Originally Posted by
KevH
This nonsense started with the California Public Safety Realignment Act of 2011 (AB109) that kicked a metric ton of convicted felons out of state prisons. Basically, a person could be sentenced to prison for 5 years, but they would be out on "supervised release" and it put the responsibility of supervising on county probation departments instead of on state parole. So suddenly, you could rob someone at gunpoint, but plea the charges down to a lesser "non-violent crime" like "petty theft from person" and you would be on "supervised release" (never having stepped foot in a state prison) and be supervised by a county probation officer.
In a big county in California like mine pre-2011 most probation officers supervised maybe 50 probationers. Once AB109 passed that probation officer was now supervising around 1200 probationers. So how much supervising to do you think actually occurred?
Then in 2014, voters in this state passed Prop 47, which was labeled Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act (it had nothing to do with either). This changed all of the larceny laws and made any theft under $950 a misdemeanor. It also got rid of "Petty Theft With Prior Convictions" and changed PAST CONVICTIONS from being felonies to misdemeanors. Remember the guy before I talked about that robbed someone at gunpoint, but plead it down to a lesser sentence? Not only did he never go to prison, but now he doesn't even have a felony convictions. It also essentially made hard drug use (meth, coke, PCP, heroin, LSD, etc.) misdemeanors instead of felonies and overturned any prior felony convictions so lots of "felons" no longer were felons. This one piece of legislation set us on the course to where we find ourselves now. I cannot overemphasize how much this single piece of legislation has destroyed our criminal justice system in this state.
In 2016, voters passed Prop 57, which further reduced sentencing and overturned more past felony convictions.
In 2019, our legislature passed AB392 which severely limited police officers' ability (and legal protection) to use force.
In 2020, more legislation was passed, such as taking away police officers' ability to use a carotid restraint.
In 2021, SB2 and SB16 was just passed which further strips police officers' ability to use force and makes them subject to a "state board" to review their ability to maintain their job and further opens them to liability.
While all this had been happening, Soros-backed "district attorneys" (I'll use the term loosely) have been aggressively prosecuting cops for both current and sometimes long past use of force.
In summary, violent criminals are no longer punished and it's been clearly messaged that they won't be held accountable which in turn emboldens them to do whatever they want.
At the same time, police officers are now open to huge liability such as being sued without qualified immunity, losing their job or going to prison while their departments have been "defunded" and are now understaffed while the media (especially locally) continues to slam the police for everything we do.
Law enforcement morale in California is at an all time low and crime no longer has punishment.
So with all this information in mind, I'll let you decide if you think sticking a cop in a store will do anything.
The people that created this mess (as well as our homeless issue which is directly connected) think throwing money at it will make it go away. They spent ten years creating this mess. Now they are reaping the results.