“A mob of over 100 looters purposefully crashed a Kia into a small bakery in Compton, Calif., before they flooded in and ransacked the store during a night of rampage on the streets earlier this week,” reports the New York Post.
This is just one example of organized retail theft, which Democratic legislators and “criminal justice reformers” falsely claim is largely mythical, even though there are many highly-publicized examples of it. (See this link for one example, and this link for another example).
The Post reports that
The thieves had gathered in the area for an illegal street takeover around 3 a.m. Tuesday before making the mile-long trek to Ruben’s Bakery & Mexican Food.
When they got to the locked store, a white Kia backed into the front doors, clearing an entryway for the crowd of pillagers to get to their loot….the mob filled their arms and pockets with as much as they could before the store was set to open in three hours.
A majority of the looters attempted to conceal their identities by either wearing masks or holding their hoods over their faces with their hands.
Meat scales, meat, groceries and lotto tickets were among the goods stolen in Tuesday morning’s brazen robbery…
One driver used a white Kia to smash in the store’s front doors to create an entrance for the looters…Police had received two calls about a car on fire and a street takeover outside the bakery just before the looting occurred.
Residents of the neighborhood say they don’t feel safe while the crime continues in the Southern LA city.
“When I walked in there and saw you had taken a car and pushed the door in, that was very disheartening for me,” one resident told NBC Los Angeles. “People are coming in and vandalizing, it’s just scary.”
The takeovers have been a problem across Los Angeles County for the past few years, with city and county officials trying different methods to thwart the gatherings.
Compton could reduce its crime rate by jailing more criminals, and giving them longer sentences. When El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell by more than 90%. Jailing more criminals saved thousands of lives in El Salvador.
Soft-on-crime policies have increased violent crime and theft in many big cities. Judges and progressive prosecutors refuse to jail many offenders because of the myth of “mass incarceration.” But as criminology professor Justin Nix notes, “Given its level of serious crime, America has ordinary levels of incarceration but extraordinary levels of under-policing.”
Longer incarceration for crimes would deter crimes such as theft. Crime in California fell significantly after California voters adopted Proposition 8, which mandated longer sentences for repeat offenders who kill, rape, and rob others. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found those longer sentences deterred many crimes from being committed. As it observed, three years after Proposition 8 was adopted, crimes punished with enhanced sentences had “fallen roughly 20-40 percent compared to” crimes not covered by enhanced sentences. Similarly, a 2008 Santa Clara University study found that longer sentences for three-time offenders led to “significantly faster rates of decline in robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft,” even after controlling for pre-existing crime trends and economic, demographic, and policy factors.
Studies of countries with short prison sentences have found that letting criminals out early increases the crime rate, making longer prison sentences a good investment.
