Norfolk City Council members plan to vote on an ordinance Tuesday that will allow the city attorney’s office to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting charges.
The proposal comes after the city’s mayor and commonwealth’s attorney recently traded barbs over the handling of shoplifting cases.
Council members plan to vote on changes to the city code which would make shoplifting a class 1 misdemeanor under a newly-written section. The change would allow City Attorney Bernard Pishko’s office to prosecute the charges, Pishko said in an email. Pishko also said in an email that there is no limit to the dollar amount that could be prosecuted as a class-one misdemeanor under the proposed code section…