Fifteen people accused of shoplifting retail merchandise worth tens of thousands of dollars were have been charged with various theft-related offenses by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
The charges came Monday after two separate operations by the San Francisco Police Department in early August that involved coordination with large retailers and local businesses to catch shoplifters, the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, which is representing several of the defendants, criticized the District Attorney’s Office’s increased focus on retail theft, saying in a statement that resources are better used elsewhere to address what a spokesperson called “property crimes.”
Prosecutions of misdemeanor petty theft increased drastically in 2024 from the year before, rising from 299 cases to 757, an increase of about 250%, according to data from the DA’s Office.
The number dropped to 641 in 2025 and is on pace to be roughly 550 in 2026, if averages through August hold.
The SFPD law enforcement operations and the DA’s prosecutions come amid an effort to codify a loosely defined concept lawmakers refer to as “organized retail theft” at the federal level.
Congress has also floated the idea of giving the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement more authority to police retail theft, while also arming the federal agents with gloves that use an electric shock to subdue people.
Legislature takes tougher stance
California lawmakers passed their own legislation targeting retail theft with a suite of laws in 2024 that went into effect in 2025.
Some changes included allowing prosecutors to use an aggregate amount from different victims to reach the $950 threshold to charge a felony, extending probation in petty theft cases for up to two years, and allowing police officers to make arrests based on reasonable suspicion, even if they did not witness the alleged crime.
Other changes sought to target the theft of goods that were intended for resale and amend certain auto theft-related crimes, as well as target large-scale thefts involving multiple suspects.
State voters also modified a law that same year that allowed petty theft to be charged as a felony if a defendant had multiple prior convictions, even if the value was under $950. The changes enacted by that law, Proposition 36, also made such offenses punishable by up to three years in prison.
The first SFPD operation resulted in the arrests of five people accused of stealing goods worth nearly $33,000. That operation was conducted at REI, Safeway, and another local business, the DA’s Office said.
“Pouring public resources into retail-theft crackdowns may protect multibillion-dollar corporations, but it does nothing to address the economic desperation that drives property crime. …”
San Francisco Public Defender’s Office
The second operation resulted in the arrests of seven others at different Whole Foods stores. Two people were arrested at different Walgreens, while another was accused of stealing merchandise from the Target at the Stonestown Galleria shopping mall.
The 15 defendants’ ages ranged in age from 26 to 57. All were charged with some sort of theft related offense. Many charges are known as “wobblers” that could be pursued as misdemeanors or felonies. One man was also accused of possession of drug paraphernalia.
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office said in a statement that it was representing several of the defendants and criticized the recent push to target theft for criminal prosecutions.
“We are living in a time of extreme income inequality, and studies show that property crimes are fueled by desperation and poverty,” a spokesperson for the Public Defender’s Office said. “Pouring public resources into retail-theft crackdowns may protect multibillion-dollar corporations, but it does nothing to address the economic desperation that drives property crime. Investments in community health and job opportunities address poverty and deter these offenses, not incarceration.”
Empowering federal authorities
At the federal level, Congress is considering giving the Department of Homeland Security more authority to use its agents to make arrests of people suspected of retail theft by creating a new division within the department.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill, H.R. 2853, the Combating Organized Retail Crime (CORCA) Act, in May. The U.S. Senate is considering incorporating it into the federal defense spending bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act.
Vera Action, a nonprofit legal aid organization that advocates against mass incarceration, urged lawmakers to reject the bill.
The organization’s president, Insha Rahman, and the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center’s president Kica Matos wrote in a statement on the organization’s website that the legislation would needlessly empower the federal agency to violate civil liberties, while doing little to combat retail theft.
“CORCA purports to address a legitimate concern — organized retail theft — but does nothing to actually prevent or reduce shoplifting or cargo theft,” Rahman and Matos wrote.
“Instead, tucked into the bill is a dangerous provision that would dramatically expand DHS’s role in domestic law enforcement, allowing the agency to collect, analyze, and share the personal data of people in the United States with few meaningful civil liberties safeguards, no adequate oversight, and no accountability mechanisms.”
ICE also just authorized the purchase of 6,000 pairs of gloves that agents can use to shock people it deems noncompliant.
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, meanwhile, pointed to a study from the Vera Institute of Justice — a related nonprofit organization that engages in policy research — that said incarceration did little to reduce property crimes like shoplifting.