In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer four years ago, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of American cities to demand change, including here in LA, a city with its own history of police brutality. Proposals to slash police funding, reduce prosecutions and create alternatives to incarceration were at the center of public discussion, led by people like local Black Lives Matter leader Melina Abdullah.
“What we are demanding, what Angelenos are demanding, is that we be courageous in this moment,” Abdullah told members of LA’s City Council in 2020. “This should be about what kind of world you want to make.”
Black Lives Matters protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the LAPD in 2020 – a time when proponents of criminal justice reform and cutting police funding had public opinion on their side. Photo: Saul Gonzalez
But leap forward to today, and we’re in a full backlash to many policing and criminal justice reforms – a backlash fueled, in part, by coverage of crime, especially incidents of retail theft, on local television news and social media.
We’ve all seen the viral security camera videos of “flash mobs” storming into stores in broad daylight and stealing whatever they can grab, from designer handbags and clothing to consumer electronics. That’s led to over 1,000 arrests statewide and the opening of hundreds of investigations by California’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force.
UCLA social welfare and anthropology professor Jorja Leap, who’s studied public attitudes about crime since the 1990s, says such unlawful acts have helped fuel an atmosphere of crime anxiety.
“We're looking at the landscape of panic, and I don't know any other way to put it,” says Leap.
She acknowledges that real crimes are happening that frighten people, but also believes some concerns are a knee-jerk reaction to high-profile media moments, like viral videos of store “smash and grab” robberies, rather than a reflection of local crime statistics.
But when you review the data about what’s happened with crime trends in LA in recent years, the picture is muddled, with numbers that support the claims of both criminal justice reformers and law-and-order hardliners.
Put simply, after a big spike during the pandemic, violent crime, including murders, rapes and aggravated assaults, is down. Homicides have dropped by 17% since 2022, according to the LAPD.
One person with firsthand knowledge of the retail crime surge is Los Angeles 7-Eleven franchise owner Jawad Ursani.
Ursani’s store on La Cienega has been ransacked twice by groups of young people, incidents that got a lot of media attention and hurt Ursani financially because he has to cover the losses personally.
“When someone steals merchandise from my store, it's like you're taking money out of my pocket,” says Ursani.
That’s why he’s joined other LA area 7-Eleven store owners in supporting Proposition 36 on the November ballot, which would roll back criminal justice reforms approved by Californians a decade ago. Those reforms included classifying many non-violent crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies.
Ursani says that change turbo-charged retail crime from levels he was used to dealing with.
“Theft is part of business, we get that,” says Ursani. “But when it exceeds the threshold, that’s where the problem is getting out of hand. Where you will see someone come in multiple times a day taking $20, $50, $100 worth of stuff and be back tomorrow taking again.”
Jawad Ursani, the owner of a 7-Eleven franchise in Los Angeles that's been robbed twice by groups of youths, speaks at a pro-Proposition 36 press conference in front of his store. Photo: Saul Gonzalez
Such frustrations about crime are also at the center of this year’s Los Angeles County district attorney’s race. Incumbent George Gascon was elected in 2020 promising historic changes to LA’s criminal justice system.
“One of the problems with public safety, the way it’s done in this community, is that you are incarcerating people over and over again and you are not dealing with the underlying problems,” Gascon said when first campaigning for the office.
Those underlying problems, says Gascon, include mental health issues and few alternatives to incarceration. The solutions Gascon has pursued include instructing prosecutors not to seek sentencing enhancements and taking the death penalty off the table.
More: LA DA George Gascón stands by his progressive prosecutor ideals
But as much of the public has soured on a message of reform, this election year, Gascon faces a serious challenge from former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman.
Hochman’s leading in the polls and emphasizes a tougher approach to prosecution that he frequently calls “the hard middle.”
“My vision for criminal justice is to balance fairness and safety. I reject decarceration policies that say, without considering the facts of the law, that there are certain crimes and certain criminals we're not going to prosecute," Hochman told KCRW at a campaign event in Studio City.
More: Nathan Hochman says his goal is deterring crime in the first place
But some people who’ve committed crimes and been caught up in the criminal justice system say current reforms, like reduced sentencing and offering alternatives to prison time, are working. They worry crime fears could threaten real and steady progress.
One person with such apprehensions is Robyn Willams, who four years ago was arrested for theft. Because of that offense and other criminal strikes in her background, Williams faced up to 25 years in prison. She was able to instead enroll in an intensive substance abuse program, which kept her from being incarcerated and allowed her to change.
Instead of going to prison after an arrest for theft, Robyn Williams of Los Angeles was given the option of enrolling in an intensive substance abuse treatment program. She credits it for changing her life and making her a productive citizen. Photo: Saul Gonzalez
“It changed my life and made me the woman that I am today,” says Williams, who has reestablished contact with her children, enrolled in school and found gainful employment since leaving treatment.
Williams says going to prison wouldn’t have helped her or the public.
“Here I would have been sitting in prison for 25 years, not giving back, but still taking from society,” says Williams.
That’s why she’s concerned about the current clamor to roll back criminal justice reforms and get tough on arrests and criminal sentencing.
“We start arresting people, eventually they are going to get out,” says Williams. “So what are we going to do when they come home? Putting them in jail is not going to prevent them from committing another crime. Giving them help to learn how to take care of themselves is what’s going to help them.”
During periods of crime anxiety, UCLA’s Jorja Leap says that often quieter criminal justice reform success stories, like that of Robyn Williams, get little to no attention.
“We are not interested in the good news” says Leap, “and we've all been raised up on ‘if it bleeds, it leads.’”
Leap says if we’re not careful, we might repeat the mistakes of the past, such as over-incarceration, which packed California’s prisons, and too much punishment and too little genuine rehabilitation, with no lasting increase in public safety.
“We are looking at the pendulum going the other way,” says Leap. “And I don't know if people realize the implications of what's going to happen.”
When it comes to public perceptions of crime and the public’s willingness to roll back reforms, Leap hopes we can keep the pendulum from swinging too wildly.