Los Angeles County Sheriff Department detectives proudly announced a complex and successful sting this week. 

A retail theft ring has been caught red-handed, with millions of dollars’ worth of make-up, perfume, pharmaceuticals, and more, stolen from stores in and around California, much of it still bearing store tags.  

Product has been recovered; at least a dozen locations have been revealed.  Multiple fences have been identified, with eight arrests announced at the start, and likely more to follow.  They will prove that shoplifting rings were organized to hit the stores that had what the fences wanted – from pharmacies like CVS to big box stores like Walmart.

The police are proud of their work, as well they should be; such a successful catch is – in itself – good for the community, and a badge of honor for the investigators involved.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, such a bust would have been earth-shaking in its impact.  Take an organized crime gang like this out of operation, and the community would be safer for years.

But will that be the case this time?

Of course not – because even though these particular ringleaders and locations have been taken out, the conditions that facilitated their creation are not being corrected, or even addressed.

Why are there all these crimes?  Why are so many criminals so unafraid of the system that they will brazenly steal, often in “flash mob” form, from stores with security cameras filming them and even security guards watching, impotently, from the door?  And why are there so many such crimes that this bust won’t even make a dent?

These are the issues that the politicians of Los Angeles – and frankly, those of most other major cities across America today – won’t even touch.  The politicians won’t bring it up, and the press (a.k.a., the pols’ P.R. agents) won’t even ask the questions.

But the taxpayers deserve to see these issues – the issues hinted at by this story but not tackled head on -- discussed and debated in the public square, especially in an election year.

Minimal Jail Time:

Where do these ringleaders get the army of foot soldiers to do the swiping, the smash-and-grabbing, the flash-mobbing?  For the past few decades, the leftist approach to the problem of urban crime has been to empty the jails and just hire more social workers.  They disregard or statutorily reduce sentencing guidelines for property crimes, so that even after shoplifters, burglars and other robbers are convicted, they are released back into the community almost immediately.  Should anyone be surprised that crime is rampant, when the government is knowingly releasing every thief they catch via a revolving door policy?

Foreign-Born Criminals:

As if that weren’t enough, the open borders policy of recent Democrat regimes has resulted in the importation of criminals from abroad. No, this isn’t xenophobia; it’s statistically undeniable. While standard legal immigration at least makes an effort to only grant immigration visas to honest, productive potential citizens, such vetting is impossible – intentionally – with the flood of illegal aliens we have seen flowing across our borders in recent decades. Crime gangs from Central and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, who would usually be thwarted by standard immigration processes, are able to blend in with the caravans and crowds of “asylum claimants” or join the ranks of what the Border Patrol calls "gotaways." Are we talking about ten percent of them? Fifteen? Twenty?  No way to tell.  But since we’re talking about millions and millions of illegal aliens every year, even if only 10% of them are criminals, that’s too many.

The End of Retail: 

Big or small, stand-alone or mall locations, retail nationwide is suffering an existential crisis.  It’s not just personal habits, and it’s not just the popularity of e-commerce.  Retailers are being crushed by crime.  From targeted flash mobs to riots -- from surreptitious pocketing of whatever’s easily nicked to a targeted focus on the specific wares that the fence is looking for – there is simply no way for any retailer to cover the current level of theft.  They try to hire more security guards; they install cameras, they put less product on the floor and keep more in the back.  But no matter what they do, the constant shrinkage causes more and more chains to give up on their urban footprint, and now sometimes their suburban locations, too.  We are approaching the point at which no chain in the country can afford to operate a location in America’s cities.

The $800 to $1,000 prosecution limit: 

One of the hallmarks of today’s progressive prosecutors – the many Soros-funded district attorneys of cities and counties like Los Angeles – is the public declaration that police resources are too valuable, and capitalist retailers too unimportant and undeserving of protection, to waste time on prosecuting “minor crimes” like retail theft valued under some arbitrary figure of $800 or $1,000.  This position has always been shameful and indefensible, but is all the more so in light of organized theft rings like the one in today’s news.  That $700 theft from this store and $750 theft in that store, and that $600 theft yesterday and the $650 theft tomorrow, will all add up.  They wind up being part of a multimillion dollar ring once the fences trade for it and add the loot to their off-the-books warehouses.  In truth, these $800 and $1,000 prosecution thresholds are just tools to protect the crime bosses from losing their foot soldiers.

The Impact on Society:

 But the most important reminder that this news story brings to mind is the big picture, the impact of all this retail theft on the other issues that plague America today, and our big cities in particular.  Inflation is killing our economy -- particularly devastating the working poor and middle class; this massive retail theft is a driver of that inflation.  Young people can’t get their first jobs -- and employed adults can’t get those part time jobs, that were once the standard way to get ahead; where have those jobs gone? The old retailers either spend more on guards so they can’t afford more cashiers, or they’re just closing up and moving away. Your son or daughter can’t get a job at the local mall if the local mall shut down because crime drove away both shopkeepers and shoppers alike. 

They haven’t said a word about any of these issues in the news coverage of this latest bust; they avoid it in every story about crime nowadays.  Boast about the capture, be proud of the good police work, but don’t ask the deeper questions.

The fact that rampant crime is not just tolerated but encouraged by the policies of the modern Democrat-run city and blue state government is absolutely off the table.

But if our elections are to have anything to do with the problems plaguing our communities, these issues have to be given the attention they deserve.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer and speaker. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I,  II, and III).

Image: PxHere // CC0 public domain