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# READ-HANDED: Law stymies those who steal free newspapers No stopping the presses
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/read-handed-law-stymies-those-who-steal-free-newspapers-no-stopping-the-presses/
- Published: 2007-01-04T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T23:35:45.000Z
- Author: Kevin Herrera
- Tags: Crime, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Free papers battling rampant recyclers*

CITYWIDE — Just because they are free, that doesn’t mean it’s OK to pick up hundreds of local newspapers and recycle them.

But according to publishers of the Santa Monica Daily Press and the Santa Monica Mirror, as well officials with the police department, some paper perusers — or abusers — haven’t gotten the message and are continuing to swipe issues each day, despite a state law that prohibits it.

Police are on the lookout for thieves after receiving complaints by the publisher of the Mirror, Michael Rosenthal, as well as other publications in the area.

“It’s a tremendous issue,” said Rosenthal, who lobbied legislators to pass the anti-theft bill.“Everyone says it’s a free paper, so no big deal right? Well, wrong. First of all, we pay to have it published. We have advertisers who pay for space and we have readers who want to get their local news. Stealing papers comes at a great expense.”

Rosenthal estimated that about a quarter of a million papers have been stolen in the last 10 years, many of them from racks along Wilshire Boulevard.

“The public generally respects the newspapers and treats them fairly well, but then there are those who like to vandalize the racks, kicking them in,” Rosenthal said.

The new law (AB2612) applies to anyone who takes more than 25 copies of any freely distributed newspaper with the intent to either deprive readers of their content, to recycle them, or to harm a business competitor for some economic advantage. Those caught are subject to a $250 fine. A subsequent offense could be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $500, sentencing of up to 10 days in county jail or both.

The measure, by Assembly Minority Leader George Plescia (R-La Jolla), is a response to several incidents in which large numbers of free papers were taken from news boxes to be sold for recycling or to keep others from reading them.

In one case, the entire press run of the Chula Vista Star was taken from news racks on three different occasions and sold to recy-clers in Mexico. Authorities said they were powerless to prosecute because the newspapers were free and had no fair market value.

In another instance, thousands of copies of the Epoch Times began disappearing in the San Gabriel Valley after the Chinese language paper began publishing articles on human rights violations and other issues in China.

Stealing free newspapers has “become a festering problem,” said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which lobbied for the law’s passage.“There are a lot of thefts of college newspapers when individuals disagree with a story or editorial, and in a couple of cases, college presidents didn’t want papers to be circulated around campus and had campus police remove them.

“This is about free speech and those advertisers who are paying good money for the advertisements that are missing before readers have a chance to see them,” said Ewert.

Glenn Bolan, circulation manager for the Daily Press, said he is happy the new law is in effect and is thinking of posting a sign at one of the racks most often targeted so that he can give fair warning to those taking the papers.

“The thefts aren’t really a big deal,” Bolan said. “It’s just annoying because some of the papers are not getting out.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 4, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/010407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)