San Jose business owners affected by retail theft rally to support Prop 36
Business owners in a Vietnamese American neighborhood in San Jose are voicing support for Proposition 36 in hopes it will relieve rampant retail theft at their businesses.
"This is our business right here, we are the face of Little Saigon," said Vu Dinh, the owner of the Banh Mi Oven Vietnamese sandwich shop on Story Road.
It's a family business that is trying to grow. But Dinh says the shop has been broken into repeatedly, including one stretch in 2022 when his surveillance cameras captured a string of eight burglaries.
"They would go to the register and just grab it out and run away with it," Dinh said. "We deal with a lot of those break-ins. And of course, the broken glass and boarded up causes a lot of collateral damage. It costs time and money and if it's under $900, they get away with it."
Dinh said police have told him that his break-ins are most likely tied to the drug and homeless crisis in his neighborhood.
And that's why he joined San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and several fellow business owners at an event to support Prop 36 which would make changes to Prop 47 by increasing punishments for theft and drug crimes and create a new court process that could result in more offenders turning to drug treatment to stay out of jail.
"It is compassionate, it does not return us to an era of mass incarceration but it brings much needed accountability back to our society and every biases in this report is toward treatment, treatment, treatment," Mahan said.
"It is getting people the help they need but recognizing that if they are trapped by by a cycle of addiction to fentanyl and meth on our streets, we have to intervene."
The event was held at the Grand Century Mall, a Vietnamese shopping complex that's often the target of retail theft.
"Each break-in affects not only our bottom lines, but it's also reduced the morale of my employees and the trust of our customers," Dinh said to the gathering.
But opponents of Prop 36 call it misleading.
"Proponents are saying that this will result in more people ending up in treatment, but there is not a single line item in this ballot initiative creating new funding streams for new treatment," said Will Matthews of Californians for Safety and Justice. "There is already a woeful lack of available treatment right now and that's something Prop 47 from a decade ago has begun to address."
Matthews' group authored Prop 47 in 2014.
"The governor and legislature are leading the way and making inroads into our safety challenges without having to gut the billions of dollars that have been made available for drug treatment, mental health and re-entry services," Matthews said.
It is one of California's most difficult problems, with differing potential solutions.
"In the retail area, we have people that just come in and grab whatever they want to. Just grab a snack, grab a drink and just run away with it," Dinh said.
And he wonders how long he can stay in business when no one has held accountable for his thefts and break-ins.