Gov. Gavin Newsom used his remaining State of the State tackle to underscore California’s jaw-dropping crime figures — stats that he mentioned refute the president’s claims about widespread homicide and mayhem.
To place in perspective a number of the numbers cited by the governor on Thursday:
The final time homicides have been this low in Oakland, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was visiting Joan Baez at Santa Rita Jail to commend her on her latest arrest in protest of the Vietnam draft.
Killings haven’t been so uncommon in San Francisco since celebrity Marilyn Monroe wed baseball legend Joe DiMaggio at Metropolis Corridor.
And violent deaths within the metropolis of Los Angeles fell to charges not seen because the Beatles performed Dodgers Stadium, their penultimate public present.
“We’ve got seen double-digit decreases in crime general within the state of California,” Newsom mentioned. “We’ve acquired extra work to do, however to these with that California derangement syndrome, I’ll repeat — it’s time to replace your speaking factors.”
The governor’s remarks comply with reporting by The Instances that confirmed L.A.’s murder price is nearing a file low, mirroring traits in different cities nationwide.
With the counts based mostly on information from the LAPD and different regulation enforcement businesses, President Trump’s insistence that crime in California is uncontrolled has come to appear more and more bombastic. Just lately, the president has modified his message to warn of a potential crime resurgence.
“We’ll come again, maybe in a a lot completely different and stronger kind, when crime begins to soar once more,” Trump mentioned on Fact Social in a submit saying an finish to his authorized battle to take care of Nationwide Guard troops in L.A., Portland and Chicago. “Solely a query of time!”
In his speech Thursday, Newsom credited the stark drop in violence to a flood of crime-fighting money unleashed by the California Legislature.
“Nobody’s walked away from public security,” Newsom mentioned. “We didn’t flip a blind eye to this, we invested in it. We didn’t discuss it, we leaned in.”
However specialists mentioned the fact is extra difficult. Those that research the basis causes of crime say that it could take years, if not a long time, to disentangle the causes of the pandemic-era surge in violence and the precipitous drop that has adopted.
Trump hammered lawlessness in California’s streets throughout the 2024 presidential marketing campaign and all through his first 12 months again within the White Home. He hardly ever names Newsom with out invoking crime and chaos, and commonly threatens to surge armed troopers again into into the streets.
On the similar time, the Trump administration has slashed a whole lot of thousands and thousands in federal funding from faculty security grants, youth mentoring applications and gang intervention networks that specialists say have been instrumental in bettering public security.
Proponents fear these cuts might threaten L.A.’s patchwork of different disaster response applications geared toward easing the town’s reliance on regulation enforcement. Lately, scores of teams have sprung as much as help folks coping with homelessness, drug habit and the signs of untreated psychological well being problems — all of which might heighten the notion of crime, even when precise numbers go down.
Looming cuts in federal spending might hinder efforts to scale up these initiatives, some warned.
“I simply don’t understand how we will proceed to pattern in the correct course with out persevering with to spend money on issues that work,” mentioned Thurman Barnes, assistant director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Analysis Middle.
In accordance with information revealed by the Main Cities Chiefs Assn., homicides have been down in San Francisco, San José, Sacramento and Oakland. Different violent crimes, together with rape, aggravated assault and theft, additionally dropped, with a handful of exceptions.
Property crime was additionally down, the governor mentioned Thursday.
Road-level dysfunction and perceptions of widespread lawlessness helped topple progressive administrations throughout California in 2024 and earned Trump an surprising windfall in a number of the state’s bluest cities.
These considerations are “on the core” of California voters’ frustrations, Newsom acknowledged Thursday.
“We’re seeing outcomes, making streets safer for everybody,” the governor mentioned.
Jeff Asher, a number one professional within the area of criminology, mentioned it’s exhausting to say whether or not the notion hole is closing “as a result of we don’t essentially observe it tremendous systematically.”
However he pointed to a Gallup ballot from late final 12 months that confirmed lower than half of People believed that crime had gone up — the primary time in 20 years that that quantity had dipped under 50%.
“The pandemic broke us in quite a lot of methods, and we’re beginning to not really feel as damaged,” he mentioned.
Newsom additionally touted sharp declines within the variety of folks dwelling on the streets.
Unsheltered homelessness dropped 9% in California and greater than 10% in Los Angeles, the governor introduced — information he sought to distinction with an 18% rise in homelessness nationwide.
The sight of encampments and folks within the throes of psychosis within the streets drives perceptions of lawlessness and hazard, research present. Reducing it soothes these fears.
However California’s general homeless inhabitants stays stubbornly excessive, with solely modest reductions. Federal funding cuts might hamper efforts to additional scale back these numbers, specialists warned.
Reasonably than dig into the complexities of crime, Newsom sought to painting the president himself as the motive force of lawlessness, calling the primary 12 months of his second time period a “carnival of chaos.”
“We face an assault on our values in contrast to something I’ve seen in my lifetime,” the governor mentioned. “Secret police. Companies being raided. Home windows smashed, residents detained, residents shot. Masked males snatching folks in broad daylight, folks disappearing. Utilizing American cities as coaching grounds for the US navy.”
“It’s time for the president of the US to do his job, not flip his again on People that occur to stay within the nice state of California,” Newsom mentioned.
