It's California, that state is ******. In San Francisco they've recently 'legalised' shoplifting of anything up to a value of $950 by making it a misdemeanour rather than a felony. Crimes of that nature sky-rocketed and the police can't be arsed to investigate, so the usual suspects are out in force and helping themselves to anything and everything with little to no recourse.
The US police often can't be bothered to investigate actual crimes that go on in front of their eyes, or that they're called to that are definitely felonies.
I've seen so many tales of people in "good" neighbourhoods with extremely well funded police getting a bored officer who can barely be bothered to take a report of fairly major crimes because they're not interesting or not going to be instantly solvable, so it's seen as a problem for the police as it means their stats are going to look.
One of the reasons you tend not to send people to jail for low value, non violent crimes is because it costs so much to do so and there are, in most countries, often better options. Is it worth sending someone to jail because they've stolen $50 worth of goods, and spending tens of thousands on that (and ensuring the person is far more likely to resort to crime in the future), or is it worth trying to spend a few hundred on other options as the first resort.