California to make it illegal for stores to stop thieves

Businesses are different than homes. Someone has to believe they can make money operating a business on the owned or rented premises. Residences have a value as a place to live. They only lose any interest as even as place to rent when the location is no longer viable. A small rural community and a crime ridden inner city area.

As I told you, the city could force owners to rent to low quality businesses, but is that what the city wants for what was a high quality business area?

 

The Francisco Bay Area population has not declined.


https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/population

I was born in Inglewood, grew up in Palos Verdes, graduated from Long Beach State, eventually lived part of the year in Canada and part in Napa.

Me.

Yeah, sure--my ignorance based on living in the Bay Area, and growing up in LA. Maybe its my university training in economics, business, computers and history.

I made no claim California residents are moving to a particular state.

 

Many people have left that area. And those people have been replaced with other people, many of whom came from other foreign countries.

 

I left. There are problems that caused me to leave. But there are plenty of people happy to stay.

 

As a business, would you be allowed to lock your doors to egress?

 

The way the law will work will not make the legal status of situations like that the most clear.
The main part of the law simply requires employers to have established written policies on how to deal with situations that could lead to "violence", and to train their employees in that, and record any situations. Which may not sound so terrible on the surface, but it has to be understood that this is going to more directly open up the employer to lawsuits and legal liability, since any action on the part of the employees will be assumed to be directly due to specific instruction from the employer, and so it will be much easier to find the employer liable and responsible in a lawsuit or even criminal case against the employer. Part of this isn't just the wording of this one law, but the background cultural and legal context in which this law is going to end up functioning. This same exact law would end up having less of a legal effect if it were in a conservative area, where people are less automatically inclined to view the employer as responsible, and where they have less sympathy for criminals.

Locking doors to prevent a thief from leaving would be likely to lead to a violent situation, and so would presumably fall under the wording of this law. I'd think that would be less likely to make the employer liable than initiating a physical confrontation, but in a place like California it's not unlikely they might blame the employer for locking the thief in if that ends up resulting in a violent altercation (even if the criminal started it).
Many stores may be reluctant to want to try to lock a thief in because these criminals can get angry and start doing damage to the inside of the store or begin to attack employees.

To summarize, this is another example of a "tricky" law that will do something, is clearly designed to do something, even though the wording of the law does not exactly clearly explicitly say it will do that thing.

In addition to that, I think the new law will also burden businesses with more paperwork and requirements.

 

And then lethal force to stop the attack would be justified.

 

I don't think you understand progressives or California very well.
What goes and seems "common sense" in conservative states may get you years of prison in a progressive area.

Think about Ahmaud Arbery case, where the suspect attacked and began trying to pull the gun away from the man, who only very reluctantly shot after some moments of struggle when it became clear he would not be able to prevent the suspect from prying away the gun from his hands. To you and me that might seem like an obvious self-defense case. Or at least partial self-defense, circumstances that should greatly mitigate the shooting. But no, he was sentenced to life in prison. And nobody seems to care.

You can also read this story: Manhattan DA prosecuted store employee for defending self, stopping thief

 

Good point. They are essentially Great Britian at this point. I'll give up trying to understand them.

 

Unfortunately it is imperative that you understand the insanity. Because it's spreading and could eventually impact people like you. If it has not already, in more indirect ways.

All insanity has a rhyme and a reason. A whole segment of society does not embrace a form of mass insanity unless there is some reason.

You also need to understand so you can identify these cases and stories when you see them, and not just immediately brush them off. A lot of conservatives have a tendency to just brush off a story that doesn't seem to make sense to them, assuming there must be some other important part to the story they don't know about. So these things are happening and society is changing, and most conservatives have blinders on and are unable to see it. That of course just emboldens the crazies to keep pushing things even more. Eventually these things get cemented in society, and normal people like you never saw it coming.

 

No. And do you really want to lock a crazy and possibly violent person inside of your business?

That kind of thing does work, when the law enforcement response is quick and enforcement when cause is almost ensured.

When law enforcement response is non-existent as well as enforcement, then that is a recipe for disaster. Or more likely they will be given a pat on the head and told to run along as you were arrested.

 

Oh, it will. It mandates that any kind of interaction outside of routine business must be documented and sent to the state for review. That means the occasions where a customer threatens, harasses, or assault an employee for no reason will be among those. And yes, that is often a risk just working in an area with a high number of addicts and mentally unstable people.

We had one guy who was a regular at a store I managed. He was homeless and a meth addict, and most times he was perfectly fine. But sometimes he would get some bad meth and it would be immediately obvious. Walking the isles screaming and swearing, I would have to go and tell him to either use his "inside voice" and stop the profanity, or hew would have to leave. But the final time, he started to throw products from the shelves at me, other employees, and customers. I simply had two of the employees stand near him to have other customers keep their distance as I called the cops.

Nobody was hurt, and a couple of days later when he was released from detox he actually came in and apologized to me. Yes, he was mentally unstable when he was tripping, and on those occasions he acted like that he did feel bad. But I had already done a PC 602 on him, and told him he still could not return. He was simply becoming too violent to allow around our customers and employees. And in the year and a half I had managed that store I had seen him become more unstable, the shouting and swearing had gone from maybe once a month (at which time he would always apologize and leave), to at least once a week. And that time where he would not quiet down and started throwing things.

And if this law had been in place then, I probably would have had to spend a couple of hours filling out reports, as well as any other employees there at the time. Then have some board of people in Sacramento judge us for what happened and our response.

I actually had a fairly good relationship with most of the homeless in that community. I talked to a few of them right after I became a manager there, and told them my rules. Simply be reasonably clean (bathe in the previous week), not steal, not swear, and speak in normal tones. We were the local "Dollar Store" type of chain, and for many we were actually one of the last places they had not been banned from. But they learned fast that if I caught them stealing, screaming, or swearing I would not hesitate to use a PC 602 so they could be arrested simply for walking in the door if they would not stop.

And as I had already been living in that community for over 2 years, I knew the reputation of that store before they hired me. My wife would not go there because of the homeless, and they were always hanging out in the front, harassing customers for money going in or even doing it in the store. I put a stop to that right away, because it was not right for the other customers to have to put up with that. And thankfully, our police response there was pretty good because we were a rural area with a population of under 20k. But it was a never-ending battle with my store manager, who was upset I was "banning customers".

I never banned a "customer", I banned problem people. The ones that would come in and steal $10 worth of stuff then walk out the door spending nothing is not a customer. And the guy that swears and yells while buying $3 of candy and soda while driving out 4 other people is a negative customer, that cost us more from the loss of business than what he would spend. All the other homeless and addicts knew they were more than welcome, just to follow the expected rules of common decency and behavior. And I knew of people that would drive 20 miles to another store in our chain that did not have as bad of a homeless problem.

And for many, we actually were the last place they could go to other than liquor stores. We only had 4 other "food stores" in our community. A Wally World, an upscale grocery store, one of the large industrial types of "Maxx" stores, and a "Outlet Bargain" type of store. Then finally us. And as the thieves would get caught and banned from all the others, we were often the last place they could go. I even had some swear at me when I gave them their 602, but they only had themselves to blame at that point. And many of them at that point would move up to the bigger town 20 miles north, and simply repeat the cycle. Most of those we ended up with had often had to leave Sacramento for the same reason. Caught over and over again until they had no place left they could shop at so they moved.

And it is not even like they had to steal to eat. Many would have 3 or more EBT cards (one from each of the neighboring counties), but those were primarily used to get cash for their drugs. In California, paying a homeless person cash to use their EBT is amazingly common. Or seeing them pull one cared out after another when they are at the register, as they are trying to find one that still has money left on it to make their purchase.