A Grab-and-Go Future
This incident could happen at any Walgreens in San Francisco: A man strolls into the store walks over to the hair display, grabs an armful of shampoo bottles, and simply walks out the door. He felt no need to rush, had no fear, and didn’t bother looking back.
Instead of actually doing something, people stood by and recorded the scene on their phones, shaking their heads; they knew nothing would happen, as he’d simply disappear into the crowd. There’s no point in calling the police; they wouldn’t come, store clerks wouldn’t bother, and the DA wouldn’t prosecute.
In California, petty thefts valued at less than $950 are typically not worth the paperwork involved.
It’s this future that mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is dangling in front of New York City.
California’s Lesson
New Yorkers need to look west before being seduced by Mamdani’s pitch to abolish misdemeanors, because California illustrates a picture-perfect example of what could go wrong.
Proposition 47 reclassified a wide range of felonies after passing in 2014 and increased the threshold for felony theft to $950. It was sold as reform on paper, yet in reality, it became an invitation to corruption. As long as their haul fell under the magic dollar amount, shoplifters learned there was little to fear. Over time, police grew unwilling to waste their time with cases the courts wouldn’t touch.
Fallout was swift: Retail theft spiked, while stores closed. The chains Walgreens and Target took action: Walgreensabandoned entire neighborhoods, and Target locked items behind plastic.
Residents paid the price every day. Earning the nickname “the shoplifter’s charter,” Prop 47 overlooked the fact that people weren’t simply clever slogans; they were commuters, small business owners, and single parents working hard to keep their communities together.
San Francisco’s Warning
San Francisco, always a bastion of progressive experiments, doubled down by voting Chesa Boudin into the position of district attorney in 2019. Like a good progressive soldier, Boudin followed the script by not prosecuting most low-level crimes, and became an advocate for restorative justice over accountability.
Before long, residents woke up to find shattered car windows, thriving open-air drug markets, and hollowed-out neighborhoods. The once-booming downtown slowly transformed into a brick-and-mortar desert, not only because of COVID-19’s mandates and remote working, but also because nobody wanted to shop or work where crime ran rampant.
The embrace voters gave the reform ultimately faded. Boudin was recalled in 2022, a stunning rejection in one of America’s bluest cities. The people of San Francisco had grown tired of being test subjects in social experiments that worked wonderfully in academia but failed utterly in the real world.
Now It’s New York’s Turn
Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens. He isn’t talking about softening penalties; he’s talking about eliminating misdemeanor enforcement.
Period.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. This action means shoplifting, petty theft, drug possession, prostitution, low-level assault, and even some incidents of drunk driving no longer draw consequences, unless there is “major” injury or violence.
Mamdani isn’t proposing leniency; he’s surrendering a city.
“E-ZPass for criminals” is the moniker critics have slapped on it, and they’re right. New York already is at war, battling crime in the subway, illegal vending, homelessness, and drug abuse. When misdemeanor guardrails are stripped away, the floodgates are turned wide open.
If California is the cautionary tale, then San Francisco is the warning flare, showing that ignoring “small” crimes leads to a forest fire.
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