They've taken stories about a very small number of cities, albeit large metro areas such as San Francisco, reapproaching how they prosecute shoplifters or how police prioritize responding to shoplifters. Not only is shoplifting not legal on a broad scale, but it's a very disingenuous interpretation.
The subtitle says "Walgreens has closed 22 stores in the city, where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized." Refusal to arrest or prosecute, which is the reality on the ground, is de facto legalization. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not very helpful to say "no, that's disingenuous, you and I both know it's a harlequin mallard."
... completely ignoring the part where I highlighted that GP said "shoplifting is now legal" in a broad sense, and I then specified that that is, in reality, limited to a handful of cities. It would be obvious that San Francisco is one of them, and that I never argued that it wasn't de facto legal there.
Hence the phrase, in the part you quoted, "on a broad scale". Bailing from one city is not a broad scale - I'm sitting in the parking lot of a busy Walgreens in a different state waiting on food truck tacos as I edit this.
You’re correct but you’re also missing the point. If law enforcement outright says that they won’t show up to enforce a law, there isn’t a difference between following that law and breaking it. You face the same consequences.
Effectively, yes. Going ten over the limit here isn't "legal", per se, but it's not something you'll be pulled over for, so everyone does it. It's "legal".
Plenty of people get pulled over for going ten over, some states are known for pulling over for anything over the limit. Hell, lots of people get profiled and pulled over for nothing at all. It’s so interesting to see this kind of privilege on display, thinking that pushing the legal boundaries is now technically “legal”.
Eh, de facto legalised. When states legalise marijuana and the Fed’s don’t enforce, we freely call it legalised, even if that isn’t technically correct, because it practically is. Shoplifting is de facto legalised in San Francisco.
