A Silicon Valley crime charade comes with tragic consequences
Rafael Mangual at City Journal skewers the “nonviolent crime” fantasy by spotlighting a San Francisco shopping tragedy that cost a store clerk his life. It’s a problem gripping the nation, but California has been hard-hit after retail theft spiked in recent years, thanks to lax local leadership. Despite the terrible track record, change is still possible if CA continues to crack down on property crime.
{Editor's note: Despite remaining "well below historical levels," a retail theft uptick in recent years plagued CA, per the state's Legislative Analyst's Office, which spotlights how Proposition 36 and other fresh reforms could curb shoplifting.}
Two ubiquitous phrases in debates about policing and criminal-justice policy are “nonviolent crime” and “nonviolent offender.” Are these categorizations really useful? The best test of whether an offense or offender is truly nonviolent is to intervene and try to put a stop to a so-called low-level offense and see what reaction you get. It’s not hard to see how getting involved in many such scenarios could prove dangerous. Tragically, a recent case in San Francisco illustrates these dangers vividly.
Five days after sustaining serious injuries, a San Francisco store clerk named Yowhannes “John” Tewelde has died. He was beaten with a baseball bat by a man whom he tried to stop from stealing beer from his store. Tewelde’s death marks yet another homicide in the Bay Area, which, between San Francisco and Oakland, has seen an enormous amount of crime and mayhem in recent years.
The nature of Tewelde’s death illustrates an important reality that progressives working to ease up on supposedly nonviolent crimes don’t seem to appreciate: even “minor” offenses like retail theft, open-air drug use, and smoking on subway platforms are frequently backed by a threat of violence. Had Tewelde not intervened, allowing the thief to take what he wished, progressive prosecutors like former San Francisco district attorneys George Gascón and Chesa Boudin probably would have refused to prosecute him, citing the nonviolent nature of the offense. All we’d have is a lowly shop owner forced to shoulder the cost of a few cheap beers. No big deal, right?
Wrong. The decision to ignore the theft would allow an individual who was in truth both willing and able to kill over $10 to remain on the street. It would be only a matter of time before he did something terrible.
Tewelde’s death is one among many tragic instances in which attempts to stop thieves from running roughshod over their victims are met with deadly violence. Earlier this year, a loss-prevention worker at a California Home Depot was shot and killed after confronting a female suspected of shoplifting.
Editor’s note:
San Jose’s organized retail theft unit claimed 20% more cases in 2024’s first quarter than in all of 2023, pointing to police progress in protecting communities from violence-prone criminals.
Read the whole thing here.
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