Law Enforcement Surge In Oakland, California

[Alpha8472]

A brief law enforcement surge just ended in Oakland, California. The California Highway Patrol did a 4 day marathon police surge in Oakland arresting people, doing traffic stops, and patrolling the streets to stop retail crime.

The Oakland Police are under Federal oversight. They are under pressure to not do random stop and searches. They also cannot pursue thieves.

However, the California Highway Patrol can do random stops and they can do police chases.

They caught thieves off guard and arrested many people.

People are saying why did it only last 4 days. The CHP officers had to be moved from other areas of California. The amount of overtime was huge. There is a lack of staff and they can only work so many hours.

The state says they will do announced saturation patrols in the future.

This surge is being done to enforce current laws and tackle the retail theft rings.

Of all the things the state spends money on, why can't it spend more money on law enforcement?

Also there is a surge of state attorneys being sent to Alameda County where Oakland is located. These attorneys will prosecute crimes. The focus will be on violent crimes and retail theft ring crimes.

First there will be more arrests and then the added state attorneys will prosecute those criminals.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/chp-deploymen ... ts-in-week

[ClownLoach]

A brief law enforcement surge just ended in Oakland, California. The California Highway Patrol did a 4 day marathon police surge in Oakland arresting people, doing traffic stops, and patrolling the streets to stop retail crime.

The Oakland Police are under Federal oversight. They are under pressure to not do random stop and searches. They also cannot pursue thieves.

However, the California Highway Patrol can do random stops and they can do police chases.

They caught thieves off guard and arrested many people.

People are saying why did it only last 4 days. The CHP officers had to be moved from other areas of California. The amount of overtime was huge. There is a lack of staff and they can only work so many hours.

The state says they will do announced saturation patrols in the future.

This surge is being done to enforce current laws and tackle the retail theft rings.

Of all the things the state spends money on, why can't it spend more money on law enforcement?

Also there is a surge of state attorneys being sent to Alameda County where Oakland is located. These attorneys will prosecute crimes. The focus will be on violent crimes and retail theft ring crimes.

First there will be more arrests and then the added state attorneys will prosecute those criminals.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/chp-deploymen ... ts-in-week

Unfortunately, what it won't do is actually result in jail time.

The state has closed or reduced bed space at State Prisons, to the point that 100% of beds are being used for person-on-person crimes. They also have the law passed about ten years ago that they can hand down prisoners to county jails, and as a result their beds are filled also with person-on-person criminals.

I am in Riverside County which still arrests and prosecutes property criminals, but the DA and Sheriff acknowledge that they aren't going to serve any actual jail time for any property crime. No space. The truth is that the Prop 47 is not the cause, the lack of jail space is. Our county Sheriff and DA both discussed this on the radio last week and brought specific, detailed statistics and facts to support their claims that property criminals are not being jailed at all in California.

All of this is a big, expensive show at taxpayer expense that will not result in any meaningful change. Now they're proposed changes to Prop 47, but they will not be able to actually hold anyone on the new enhanced felony sentences because of no room. Their sentence will be issued then immediately stamped "time served" and "early release."

The entire system is broken and the retail crime surge is only a symptom. This attempts to treat the system, but it will not cure the disease.

[storewanderer]

There was room... 4-5 years ago... but in an effort to appear fiscally responsible CA closed prisons due to low occupancy...

I don't want to go too far off topic... I'll just stop.

Sounds like changes to Prop 47 are all optics. And it is an election year. If it wasn't, I doubt they'd even be talking about it. I hope it will help retailers somehow. If nothing else the issues surrounding this topic will stop other states from following CA's path on this topic.