Just hours after Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of bills into law to combat smash-and-grab robberies in the crime-ridden state, a large group of thieves stormed three separate 7-Eleven stores in Los Angeles, swiping food and drink items before fleeing on bicycles, according to NBC.
The group of up to 30 “kids and teenagers” began their rampage at the 7-Eleven located at 7040 West Sunset Boulevard just after 8 p.m. where they smashed a window and stole items.
They then moved onto a store near Hollywood Blvd and Highland Ave. about 15 minutes later where a worker there was allegedly assaulted, the outlet reported.
A third store on Santa Monica Boulevard was hit at around 8:22 p.m., the outlet reports, where they broke a front window and took more than $2,000 worth of items including a box of chargers, the outlet reports, citing a store manager.
One store manager told the outlet that the teens caught on video surveillance cameras on Friday, appear to be the same group that struck two other 7-Eleven locations in the area last week. Footage from one of the robberies shows the teens ransacking a store with their faces left uncovered and clearly visible.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Friday’s string of smash and grabs come after Newsom hailed his new bills as a turning point in the Golden State’s bid to tackle the lawless behavior which has plagued California and other states in recent years. The incidents in many cases have been captured on video and posted online, bringing national attention to the rise of retail theft in the Golden State.
The bipartisan package of 10 bills creates stricter penalties for repeat offenders and people running professional reselling schemes.
The legislation allows prosecutors to combine the value of items stolen from different victims across various counties to help meet the threshold for felony grand theft and enforce harsher penalties for smash-and-grabs and large-scale reselling operations.
“This goes to the heart of the issue, and it does it in a thoughtful and judicious way,” Newsom said of the package. “This is the real deal.”
While the package received bipartisan support from the California Legislature, some progressive Democrats did not vote for it over concerns that some of it was too punitive.
The legislation also aims to address cargo thefts and to close a legal loophole to make it easier to prosecute auto thefts regardless of whether the vehicle was locked and requires marketplaces like eBay to begin gathering bank account and tax identification numbers from high-volume sellers.
This comes as Democratic leadership works to show they are tough on crime while at the same time urging voters to reject Proposition 36, a ballot measure that would impose felony charges for repeat shoplifters and some drug charges and create harsher sentences for these crimes.
Newsom and fellow state Democrats worked for months on an unsuccessful effort to keep Proposition 36 off the ballot for November’s election. Democrats feared the measure would disproportionately criminalize low-income people and those with substance issues instead of targeting ringleaders who hire large groups of people to steal goods for them to resell online.
Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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