The Kern County District Attorney’s Office said it has filed its first case under Proposition 36 since the initiative took effect Wednesday.
According to the DA’s Office, the Bakersfield Police Department’s Organized Retail Theft Unit conducted a “blitz” operation Thursday in the 11000 block of Stockdale Highway. Blitz operations are collaborations with retail store loss protection agents that allow law enforcement to respond immediately and arrest suspects of retail theft quickly, the DA’s Office said.
During the operation, loss protection agents at Target alerted BPD officers of a theft in which Dustin Towery, 25, and another unknown suspect were suspected of stealing two electric scooters and fleeing the store through the rear emergency exit. According to the DA’s Office, the scooters’ combined cost was $879.
Officers arrived almost immediately and arrested Towery, who hid under a parked vehicle. The electric scooters were found and returned to the store, the DA’s Office said.
Towery was charged Monday with shoplifting with two prior convictions and resisting an officer at the Kern County Superior Court. The felony charge regarding the shoplifting was filed under Penal Code Section 666.1, which is one of the centerpiece laws under Proposition 36, the DA’s Office said.
According to the DA’s Office, that code section makes felony charges possible when a person commits a theft of property with a value of less than $950 and the person had been convicted of two or more theft-related cases in the past.
Towery had been convicted of theft-related incidents in six different cases between 2018 and 2020, including vehicle thefts and burglaries, according to Kern County Superior Court’s website.
“Californians overwhelmingly supported this new law, which gives police and prosecutors the tools to once again provide real accountability for repeat theft offenders,” District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer said in a news release by the DA’s Office. “I look forward to putting these tools to work and bring order back to our communities that for too long have suffered at the hands of repeat theft offenders.”