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Sheriff of California’s 4th largest county says public safety ‘in crisis’ due to ‘radical progressive agenda’

February 25, 2024 | | Print Article

The Chief Law Enforcement Officer of California’s fourth-largest county says the state’s “public safety is in crisis.”

“Crime is steadily on the rise and our public safety policy is one of the worst, if not the worst in the nation,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco stated at a recent press conference.

And, the sheriff claimed, it’s happening by design.

“I wanna make this clear and I want there to be no mistake in what I am saying,” Bianco told the press. “This is not by accident.”

The crisis in California, he said, is the product of “a radical progressive agenda.”

“The driving force in our crisis is a radical progressive agenda fraudulently called ‘criminal justice reform,'” Bianco stated. “This is nothing short of a sick and twisted social experiment where law enforcement is the bad guy and criminals are somehow victims of society and not responsible for their actions, their crimes, or accountable to their countless victims.”

The sheriff pointed to the Public Safety Realignment Act, signed into California law by the Golden State’s former progressive governor, Jerry Brown, in 2011.

According to the Los Angeles County Probation website, “AB 109 is fashioned to meet the U.S. Supreme Court Order to reduce the prison population of the State’s 33 prisons. Noteworthy is the fact that no inmates currently in state prison will be transferred to county jails or released early.”

“AB 109 is fashioned to meet the U.S. Supreme Court Order to reduce the prison population of the State’s 33 prisons,” Probation explains.

Bianco said it was with the passage of that legislation that California’s current problems began.

“State government failed to take responsibility for prison overcrowding or their failure to build more prisons,” he said, “and instead forced county jails to house state inmates while simultaneously releasing thousands of felons early.”

“This has pushed our county jails to a near collapse and caused the early release of countless criminals,” Bianco stated.

And what California Governor Gavin Newsom is doing about it, according to the sheriff, “defies common sense.”

“Thousands upon thousands of criminals are being released from custody early, crime is increasing, and our governor is closing prisons instead of building new ones,” Bianco said. “It defies common sense.”

The sheriff called the state’s Prop 47, passed in 2014, “a complete fraud” that was “perpetrated in California.”

The proposition’s “stated purpose,” according to the Judicial Branch of California, is to “ensure that prison spending is focused on violent and serious offenses, to maximize alternatives for non-serious, nonviolent crime, and to invest the savings generated from [the proposition] into prevention and support programs in K-12 schools, victim services, and mental health and drug treatment.”

Additionally, it is to ensure “that sentences for people convicted of dangerous crimes like rape, murder, and child molestation are not changed.”

“The proposition states that it ‘shall be liberally construed to effectuate its purposes,'” California Courts states.

“Prop 47 changed many felonies to misdemeanors, basically legalized drug use, and increased the amount of petty — petty — theft to nearly $1,000,” Bianco told the press.

“In 2016, another lie was perpetrated on voters with the naming and wording of Prop 57, tricking voters into approving the release of thousands of violent criminals onto our streets and neighborhoods,” Bianco continued.

Also known as the “Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016,” Prop 57  and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) “incentivized incarcerated people to take responsibility for their own rehabilitation by providing credit-earning opportunities for sustained good behavior, as well as in-prison program and activities participation.”

“Under Proposition 57,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation explains, “incarcerated people increased their Good Conduct Credit earning, and have been given time credits for participation in Milestone Completion Credits, Rehabilitative Achievement Credits, and Educational Merit Credits.”

“Also under Proposition 57,” the department continues, “a process for parole consideration was established for eligible people convicted of nonviolent crimes. Those who demonstrate that their release would not pose an unreasonable risk of violence to the community may be eligible for release upon serving the full term of their primary offense when an alternative sentence has been imposed.”

“This is why we are here,” Bianco said. “Everyone knows Prop 47 and 57 are disasters, and yet Governor Newsom touts it as a success and lawmakers continue to refuse to fix their mistake and the problems that they have created.”

“When once crimes are no longer crimes, it allows Governor Newsom and Attorney Genoral Bonta to cite completely flawed data points to support their failures,” he stated. “Californians are now suffering the consequences of a failed social agenda.”

“We are now at our breaking point and Californians have had enough,” Bianco said. “The lie of Prop 47 has been exposed, and the progressive love affair with criminals at the expense of victims has infuriated law-abiding Californians.”

“While we suffer every day with rampant theft, causing our small businesses to close and our large box stores to move out of state, our supermajority of lawmakers sit here in their guarded tower, oblivious to what is going on in their communities, experiencing drastic increases in all crimes, particularly violent crimes,” he noted.

Bianco said that, “over the past five years,” law enforcement in California has been proposing new laws and modifications to existing laws to increase punishments and send more criminals to prison, but the liberal lawmakers won’t even consider them.

“Reality has gone completely upside-down, to the point our governor, our lawmakers, and our attorney general refuse to prosecute criminals, to include those criminals committing crimes with guns,” Bianco said, “and instead have dedicated their efforts to disarm and remove Constitutional protections of self-defense from law-abiding Californians.”

“We are in a very important election year, and the political silliness is surfacing all around us,” he said. “The same supermajority who refused any sort of tough-on-crime laws for the past several years are up for reelection.”

“They are now claiming they are going to address our public safety crisis with new laws cracking down on crime,” Bianco said. “The problem is, every one of their bills are disingenuous and hollow.”

As an example, the sheriff pointed to one bill that “claims to address theft by lowering the felony limit back to $400” when, in actuality, it “gives these career criminals three more chances steal and be convicted before they are sentenced to prison.”

“That is a minimum of three more victims,” Bianco stated.

Californians are, daily, “slapped in the face of reality,” he said. “Criminals have been emboldened by a lenient system that holds no consequence for criminal behavior.”

He called Newsom “tone-deaf” and accused him of “leading” a “failed social experiment.”

“it is time we wake up and hold our politicians accountable for what their bills, laws, and policies have caused,” Bianco urged California voters. “It is time to return to a common sense approach to crime, realizing and admitting that there are evil people who refuse to conform to a civilized society and instead choose to victimize the rest of us by stealing our property, robbing our stores, flooding our streets with drugs, including fentanyl, breaking into our homes, murdering our children, and giving the middle finger to our justice system.

“Californians deserve better.”

Melissa Fine
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