The Maricopa County Attorney's Office announced an indictment against a man who allegedly stole from cosmetic stores around the Phoenix metropolitan area on Monday, and County Attorney Rachel Mitchell is hoping to send a warning to aspiring thieves.
Yosvany Maza Portilla was indicted on 20 counts of organized retail theft for his alleged actions over a year and a half, and some of the merchandise he stole from stores like Ulta and Sephora was worth more than $11,500, according to the attorney's office news release.
Mitchell told The Center Square in an exclusive interview that she is taking a different approach from other heavily-populated areas around the county. In neighboring California, nine of the 15 most populated counties had an increase in robberies on "commercial establishments" in 2022, when compared with 2019, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
"Eventually, my hope is that when people understand that we are extremely serious about this, that it dwindles off. That these major players go somewhere else, prison, first of all, or back to their own home states. But that's what we want to do, is to convince people that this is not the place. I think they've gotten the message from looking around the country, and there are a lot of places around this country that are not taking this seriously. That we are," she said.
As for why Maricopa County is dealing with retail crime differently than other places of a similar size, she credited varying approaches in local leadership.
"It's not who's in the White House or who's at the U.S. Capitol. It's who the city council people are, whether they support and fund the police, and it's who your district attorney or county attorney is. So my role, and when you have a city council that does not fund and support the police, and you have a DA or a county attorney saying, 'I'm not gonna enforce the law,' you get the disaster that has become Los Angeles or Chicago," Mitchell, a Republican, said.
