ROSEVILLE, Calif. — Omar Sharif and his family have called the Sacramento area home for four generations and built a legacy jewelry business.
The family-owned business is getting ready to open a new location in Roseville after making the decision to close its K Street store in Downtown Sacramento.
“We would still be open today if it wasn't for all the issues that we had in downtown,” said Sharif.
Sharif replays a video from 2020. It’s a painful reminder of when the family watched their downtown store get destroyed in minutes during a smash-and-grab. He says it's been a while since he’s seen the video.
"They'll pick up the chairs and start smashing them into the cases trying to break the showcases,” he recalled.
In the video, multiple people break into the store, grabbing anything they can, even ripping TVs off the wall and trying to break into the vault.
"I mean, what goes through your head when you're about to break into a store and destroy someone's life? Someone's business, someone's livelihood,” he said.
After repeated break-ins, COVID’s impact on foot traffic and the homeless crisis, the family decided to close the doors to the downtown location.
But that wasn’t the only hit the family took… they had multiple people hop the counter and begin smashing displays, demanding cash and jewelry at their Carmichael store. Sharif says incidents like these are traumatizing.
“I use the word devastating because just to go in there and something that your family works so hard for just to be destroyed, it hurts,” he said.
Sacramento now ranks 7th in the nation of cities affected by organized retail theft. The National Retail Federation estimates retail theft has cost retailers $112 billion in losses. That cost trickles down to consumers left paying an estimated $500 more a year on purchases.
Lieutenant Chris Ciampa with the Roseville Police Department says their efforts start with patrol.
“People want to go to a store and know that they're safe,” said Ciampa.
Roseville has seen its share of organized retail theft with an 82% jump in the last three years. ABC10 joined Ciampa on patrol and multiple retail theft calls came in within the first 20 minutes.
One of the calls was from a business saying they spotted a repeat offender. Ciampa says the man was in the area stealing just seven days earlier.
"This is that partnership between loss prevention and the business and the PD. They recognized him as well. Last week, they were willing to call the police and file a police report,” said Ciampa.
Law enforcement agencies and district attorneys up and down the state say the reason for the spike in retail theft is Prop 47, an initiative aimed at tackling prison overcrowding passed by voters in 2014. It makes non-violent theft a misdemeanor when the value is less than $950.
Ciampa says it’s only made the thieves smarter.
"They'll have multiple bags and they've got their phone as a calculator or an actual calculator, and they'll know how much is in each bag, so if they do get confronted or they do get caught, they drop a bag here they drop a bag there,” he said.
And the consequences are low if they’re arrested.
Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire says his office saw a 67% increase in cases involving retail theft from 2021 to 2022.
"Someone who steals for the 10th time who was stealing clearly to sell these goods on the black market, we have to punish them the same as the person who goes in and steals the proverbial loaf of bread to feed their family. Those people should be treated differently,” said Gire.
He says one of the biggest problems with California's current laws is not being able to prosecute repeat offenders.
"The idea behind Prop 47 that people who repeatedly steal might need some services… that's very true, but it's not working, what we're doing now. Unfortunately, change is probably going to look a lot like initiatives and voter-enacted changes because the legislature at least at this point doesn't seem to have an appetite to roll back any of the changes,” he said.
This is why partnerships with local businesses matter in solving and deterring theft.
The Roseville Police Department also protects one of the largest malls in the area, the Westfield Galleria. With around 200 stores, they see over 200,000 shoppers in any given week, and they’ve also seen their share of retail theft.
"I think people are getting fed up. They're tired of seeing it, the news. Business owners are tired of having to be worried about that all the time,” said Roseville Galleria General Manager, Jeff Richardson.
Thousands of dollars worth of electronics were stolen during a robbery at the Apple store in 2018. Then, in 2022, 10 suspects used sledgehammers in a smash-and-grab theft at a jewelry store.
ABC10 walked the mall with Richardson to check out some of the security measures they’ve put in place. He says they’ve done everything from having security 24/7 to hiring two Roseville Police Department officers at the mall every day. They've also expanded their CCTV system to keep an eye on the 1.3 million square foot mall.
"I can't tell you exactly how many cameras, but what I can tell you is that other than the bathroom, we're going to see,” said Richardson.
Across the street from the Galleria, Sharif Jewelers isn’t taking any shortcuts when it comes to security. Sharif says once the store is built, customers won’t be able to take more than two steps without tripping a motion sensor and about 200 cameras will always be activated.
“Our cameras are going to be so sophisticated that if you were to drop a diamond on the floor, we'd be able to see where it was dropped,” he said.
They’ll also have license plate readers and a security guard, but it’s the partnership with the police that’s giving Sharif and his family new hope for the future.
“If it takes us a week or takes us a month or takes us a year, we'll come find you. We're not going to let you come steal in our town and get away with it,” said Ciampa.
California recently sent $267 million to cities and counties throughout the state to increase arrests and prosecutions for organized retail crime.
The Roseville Police Department will get about $600,000, which they’ll use for vehicles and surveillance technology to deter thefts.
The Placer County District Attorney’s office received $2 million. It will be used for an organized retail theft prosecution unit with a dedicated full-time deputy district attorney, investigator and crime analyst.
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