Gov. Gavin Newsom responds to California crime concerns with a pro-cop push to fund the police.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Dec. 17 he will be asking the Legislature to spend more than $350 million to ramp up crime-fighting efforts.

The governor is responding to a raft of flash-mob-style shoplifting incidents that struck retailers in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, and that inspired a cascade of headlines about out-of-control crime.

The announcement is the latest indication that California’s Democratic leaders want to talk tough on crime, even as they defend a decade’s worth of reforms aimed at making the criminal justice system less punitive and discriminatory. “We’re not walking back on our commitment in this state to advance comprehensive reforms,” Newsom said at a press conference at a CHP post in Dublin. “But we also have to recognize this moment we’re in. We have to recognize people’s fears and anxieties.”

“Stats mean nothing in terms of your feelings.”

Indeed, Newsom stressed that his announcement was motivated more by growing public concern about crime than the crime itself.

“I could regale you with facts,” he said, noting that despite an apparent increase this year, crime remains at a relative historical low across the state. “Stats mean nothing in terms of your feelings.”

Newsom went to special lengths to defend Proposition 47 in particular. The 2014 voter-backed initiative reduced penalties for certain low-level offenses, including theft and shoplifting of less than $950, from felonies to misdemeanors. For nearly a decade, conservatives have predicted that the loosened rules would result in a crime wave. Last year, tough-on-crime activists put a measure on the ballot to ratchet some of those penalties back up. It failed by 24 percentage points.

But the latest series of high-profile shoplifting raids has revived that debate. Palmdale Republican Tom Lackey, vice chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, called Newsom’s announcement “too little, too late.”

Heading into an election year, Newsom’s budget proposal appears intended to leave voters with the opposite impression. If the Democratic Legislature approves the governor’s proposal: $255 million in grants would go to local law enforcement agencies to combat organized retail crime; $18 million would create a new statewide anti-theft team; $25 million would fund local gun buy-back programs; $20 million would assist the National Guard to intercept fentanyl and other drugs at the Mexico border; $20 million would be reserved to cover uninsured losses of small businesses hit by thieves; and more.

The package will be included in the budget proposal that Newsom will unveil in January.

Standing beside Newsom at the press conference was Attorney General Rob Bonta. Newsom appointed Bonta in March, plucking him from the Assembly where he was one of the most liberal members on criminal justice issues.

Opposition to crime is a bipartisan instinct, Bonta said: “I’ve not met anyone who wants to be a victim of crime – Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t matter.”

BEN CHRISTOPHER covers politics and elections for CalMatters, where this story first appeared