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How to Stop Mob Looting
Very simple; strengthen the law and then, enforce it. Define mob looting as a crime as follows: when more than one person cooperatively enters a retail establishment with the intent to steal merchandise. Aggregate the loss in determining the level of felony charged so that each person involved in the theft, including those aiding and abetting (drivers and those obstructing response, fences, persons who receive stolen property, etc.) are charged with the full value of all merchandise stolen and the costs of all damage.
Allow up to triple damages as compensation upon conviction. Allow a weapons charge if implements are used in the theft that could be classified as a weapon or used to intimidate a response. Arrest the perpetrators.
Stack up the felonies and dare the prosecutors to dismiss.
Published in General
Would more than one person cooperatively entering a retail establishment and stealing merchandise also be defined as mob looting? Or does it only include intent?
I don’t think that theft would have to be successful to meet the definition of mob looting; if there is damage but the theft is thwarted, the charge would still be valid.
There could be a separate conspiracy charge if law enforcement thwarts a planned mob looting. This would be a more difficult case and hard to prosecute.
I love the idea, Doug, but the very prosecutors who should be doing just this will likely not follow through. It’s not like they don’t understand these are crimes; they just don’t care. I’m becoming so cynical. . .
Looting is probably not the correct word; From the Oregon Revised Statutes
There’s more:
Organized retail theft might also be a violation of Federal RICO statutes.
I don’t think you even need to go over the top with damages and stacking charges. Just normal enforcement of existing laws would be enough to stop this madness. When a city announces to the public that it will no longer enforce certain crimes, what the Hell did they think was going to happen?
I agree. There are probably adequate laws on the books. [California might be an exception, since California law has explicitly decriminalized a lot of theft.] Most of the current problem is that prosecutors are declining to enforce existing laws. In some cases other politicians are pressuring prosecutors not to enforce the law.
Make it legal, no questions asked, no possibility of prosecution for owners to shoot the looters
Or, as I said elsewhere, public hanging upon conviction, like we used to do with horse thieves. You’d probably only have to do it once, with YouTube around.
Tend to agree. Although the law always values life over property, I believe these hammer-wielding, gun-toting thugs are a clear exception to that concept.
These thugs are not just run-of-the-mill thieves hitting the local Qwik Shop; they are very organized and ready to do violence on anyone who would dare to try and stop them. That being the case, I believe that business owners are justified to use deadly force.
A nation of men, not laws.
The idea here is to provide a new law for organized looting. It is more than just retail theft. It should qualify for the highest felony. Every participant should be charged with the full value of the theft and destruction and there should be additional charges for damage (equivalent to wanton destruction) and for using weapons to aid in the theft and intimidate (equivalent to mayhem.) Make it clear that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Damage calculations should include lost profits and losses required to restock and reopen.
Honestly, I’d have no problem with just gunning the perpetrators down in the street. Put me on the jury and no one’s getting convicted.
Sadly the politicals in power do not share your point of view. Quite the opposite.
You are not cynical enough. It is not that the prosecutors don’t care, they do care and they want criminals running amok in the hope that it ushers in a strong-arm commie government. It is all part of a plan.
It might also count as terrorism, since some people consider looting to be political speech.
The law should not do so. Property is mine too. Deadly force to protect it makes sense.
I spent my time, which I cannot get back, to get my property. That is stealing my life.
Very good suggestions, but we are talking about California. A more simple and direction solution would be to follow Florida’s example and make it clear that crimes will be prosecuted.
Honestly, I am eating this up with a SPOON. Pass stupid laws, get stupid behavior.
These flash movs will continue to be overwhelmingly black too, unless the hispanics want to get in on their own raids. Theyw ill not be integrated even between black and brown in any meaningful way. Why? Among other reasons, the whole way this works is that so long as the looters are black, then doing anything about it is “racist”. Mentioning or even noticing this is also “racist”.
The whole process is a race weapon aimed at law and order, at western civilization, and almost incidentally, at white people. Once the Marxists who continually refine this weapon have taken over, only then will all races be equally worthless in the eyes of The Party. Khmer Oakland.
So I’m not too concerned about how to stop this sort of thing. It’s obvious — roll back the changes that led to it. The communities which refuse to do that are not actually going to countenance any other proposal to stop it. So let it roll. Pass stupid laws, get stupid behavior.
/popcorn
The failure to prosecute, and the failure of prosecutors to request a bail amount in a bail hearing is leading to organized retail theft. This failure has also lead to more serious violent crimes committed by repeat offenders.
Criminals understand the system, and they know to take advantage of this breakdown. They will commit crimes in cities, and counties that have a Soros prosecutor. They will avoid cities and counties that will prosecute crimes.
Zackly. Like I said, /popcorn.
Doug,
Thanks, but you didn’t answer my question.
Mark, I’ve learned to read your comments for a subtext (you’re one fart smeller) but in this case, it seems the answer is obviously a case of the more obvious being clearly implier by the statement of the less obvious. The answer to your first sentence is YES, and the answer to your second is NO.
I feel justified in answering this for the author of the OP as it is indeed obvious.
Good.
Now we must both learn never to do that.
We must make it our second goal not only to know what the other meant by what he or she did write, but to not assume that he meant something that he did not write.
Each of us must learn to take every statement, and every question, from the other literally. Every question the other writes is only a question, never a statement. He means everything he writes, but only what he writes.
It’s fine to guess where something, a line of questioning, is going, because it will help us to avoid careless reading and thinking that will waste our time. Obviously, in searching for the truth, a person only raises a question for some reason. But we must leave these guesses out of our responses. To wait for the response.
Inconceivable, Jamie!
Gotta complete the square here: we must also make it a primary goal to know what the other meant or did not mean by what he or she did or did not write, and to self-flagellate (enunciate carefully!) for any failure. Anything less is not worthy of the duck-pond philosophers’ conversation.
That’s essentially what the RICO Act does. It was passed to combat organized crime, and that’s exactly what the looting sprees are. The federal law was also implemented by many states. So the laws are in place. The prosecutors are not. Maybe public opinion will catch up with the problem soon.
Yes, it is, and has been for some time. Y0u can put all the tough-guy laws on the books all day but if they don’t prosecute, or don’t prosecute to the fullest extent, you reinforce the messaging that you’ll get away with it.
https://capitalresearch.org/article/soros-funded-district-attorneys-linked-to-increases-in-violent-crime/
Good discussion. The minorities that live in areas affected have to raise political hell. The urban upper classes aren’t affected and run things so won’t fix it. Leave the cities and states run by liberal Democrats and concentrate on ways to avoid the same problem in cities and states still run by sane people.