Norfolk to vote on allowing city attorney to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting
Norfolk City Council members plan to vote on an ordinance Tuesday that will allow the city attorney's office to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting charges.
The proposal comes after the city's mayor and commonwealth's attorney recently traded barbs over the handling of shoplifting cases.
Council members plan to vote on changes to the city code which would make shoplifting a class 1 misdemeanor under a newly-written section. The change would allow City Attorney Bernard Pishko's office to prosecute the charges, Pishko said in an email. Pishko also said in an email that there is no limit to the dollar amount that could be prosecuted as a class-one misdemeanor under the proposed code section.
'Once this code section is adopted, we will ask the police to charge under the city code,' Pishko said. 'It is proposed as a class one misdemeanor with a fine of up to $2,500 and imprisonment of up to one year.'
The ordinance would take effect immediately upon passage.
Pishko said the cases would be handled by current city attorneys rather than new hires. He said the fines from the cases would pay for any additional costs incurred by the prosecutions.
The code change was first proposed by Mayor Kenny Alexander at his annual State of the City address in April. Alexander said Commonwealth's Attorney Ramin Fatehi and his office were not doing enough to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting cases. Fatehi has disputed the claims, saying his office prosecutes every felony shoplifting case. He said the issue is his office doesn't receive enough funding from the city or state to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting cases.
The argument comes as Fatehi is being challenged in a June 17 Democratic primary election by John Butler, a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Norfolk. Butler has been endorsed by Alexander and City Council members Jeremy McGee, Tommy Smigiel and Courtney Doyle.
In an email, Fatehi said the ordinance was a political stunt by the mayor and other allies who supported his primary opponent.
The threshold for felony larceny has been raised in recent years and now stands at $1,000 or more in stolen goods. That was increased from $200 to $500 in 2018, and from $500 to $1,000 in 2020. The felony charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $2,500, according to the Code of Virginia.
Property crime, which includes burglaries and larcenies, has declined in Norfolk during the past few years. It declined about 25% from 2022 to 2024, from 11,488 to 8,588 incidents, according to Norfolk Police Department data. During the same time period, larcenies declined about 21%, from 9,094 to 7,188. Larcenies this year are down another 11% compared with 2024, Fatehi said in late April.
Still, shoplifting can devastate small businesses with thefts of thousands of dollars of merchandise, Jenny Crittenden, president and CEO of the Retail Alliance trade group for local retailers, told the Pilot in late April.
Trevor Metcalfe, 757-222-5345, trevor.metcalfe@pilotonline.com
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