Leaders all over the state are trying to cut down on crime and homelessness.
Along with more than 900,000 signatures, the Californians for Safer Communities Coalition put in a new measure on Thursday that would change Prop 47.
People who support the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act say it will protect small businesses and families who are being hurt by the current fentanyl problem and give repeat offenders harsher sentences.
“Bird Dog Cards & Comix” owner Carlos Mendoza says he had to get a gate to keep thieves out.
He said, “This one alone cost about $10,000.”
On Action News, he showed a tape from six months ago, when someone stole a lot of Master Cards from him.
“I’m just tying to like build a community here, have a spot so that people can come play cards with their families and friends and stuff, and when people do this, it makes it kind of hard,” he said.
The “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act” can help with that.
The bill would make people who steal from places often answer for their actions.
It also wants to go after people who sell drugs like fentanyl all the time.
Fotanyl killed Pamela Smith’s son. “I don’t want another mother to feel what I feel every single day,” she said.
Pamela Smith lost her son Jackson to fentanyl on July 3, 2016, and she says that 110 other Californians die every week because of the drug. She believes that this effort is an important step toward ending the crisis.
“What will happen is that the people who are arrested for drug abuse, at a certain point, they will be offered drug treatment and that’s what they need,” Smith said.
“It will also penalize the drug traffickers as they need to be penalized, because right now its pretty much a slap on the wrist, and to me that’s not good enough, because they are destroying families.”
Clint Olivier, CEO of the Central Valley Business Federation, says that he thinks it would make California a better place to live if it gets put on the ballot by the secretary of state.
“I think this is an issue that really cuts across race and gender and economic level because everybody is paying the cost of this,” he said. “Prices are going up because the people who are shopping and going through the check stand actually have to pay extra, to pay for the goods that are going out when people don’t go through the check stand.”
Mendoza only wants to keep making the safe place he planned for the collectibles and cards communities.
The man said, “That can’t happen again.”
Now that it has 900,000 signatures, the bill can be put on the November ballot.
Even so, the agreements still need to be looked over by the secretary of state.
