State legislators announced bipartisan effort to thwart retail thieves

State legislators announced a bipartisan effort Tuesday to crack down on organized retail thieves.

"As you guys know, our retailers have gone many years and have been asking for the help and that's what we're here to do today," said Assemblymember Juan Alanis.

The package of seven bills is aimed at renewing lapsed laws and filling in gaps to best target thieves, legislators said.

"This bill says to organized crime rings, we mean business, and we're going to give law enforcement the tools they need to shut you down," said Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur.

Taken together, the bills would allow law enforcement to combine similar thefts from different victims thefts into one grand-theft case in certain instances, allow prosecutors to pool resources across jurisdictions and result in stiffer penalties and restraining orders against thieves. 

"Our employees are asking for it, Californians are demanding it and retailers want to be able to just sell our products. We want to deter retail theft from even coming into our stores," said Rachel Michelin, president of the California Retailers Association. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, "People need to be safe, they need to feel safe. And making sure that we're responsive to Californians is critical. This package, I think, gets the job done. 

There's a separate effort underway to repeal parts of Prop. 47, the 2014 voter-approved initiative that increased the threshold for grand theft from $450 to $950. 

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the new package of bills does not affect Prop. 47.

"There's no turning back the clock on criminal justice reforms that have been enacted," Rivas said. "For us, understanding the root causes of the problem, which is complex, and for us each one of those bills goes after those levels of complexity."

Henry Lee is a KTVU crime reporter. E-mail Henry at Henry.Lee@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @henrykleeKTVU and www.facebook.com/henrykleefan