Tired of rampant shoplifting scaring away citizens and shoppers, Long Beach is trying to force stores to add staff and reduce dependence on self-checkout.

The beachfront city, with a population of around half a million, last month started requiring major food and pharmacy retailers to do more to stop theft. So far, the measures have led to a heated debate and longer lines.

Employees like the new law. The retail chains warn that the restrictions could backfire. Shoppers are confused.

The city’s “Safe Stores are Staffed Stores” ordinance is the first of its kind in the country. It requires large stores to increase the number of employees relative to self-checkout stands and also puts a limit on the number of items and types of goods that can be rung up at self-checkout.

It is the latest flash point in a national debate about how to handle what some see as an epidemic of shoplifting. This issue is affecting the quality of life for consumers who are tired of witnessing theft or dealing with measures to stop it, such as locked-up shelves.

The Long Beach ordinance will protect employees and shoppers from dangerous situations, said Matt Bell, the secretary-treasurer of UFCW 324, the union that represents grocery workers.

“The checkers and the cashiers are on the front lines of this,” he said. “It really is necessary to provide them safety and security and better staffing.”

The city said it passed the ordinance to “advance public safety and prevent retail theft,” citing “hostile and unsafe” conditions. Theft is common and underreported at self-checkout, according to the ordinance.

Rampant shoplifting has been a growing issue across the country, forcing stores to beef up security and lock up often-stolen items.

The National Retail Federation estimates that shoplifting incidents in the U.S. increased by 93% from 2019 to 2023. In 2023, retailers surveyed by the federation reported an average of 177 retail thefts per day.

The Long Beach regulations require that a large store have at least one staff member for every three self-checkout stations it uses. It sets a limit of 15 items per customer for self-checkout. Meanwhile, any items locked inside a case in the store can no longer be bought through self-checkout, according to the ordinance.

As the ordinance will force outlets to either hire more people or cut the number of self-checkout kiosks, the California Grocers Assn. warned that consumers could end up facing longer lines and higher grocery prices.

In response to the requirements, some Albertsons and Vons in Long Beach have closed their self-checkout lanes.

“We are currently unable to operate our self-checkout lanes … due to a new City of Long Beach ordinance,” said a sign for customers at a Vons in downtown Long Beach.

At a Target in Long Beach, five self-checkout stations were open and staffed by one employee. The store would need to add another employee to monitor self-checkout if it wanted to open more stations, according to the ordinance.

Francilla Isaac, a shopper who lives in the area, said she has seen closed self-checkout lanes and longer lines around the city.

“I use it a lot when I’m just here to get a few items,” Isaac said of self-checkout. “But all the stores are the same now, they have it closed.”

Groups representing grocers and retailers such as Target and Walmart said the ordinance will increase labor costs for employers, leading to higher price tags on the shelf. It will also reduce sales in stores where self-checkout has closed.

“These efforts will ultimately damage self-checkout,” said Nate Rose, a vice president at the California Grocers Assn. “We’re seeing that worst-case scenario play out where a number of grocers have decided it’s not worth it to keep the self-checkout lanes open.”

The California Retailers Assn. said retailers need freedom to decide on their own what is the most efficient way to deal with theft.

“The problem with the Long Beach ordinance is that it’s so constricting,” said Rachel Michelin, president of the association. “I think we’re going to see unintended consequences.”

Union leader Bell said grocery companies oppose the ordinance because they don’t want to hire more staff or increase their current staff’s hours. While stores may want to avoid hiring more people amid regular increases in minimum wage, they may find that being forced to hire more people actually boosts sales and efficiency.

“This should be better for the customers,” he said. “And it should actually improve profitability for the companies.”

Lisa Adams comes to Long Beach from Utah every month with her husband to sail on their boat. She misses easy access to self-checkout and hopes it will return soon, but they understand the need to tamp down on theft in the city.

She’s witnessed the theft problem firsthand.

“It was chaotic and loud,” she said. “This guy was pretending to ring his stuff up, and then he booked it for the door.”

The incursion of armed federal immigration agents in his beloved hometown of Los Angeles shocked Kent Wong.

The labor leader and educator spent the summer vigorously organizing training sessions for more than a thousand workers and union organizers to peacefully protest the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrant communities. It was work he had done for much of his life, but which he said had taken on more urgency now.

“This is a time that calls for thoughtful, mass action,” Wong told The Times in an interview in July. “How could this blatant racial profiling, the terrorizing of the communities of Los Angeles, take place without a direct challenge to this injustice? That’s why we came together.”

Wong, who spent decades teaching a doctrine of nonviolent resistance, died Wednesday at a hospital in Los Angeles at the age of 69, due to cardiopulmonary failure with complications from endocarditis.

His family and his longtime colleagues said the principles of understanding and peace he advocated were reflective of how he also conducted himself in his personal life. He was also known for holding closely the cause of supporting immigrant workers, as well as fostering Asian American labor leaders.

“At the heart of everything Kent did was his unwavering commitment to protecting and uplifting immigrant workers,” said California state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a former longtime labor leader who built deep ties with Wong over decades of working together, in a statement.

Susan Minato, co-president of hospitality union Unite Here Local 11 who was involved in organizing the training sessions over the summer with Wong, said when he founded an affinity group called the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance in the 1990s, he reached out and brought her into the fold.

“Embracing people and making people feel comfortable and like they belonged is nonviolence in an interpersonal way, and he practiced that,” Minato said.

As a fifth-generation Chinese American, Wong had always understood the struggle of immigrants, and sought to connect the labor movement across borders.

He was the son of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Delbert Wong, the first Chinese American judge in the continental United States, and Dolores Wong, a psychiatric social worker and leader in the effort to establish a public library in Chinatown.

Both of Wong’s grandmothers, who were born in the U.S., lost their citizenship when they married male Chinese nationals — the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which went into effect in 1882.

“He saw how citizenship is often a weapon used to divide communities and divide families,” his son Ryan said.

Wong helped to establish sister-city relations between the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and labor councils in Shanghai and Beijing in China in 2007. Among his unfinished projects was to bring U.S. and Palestinian labor educators to meet in Jordan, to develop cross-border ties and curriculum.

Wong’s son called him a “gentle, loving man,” recalling how Wong would pack lunch for him and his brother daily while they were growing up, and cooked dinner nearly every night.

“He had this amazing ability to come home, look in the refrigerator and cook a bok choy dish, a pork dish, and rice and tofu dishes in under an hour,” he said.

And he would talk his sons through conflicts patiently and rationally, “through all sides of what was happening,” Ryan said.

“Rather than just say, it’s that person’s fault or your fault, he was always bringing his organizer mind to how we would repair the relationship and move forward together,” he said. “I would say he lived by his principles of nonviolence and equality and love also in the home. “

Wong had great admiration for worker and civil rights icon the Rev. James Lawson Jr., who served as a longtime mentor to Wong, as well as other stalwarts in L.A., including Durazo and the city’s Mayor Karen Bass.

Wong grew up in Silver Lake, and attended the L.A.-based People’s College of Law, which had been founded with the goal of training legal advocates for underserved communities.

Early in his career, Wong was the staff attorney for a local chapter of the Service Employees International Union. He served as the founding president of the United Assn. for Labor Education, and a vice president of the California Federation of Teachers.

He joined the UCLA Labor Center as its director in 1991, and greatly grew its ranks, expanding it from three staff members to 42. He helped to secure additional state funds to create a UC-wide network of labor research centers across nine campuses.

In 2021, with support from Durazo, Wong secured funding from the California Legislature to establish a permanent home for the UCLA Labor Center in the working-class neighborhood of MacArthur Park, with the office building named in honor of Lawson, who died last year.

Bass said that the city had “lost one of its greatest champions for justice.”

“His legacy lives on in the Labor Centers across the UC system, in the thousands of organizers he mentored, and in every worker who stands a little taller because Kent Wong believed in them,” Bass said in a Thursday statement.

Wong’s death followed the unexpected passing of another person that roiled the local community, Buena Park labor leader Andrea Zinder, who was a 42-year veteran of the United Food and Commercial Workers union in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Wong is survived by his two sons, Ryan and Robin; his wife, Jai Lee; his sister, Shelley Wong Pitts; and a brother, Marshall Wong. Another brother of his, Duane Wong, died in 2016.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Thursday intended to bolster California’s property insurer of last resort, which was hit hard by January’s wildfires.

The package of bills attempts to ease the California FAIR Plan’s financial woes while also giving lawmakers more oversight over the carrier, which is operated by the state’s licensed home insurers and offers coverage to property owners who can’t get or afford it elsewhere.

“The kinds of climate-fueled firestorms like we saw in January will only continue to worsen over time. That’s why we’re taking action now to continue strengthening California’s insurance market to be more resilient in the face of the climate crisis,” Newsom said in a news release.

The FAIR Plan suffered an estimated $4 billion in losses, largely due to the Palisades and Eaton fires, after its rolls grew over the last several years as insurers withdrew from California’s home insurance market.

The losses forced the plan to assess its member carriers $1 billion to pay its claims, half of which could be recouped from the carriers’ own customers across the state. It recently filed for a 36% rate increase.

The FAIR Plan also has been sued by victims of the Jan. 7 fires over its rejection of smoke damage claims, which prompted Newsom last month to demand the insurer handle such claims “expeditiously and fairly.”

In response to such outsize losses, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 226, which will enable the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank to issue bonds on behalf of the plan to pay for catastrophic claims.

Co-authored by Assemblymember Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), chair of the Assembly insurance committee, and sponsored by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, the bill also will allow the plan to enter into lines of credit with institutional lenders.

The January fires also highlighted a long-standing issue critics have had with the plan — that it has historically been stingy with its financial disclosures. After the blazes, there was a paucity of information about its losses and whether it could cover them.

Assembly Bill 234, also coauthored by Calderon, requires the Speaker of the Assembly and the chairperson of the Senate Rules Committee, or their designees, to serve as nonvoting members of the plan’s governing committee, which is dominated by the insurance carriers who operate and financially back it.

“These crucial reforms to the FAIR Plan mark a significant step forward in protecting consumers, stabilizing the market, and enhancing transparency,” Lara said a statement.

The governor signed two other FAIR Plan bills on Thursday. Senate Bill 525 by Sen. Brian W. Jones (R-Santee), the Senate minority leader, requires the plan to offer insurance for manufactured homes that is comparable with what it offers to other residential properties.

Assembly Bill 290 by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda) is a modernization bill that requires the FAIR Plan to establish an automatic payment plan for its customers.

The FAIR Plan issued a statement Thursday that it supported AB 226, the bond measure bill, and would work to implement the other legislation as required by law.

Another insurance bill signed by the governor, Assembly Bill 1, by Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael), requires the insurance department to ensure that its Safer from Wildfires program includes the most up-to-date fire-risk reduction measures.

Insurers writing property coverage in California are required to discount premiums to account for steps taken by individual homeowners, businesses and communities that lessen wildfire risks.