Douglas County’s leaders want to put an end to the “look the other way” mentality when it comes to retail theft — and they aim to do so, in part, by threatening to fine businesses that fail or refuse to report shoplifting.
The three county commissioners on Tuesday passed on first reading a measure that would hit businesses in unincorporated parts of the county with $50 fines for each 24-hour period following an unreported theft, with a maximum fine of $1,000 per incident.
The measure still needs a second vote to become law.
“We’re not going to allow a culture where people walk out of a store with a stack of drills and nobody says a word — that era is over in Douglas County,” said Commissioner Abe Laydon during a livestreamed news conference from county headquarters in Castle Rock on Tuesday. “We also want to protect honest customers. So we’re putting an end to the era of silent losses that get passed on to the community.”
District Attorney George Brauchler, whose office prosecutes criminals in Douglas County, cited state laws that have raised dollar thresholds and lowered penalties for retail theft as a big contributor to the problem. Many of those changes to misdemeanor and petty offenses handled in state courts were part of sweeping reforms in 2021 that resulted from a criminal justice review of the misdemeanor code, but critics argued it went too far.
The practice of releasing thieves on personal recognizance bonds will be severely curtailed in the county, Brauchler said.
“That culture is a failed culture — it hasn’t worked,” Brauchler said at the event. “We wanted to take a different approach, and so the approach that I pitched … was we’re going to try to arrest everybody. You steal from us, expect to go to jail.”
But Chris Howes, the president of the Colorado Retail Council, is wary of placing part of the burden on retailers when it comes to merchandise disappearing from their shelves. Douglas County says there are about 900 retail outlets in unincorporated parts of the county.
“Retail store staff are busy enough with customer service during the holiday shopping season without having to adhere to additional strict mandates — so we look forward to more conversations with county officials,” he said. “Penalizing the store for the actions of thieves may not be the most effective approach.”
Jon Caldara, the president of the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute, agreed with Douglas County leaders that state lawmakers in recent years paved the way for increased criminal activity in Colorado by passing what he called “soft-on-crime” laws.
But for him, the idea of punishing retail outlets in the wake of a theft is a bridge too far.
“It is such the wrong approach, I believe,” Caldara said. “To be victimized by a crime and then victimized by the system is wrong.”
Theft has been a bane to Colorado retailers over the last few years, with grocery and convenience stores among those locking up certain highly sought items to keep them from disappearing. Brazen robberies have made headlines, as happened when four thieves dressed up as construction workers and used drills, power saws and blowtorches to ransack a Cherry Creek jeweler last year.
The men made off with more than $12 million in luxury watches and accessories.
In a report released last month, the Common Sense Institute, a business-oriented think tank, found that Colorado recorded 27,094 shoplifting incidents in 2024, a 22.4% increase over the prior year. That number was nearly 10% higher than a decade ago, the organization reported.
The institute also found that nearly 90% of retail thefts in Colorado go unreported.
That’s a percentage Commissioner George Teal wants to sharply reduce.
“We also know that many local storefronts are taking their cues from corporate headquarters, in places like New York and San Francisco, where liberal policies allow for lawlessness,” he said. “If we don’t know about it, we can’t address it.”
Douglas County’s ordinance would require businesses to report a theft within 96 hours of it happening, though it’s not clear how law enforcement would discover a violation of that rule. It also would require retailers to retain photographic or video evidence of a crime and forbid management from retaliating against an employee who reports a theft.
“We don’t tolerate shoplifting in Douglas County,” Laydon said. “We protect our retailers, and we protect our citizens and the citizens that are shopping.”
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