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Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone viral for shoplifting at Goal. Effectively, kind of.
The governor didn’t really steal something. However as he tells it, he did witness somebody blatantly strolling out of a Sacramento-area retailer with an armload of stolen stuff, presumably proper in entrance of his personal intimidating-looking safety element. And when Newsom requested why nobody was taking motion, the clerk advised him it was the governor’s fault.
Newsom has made it too simple to steal, he stated the clerk advised him — earlier than realizing who he was and freaking out.
Newsom, who was Christmas procuring with certainly one of his youngsters on the time, stated he was outraged. It’s simply not true, he stated he advised the clerk. California has the tenth-toughest legal guidelines towards retail theft within the nation, he lectured — in a manner that will need to have appeared tremendous bizarre till she deduced his identification.
“I stated: ‘Why didn’t you cease him?’ ” Newsom stated he requested the clerk.
“She goes, ’Oh, the governor’ ” — he broke off — “swear to God, true story, on my mother’s grave.” He added that the clerk had the temerity to inform him: “The governor lowered the edge, there’s no accountability. … We don’t cease them due to the governor.”
Newsom advised the story this week to a bunch of mayors from across the state who had gathered on Zoom for a information convention on his psychological well being initiative, Proposition 1. He and the mayors had been chatting amongst themselves whereas ready for San Francisco’s London Breed and San Diego’s Todd Gloria to go browsing. After relating the anecdote, the governor added that he hoped the 2 mayors weren’t the one ones not but signed into the Zoom. “Hopefully, all of the reporters weren’t on,” he stated.
Too late. The change, posted on X (previously generally known as Twitter) after which picked up by tv and print retailers across the state, rapidly went viral — catnip within the heated debate about retail theft and Proposition 47, which decreased some thefts and drug offenses to misdemeanors to scale back mass incarceration. Some critics have blamed Proposition 47 for the rise in thefts.
Newsom himself got here out final month calling for laws to crack down on “skilled thieves” with out amending Proposition 47, noting that one of many wine shops he owns in San Francisco was robbed not less than 3 times in 2021. He identified that Texas’ threshold for felony theft is amongst these that’s increased than California’s.
However these factors did little to calm the viral story. The chairwoman of the state Republican Celebration, Jessica Millan Patterson, rapidly jumped into the fray, writing on X: “Shout-out to this retailer clerk for saying to the governor’s face what each Californian has needed to say: that he and his radical @CA_Dem buddies are responsible for CA’s surging crime. Sadly, Newsom nonetheless didn’t appear to take the trace.”
Newsom’s workplace declined to establish which Goal the encounter occurred at, to maintain the media from mobbing the shop. They did say the encounter befell within the Sacramento space, round Christmastime, whereas the governor was procuring with certainly one of his youngsters.
The change, the governor stated, ended with an try at a photo-op.
Because the governor was explaining how strict California’s retail theft legal guidelines really are, the clerk, he stated, “seems to be at me, twice. She freaks out. She calls everybody over, desires to take photographs.”
“I stated, no, I’m not taking a photograph,” Newsom stated. “We’re having a dialog. The place’s your supervisor? How are you blaming the governor?”
He added: “Why am I spending $380? Everybody can stroll the hell proper out.”
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