SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will spend $267 million to assist dozens of native legislation enforcement businesses enhance patrols, purchase surveillance gear and conduct different actions geared toward cracking down on smash-and-grab robberies taking place across the state.

Officials from the California Highway Patrol and San Francisco and Los Angeles legislation enforcement businesses made the announcement Friday. It follows a string of brazen luxurious retailer robberies in current months, the place dozens of people come right into a retailer and start stealing en masse.

Videos of the incidents have shortly unfold on-line and fueled critics who argue California takes too lax an strategy to crime.

“Enough with these brazen smash-and-grabs - we’re ensuring law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to take down these criminals,” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom stated in a press release concerning the grants.

The spending comes from a pot of cash Newsom first requested in late 2021, after he signed a legislation to reestablish a statewide taskforce to deal with investigating organized theft rings. The cash will probably be given by means of grants to 55 businesses, together with native police departments, sheriff’s and district lawyer’s workplaces.

The grants, to be distributed over the subsequent three years, will assist native legislation enforcement businesses create investigative models, enhance foot patrol, buy superior surveillance know-how and gear, in addition to crack down on automobile and catalytic converter theft - a problem that has turn out to be rampant within the Bay Area. The cash would additionally assist fund models in district lawyer’s workplaces devoted to prosecuting these crimes.

California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee referred to as the cash “a game changer.”

“This is a sizable investment that will be a force multiplier when it comes to combating organized retail crime in California,” he stated at a information convention Friday.

Retailers in California and in cities elsewhere across the U.S., together with Chicago and Minneapolis, have lately been focused by large-scale thefts when teams of individuals present up in teams for mass shoplifting occasions or to enter shops and smash and seize from show circumstances.

Several dozen folks participated in a brazen smash-and-grab flash mob at a Nordstrom retailer within the Westfield Topanga Shopping Center final month. Authorities stated they used bear spray on a safety guard, the Los Angeles Times reported, and the shop suffered losses between $60,000 and $100,000.

Video confirmed a chaotic scene, with masked thieves operating by means of the shop – one dragging a show rack behind them. They smashed glass circumstances and grabbed costly merchandise like luxurious purses and designer clothes as they fled.

Other high-end malls have been hit in related style in recent times. Lately, a Gucci retailer and a Yves Saint Laurent retailer have been main targets within the Los Angeles space, prompting authorities to announce a brand new process drive to research the crimes.

“No Angeleno should feel like it’s not safe to go shopping in Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass stated final month whereas asserting the brand new process drive. “No entrepreneur should feel like it’s not safe to open a business.”

Since 2019, legislation enforcement in California has arrested greater than 1,250 folks and recovered $30.7 million in stolen merchandise, the governor’s workplace stated.

The new funding is important to assist legislation enforcement reply to large-scale, organized crimes that might flip violent, stated Los Angeles Assistant Sheriff Holly Francisco.

“Recently, we’ve seen suspects use weapons consisting of firearms, pepper spray and bear spray to fend off employees or loss prevention officers and just cause chaos to the people shopping there,” she stated Friday. “Our goal is to reduce the number of retail thefts and actively investigate all the criminals involved.”

• Associated Press author Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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