2023-09-28 04:44:48
The robberies have happened in broad daylight or with the complicity of the night. There are no weapons other than strength and athletic fortitude to run with stolen merchandise. There are no favorite items, since the thefts range from clothing and beauty accessories to cell phones, tablets and other technological items.
These lootings, in which hordes of people are seen entering stores and as if they were a hurricane, taking everything in their path, frightened the inhabitants of Philadelphia on Thursday night. The Footlocker, Apple Store, Lululemon and Wendy’s stores were the most affected according to official information.
“Approximately 1,000 young people forcibly entered and participated in these mass robberies, seizing valuable items,” local authorities reported.
But the night of terror and the images of the massive robberies in Philadelphia is an act that, as if it were a deja-vú, has been occurring since last August in other cities in the United States such as Los Angeles.
What is the reason for the looting?
The Police and investigators in the cities where these massive robberies have been taking place are investigating whether the looting has to do, as was initially believed, with retaliation for a judge’s decision to release an agent involved in a shooting.
Another hypothesis considered by the investigators pointed to what some of the people captured while carrying out the robberies mentioned, and pointed to the economic situation.
However, police and investigators point out that this new wave of looting and massive robberies is due to rumors and videos that went viral in 2022 and have been shared again on social networks. In one of them, with images of the robberies in the background, a voice is heard saying: “What people don’t know is that stealing is legal in California. And I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. People even have the right to steal up to $950 a day.”
Immediately afterwards, this anonymous voice, which is already being investigated by the authorities and is being tracked, adds that what they steal, these people have permission to sell.
Another of the authorities’ conclusions about the increase in these thefts and the rumor that spread stating that these minor objects could be stolen, has to do with the false information that circulated on social networks and indicated that with the approval of the Proposition 47 in 2014, with which some crimes were reclassified and lowered to the non-serious category, among them, theft without violence would have no criminal or judicial effect.
It is not true that you can
But the same Law that looters have used to spread and increase waves of massive robberies is the one that the United States justice system takes into account to prosecute a person who commits a theft, even if its value is minor.
Experts told AFP that it is not true that people can steal less than $USD 950 per day, and that it is still considered a crime, even if it is considered minor, and can be taken to prison. The California Penal Code itself considers this type of “petty theft” illegal.
“It is completely incorrect to say that people have the right to steal $950. I think this person is referring to Proposition 47, a major criminal justice reform in California,” Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, told the AP.
Kubrin added to the news agency that “if you steal something, you commit theft, regardless of the amount of dollars, you are going to be arrested for it.”
The United States authorities have set themselves the task of creating plans to stop this type of theft, which, according to information from the National Retail Federation, has left merchants in that country a total of 94 billion dollars in losses. with a 90% increase in this type of crime since 2018.
Despite this, thefts continue to occur every day. Merchants have chosen to put locks, but even these have been stolen.
#Rumor #triggered #robberies #looting #United #States