Banks are ‘commercial establishments’ — so an inmate is freed

A bank is a “commercial establishment,” a state appeals court said Friday — which meant that a convicted check forger, despite prosecutors’ objections, doesn’t have to return to jail. It was another case about the meaning of Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that reduced a number of felony crimes in California to misdemeanors, shortening their sentences considerably. Among them was shoplifting, newly defined as entering an open commercial establishment with the intent to take money or property worth no more than $950. A Riverside County man, Willie Abarca, was sentenced to three years behind bars for burglary after he tried to pass a forged $300 check at a bank in