LAPD Uncovers Warehouse Filled with $5 Million in Stolen Nike Merch

California law enforcement apprehended a suspect accused of running a massive organized retail crime operation, uncovering a warehouse stuffed with millions of dollars worth of Nike merchandise in the process.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) Commercial Crimes Division Cargo Theft Unit, the Major Theft Task Force, and the Organized Retail Crimes Task Force (ORCTF) executed two search warrants on Jan. 27, searching locations in Hollywood and the City of Hawthorne, Calif. According to police, the suspect was seen delivering the stolen Nike shoes to the Hawthorne location, which was identified as a warehouse.

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Nike’s global security director aided detectives and other supply chain investigators in searching the facility, leading to the discovery of thousands of pairs of Nike shoes, clothing, accessories and “unique prototypes” not released to the public. The entire haul was worth about $5 million, LAPD said.

Roy Lee Harvey Jr., 37, was arrested as a result of the investigation, and stands accused of receiving, redistributing and reselling a high dollar amount of stolen property. He was booked under California penal code 496(a), which pertains to receiving stolen property.

With organized retail crime and retail theft ratcheting up across the state’s most populous cities and counties, Prop. 47, which raised the felony threshold for shoplifting to $950, has been thrust into the spotlight. California Governor Gavin Newsom has consistently defended the legislation, also known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, as an essential tool for criminal justice reform.

But retail groups, law enforcement and other politicians (including fellow Democrats) have harshly criticized Prop. 47 since it passed in 2014. And last week, it Newsom saw the law’s effects in action.

At a press conference Wednesday with the mayors of California’s biggest cities, the governor shared an anecdote about a recent trip to the Target store in Sacramento where he witnessed shoplifting firsthand.

“He picks it up and keeps walking out as we’re checking out,” the governor said, referencing a thief who exited the store without paying for merchandise. A retail worker at the register noted the incident but did not intervene. “’Oh, he’s just walking out—he didn’t pay for that,’” Newsom reported her saying.

“Well, why don’t you stop him?” Newsom asked the employee. In response, she told him, “The governor lowered the threshold. There’s no accountability.”

“I said, ‘That’s just not true…Where’s your manager? How are you blaming the governor?’” he added. “I was like, ‘Why am I spending $380; everyone can walk the hell right out.'”

The governor’s story garnered backlash on social media, with some detractors characterizing his comments as tone-deaf as he appeared to foist the blame for escalating retail theft on store employees.

California Republican Party chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson swiftly called out Newsom in a post on X. “Shoutout to this store clerk for saying to the governor’s face what every Californian has wanted to say: that he and his radical @CA_Dem buddies are to blame for CA’s surging crime. Sadly, Newsom still didn’t seem to take the hint,” she wrote.

Law enforcement officers across the state, including Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper, who personally responded to incidents at the Target location visited by Newsom this week, have fingered Prop. 47 for incentivizing repeat offenders. But Cooper told Sourcing Journal last fall that it’s a combination of “the law and the retailers sitting on their hands not doing anything” that has made California’s retail crime epidemic “1000 times worse.”

Many stores have implemented hands-off policies when it comes to shoplifters, ostensibly to protect retail workers from danger (and themselves from liability). And while a handful of recent bills have aimed to institute harsher penalties for retail theft, retailers aren’t throwing their weight behind these plans, Cooper said. A former state assembly member, the Sacramento Sheriff said it’s essential for retailers, especially big box stores like Target, to lend their support to legislative proposals if they are to gain traction.

But companies are often reticent when it comes to public policy, not wanting to alienate any segment of their consumer base. “Retailers have their fingers up to the political wind—when some new turmoil arises, maybe some reform issue comes up, they’re more worried about their image than doing what’s right for their customers or employees,” Cooper said.

“There were bills put forth by the legislature that they did not support that would have changed things,” he added.