Yolo DA Discusses Smash and Grabs During Townhall, Explains What He Sees As the Problem of Underreporting

By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor

Woodland, CA – Yolo County DA Jeff Reisig held a townhall on Tuesday discussing the issue of smash and grab crime in Yolo County, illustrating their data portal.  However, the data they presented only ran through the first quarter of 2021—data that is now nearly a year old—and the DA suggested that the property crime data as well suffers from underreporting.

“If you’ve been paying attention the last month or so this has been the news as we just saw a lot… (of) very high profile, organized, smash, and grabs all across California,” Reisig explained, including some in Yolo County.

The data they present are cases referred to the DA from law enforcement agencies from 2016 until early 2021.  Over that time, while fluctuating, it has been within the range of 300 to 400.

“One of the things I’m going to talk about tonight is there is a phenomenon of underreporting,” he said. The data “requires somebody who’s a victim to pick up the phone and call the police and file a report.”  He said, “There is actual underreporting happening at lots of different levels that we’re aware of that make this data a little bit different than it looks.”

Davis Chamber Director Corey Koehler said, “There’s a high level of frustration in the business community in Davis right now.”  He said that there are expenses of having to hire additional security and security campuses.  They are adjusting store hours to try to compensate for some of this.

“There’s a psychological change they noticed in customer behavior.  Some long time customers are not visiting businesses like they used to, that’s impacted the business in a financial way,” he said.  “Businesses are also reporting they are raising prices to adjust for some of the goods that have been stolen.

“There’s just a lot of frustration out there, and they just don’t see it going away anytime soon,” Koehler said.

A viewer asked if there was a stat to indicate how many people don’t call the police because they think it’s a waste of time.

“I don’t know of a specific statistic, because how do you prove a negative that says how many people don’t call,” said Paul Doroshov, who just retired as Davis Deputy Chief of Police this month.  “I agree with Corey (Koehler) that it’s a problem.

“As more frustration builds, people tend to call us less,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

Reisig acknowledged that there wasn’t a statistic to capture people not calling to report.

“But what we know anecdotally, what I know from talking to business owners and particularly some of the bigger businesses, they have just gotten so frustrated with the fact that many of these crimes go unsolved,” he said.

He put some of the blame on “some of the laws that are in place right now.”

Reisig argued, “For Yolo County, we have seen massive drops in reports from some of the big box stores.”  He said, “That has fallen off tremendously not because the crimes are not happening, but because a lot of these businesses have just decided not to waste their time with it—frankly it’s just a cost of doing business.”

Paul Doroshov noted that the “magic number’s $950.”

“It used to be $400 and then it was raised from there, meaning if you stole under $400, it was a misdemeanor.  Now if you stole something over $400, it’s basically grand theft.  So now below $950, everything is a misdemeanor, anything over $950 is a felony.”

Doroshov added, “With that, I will say that a lot of these retail thefts, you know, you’re walking a very fine line as a person committing them, running into some type of conflict with a clerk or someone and then you could quickly catapult that into a robbery, if any fear of forces involved of you retaining that property. So, we do see that from time to time.”

Reisig also pointed out that a lot of these crimes are organized groups of people that are going in and stealing, and “those are felonies because you have arguably a conspiracy typically, and many of you actually have an organized network that is driving the whole plan.”

Reisig looked at the trend line of misdemeanor and felony cases, and “as we have gotten into 2021, the orange line felonies is starting to climb. That means the police are sending the DA’s office more felony cases, which I know from being familiar with what we’re getting has a lot more of these smashing grabs, these organized groups that are hitting stores.”

He said, “I think what’s frightening when you look at some of these videos is people can get really hurt.”

At the same time, the DA in Yolo is diverting an increasing number of cases, misdemeanors, but also increasingly some felonies.

“Diversion is an alternative to a traditional criminal prosecution where we give people, through a number of different programs, the option of avoiding jail and avoiding a fine, essentially by participating in rehabilitation programs,” Reisig explained.

“Starting in late 2020, you see a big spike in the number of cases that we diverted,” Reisig explained.  “We definitely see during the COVID crisis, an increase in some petty crimes related to just despair and people being in a bad situation.”

He said, “We made a policy decision to really up the diversion approach.”

Reisig added, “We are serious about trying to get people out of the criminal justice system.”

He would later add, “We have prisons for a reason and prisons are for people who are violent. That’s my view. People who are very violent and pose of danger. And so there are people that will go to prison for committing these crimes.

“We don’t want to do that. We would love to be able to intervene early and divert people. But when you start carrying weapons and you start hurting people, um, you are exposed to prison and, and that’s been our approach here in Yolo County.”