases, which lock up the whole lot from underwear to hygiene products nowadays.Getty Images
Inventory shrink is an industry term that refers to fewer products being on its shelves than what’s reported in its inventory catalog.
There’s no nationwide policy on the right way to take care of shoplifting, though many employers have encouraged staffers to do nothing in any respect in an effort to maintain them out of harm’s way.
