Retailer groups said organized retail thefts are on the rise across the country, and a recent report by California’s legislative analyst is backing up that claim.
The retailers said thieves are targeting larger quantities of merchandise that end up costing companies thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars.
On Tuesday, San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the impact of retail thefts here.
"We were angry in San Diego to see the fear in our community. I brought an organized team working with ORCA, the Organized Retail Crime Theft Alliance, which has businesses and local and state officials," she said. "We were able to put the case together and solve it and bring people to justice and serve the consequences that they deserve."
Stephan said San Diego has prosecuted over 200 defendants involved in organized theft in the last two years.
But she said a line gets drawn, and getting to the leaders of the theft rings goes unsolved.
"Our recent $8 million jewelry heist, where two other states suffered from the same crew ... was unsolved because there was no alert system in the national scope that alerted us that they're coming to us potentially," Stephan said.
The Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, or CORCA, would establish a coordinated multi-agency response to organized retail theft.
Stephan supports the legislation both as San Diego County district attorney and as president of the National District Attorneys Association.
"This cannot be solved locally, it must be solved by local, state and national ... we need to bring bigger solutions to a really big problem," she said.
The bill would create an Organized Retail Crime Coordination Center within the Department of Homeland Security. That center would establish relationships with state and local law enforcement agencies, and with retail companies, to investigate and prosecute organized retail crime.
But Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois noted that DHS is currently focused on mass deportations.
"In February, the Department of Homeland Security in Washington ordered its entire investigations division, composed of 6,000 agents, to divert focus on drug dealers, terrorists and human traffickers, and shift priority to the Trump administration's priority of deporting people who are in the U.S. illegally," Durbin said. "I don't think that's as high a priority as the subject of this hearing today."
This isn’t the first time this legislation has been introduced. Efforts to organize a retail crime center within DHS came up in 2023, but that bill did not move forward.
