Random acts of violence seem to be more common of late, and it looks like nobody is safe.
Marysville City Councilman Dom Belza detailed the attack on Mayor Chris Branscum, allegedly at the hands of a homeless man identified as 36-year-old Derek Hopkins, on August 22. Belza says that he, the mayor, Chief of Police Christian Sachs, and a couple of Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s congressional aides were surveying some damage to a historic building downtown when the mayor was allegedly sucker punched.
We were standing on the sidewalk near the site having a casual conversation. An individual was crossing at the crosswalk. And right as he got to the mayor, who had his back turned, the individual reached back and swung and hit him right square in the back,” the councilman explained. “There was no communication, no altercation. There was nothing that instigated the punch. It was just a complete random act of violence.”
Mayor Branscum spoke about the incident to KCRA-TV saying that he thought he had been “hit by a car.”
“I was hit so hard. The next thing I know, there’s this guy sliding by me, running, and I yelled an expletive at him.”
Belza claims he had noticed the man coming up behind the mayor.
“I kept my eye on him, but as he approached, he just hauled off and slugged the mayor right in the back, square in the back.”
Belza claims his “instincts kicked in” and he ran down the suspect, tackling him to the ground, and was allegedly attacked in the process.
“I saw the attacker take off running down the street, so instinct kicked in, and I ran after the attacker. As I was gaining on him, and we were about halfway down the block, he turned around and saw me over his shoulder,” he recalled, saying that the man allegedly punched him in the side of the head.
“After that, I engaged him and took him down to the ground and restrained him until the chief of police was able to get there. We held him in custody until he was officially arrested,” Belza added, saying that this is just a symptom of a deeper problem within the community.
“In a bigger light and a larger picture of this whole situation, this is something that we’re dealing with on a regular basis. Maybe not necessarily where an elected official gets attacked, but where there’s many more of these types of crimes and these types of attacks in communities across California.”
“It speaks to a much bigger issue in the state. This attack is really a result of the soft-on-crime policy that California has implemented over the last 10 years,” he noted.
“Prop 47 is the anchor of that soft on crime,” Belza added, mentioning Proposition 47 which was signed into law in 2014 and “reclassified six minor felony offenses as misdemeanors, including shoplifting of merchandise valued at less than $950 and drug possession” according to Fox News.
The Attorney General of California in 2014 was none other than Vice President Kamala Harris, who Belza says pushed the legislation.
“She was the one who really pushed this heavily, and since then, we’ve just seen crime go rampant in California. I think we should all be really concerned that if she is running for president, or if she becomes president, that the entire nation is going to deal with the same issues that California is dealing with for the last 10 years,” he said. “That should be a huge, huge concern for all of us.”
Despite Marysville’s small size, Belza says they aren’t immune to the effects of legislation that demands more relaxed penalties for such crimes.
“We’re a small community in Northern California, and we’ve been dealing with homelessness, substance abuse, vagrancy, loitering and vandalism. One of our local coffee shops last year just randomly had a chair thrown through its window,” he revealed. “We’ve just seen a huge increase in those types of crime, not to mention the increase in hard crimes, like murders.”
The councilman also had a bone to pick with the claim that violent crime has decreased in the state of California, pointing an accusatory finger at how such things are reported.
“When you report it differently, it’s not necessarily that the crime is going down. What used to be reported as a felony, now is reported as a misdemeanor, and what used to be reported as a misdemeanor is now reported as a lighter infraction crime,” he said. “And so it’s not that crime has gone down. I would say the reality is we’ve seen crime go up to the point where most of our residents in Marysville are afraid to go to the store. They’re afraid to walk down the street.”
“And situations like this are proof that California is not a safe state and that these small, rural communities aren’t safe anymore,” he added, recounting the harrowing tale of an elderly woman who was harassed while attempting to get her medication.
“I had a call from a lady that I know, an elderly lady in town, who went to the local (drug store) to pick up her medications. And as she was trying to get back to her car from the storefront, she was confronted by two individuals in the street that wanted to harass her. She doesn’t have anybody there to help her or to protect her.”
Hopkins is currently being held on $50,000 bail and is facing a total of eight charges including felony assault of a public official and felony elder abuse.
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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