Nearly 60 percent of voters in 2014 approved Prop. 47, which recategorized certain low-level drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, in an attempt to ease prison overpopulation. 

Since then, many have attempted to link criminal justice reforms like Prop. 47 with a spike in crime in 2015 and 2016. There was even a failed ballot proposal earlier this year that would have rolled back some reforms.

The PPIC found that the two-year rearrest rate for those released after serving sentences for Prop. 47 offenses was almost two points lower than individuals released before the reforms. Meanwhile, the two-year reconviction rate was more than 3 percent lower.

However, the study cautioned that “it is too early to know” how effective Prop. 47’s redirection of funding toward treatment for offenders was.

The study found that much of the purported increase in violent crime post-Prop. 47 was the result of methodological factors, such as police departments in years prior under-reporting violent crimes or the FBI expanding the definition of sexual crimes. Meanwhile, upticks in violence were already starting in 2013 and early 2014, before reforms were enacted.

With property crime, however, the study concluded that Prop. 47 was in part to blame. “It may have contributed to a rise in larceny thefts, which increased by roughly 9 percent (about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents) compared to other states,” the report read.

Finally, while several thousand inmates were released as a direct result of Prop. 47, the PPIC concluded its effect was more apparent in a shift by law enforcement from arresting potential offenders to citing and releasing them.

The main policy is known as realignment. Pushed through by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011, the two new laws allow “non-violent, non-serious and non-sex offenders to serve their sentence in county jails instead of state prisons,” according to an explanation from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department says that no state prisoners had their time reduced and that the laws did not provide any early releases.

The second policy is Proposition 47, a statewide initiative that passed 60 percent to 40 percent in November 2014. As Ballotpedia explains, the initiative “classified ‘non-serious, nonviolent crimes’ as misdemeanors instead of felonies unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex offenses or certain gun crimes.” It also permitted resentencing “for those currently serving a prison sentence for any of the offenses that the initiative reduces to misdemeanors.” That measure did therefore lead to early releases.

The state passed a variety of other sentencing-reform measures beginning in 2010. For instance, California had long taken a tough-on-crime approach, including passage of the nation’s toughest “three strikes and you’re out” laws in 1994, in the midst of frighteningly high crime rates. But even that signature crime-fighting law was revised, as voters passed, 70 percent to 30 percent, a 2012 statewide initiative that required a life sentence only if the third strike were serious or violent.

The new laws reduced prison overcrowding, although they didn’t actually reduce the amount of tax dollars spent on the prison system. The big question: What have they done to crime rates? A spike in some crimes over that period has led to a vociferous debate, with Republicans and some moderate Democrats fanning fears of a crime wave. One Republican gubernatorial candidate, Abel Maldonado, ran for governor in 2014 on an anti-crime platform, but didn’t gain traction.

Currently, Democratic Assemblyman Jim Cooper, a former sheriff’s captain from Elk Grove, is leading efforts qualify a ballot measure for the 2018 general election that would roll back much of Proposition 47. It also would roll back the loosened parole requirements in Proposition 57, which passed on the 2016 statewide ballot, and expand the list of crimes that requires collection of the perpetrator’s DNA, according to an Associated Press report.

Such pushback is due in large part to fears of growing crime rates. “Since the passage of Proposition 47 by voters in 2014 and the signing of AB109 in 2011, violent crime has been on the rise in California, up 12 percent in 2015 statewide according to the FBI,” according to a statement in March by Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside County. Politifact double-checked his claim and found a one-year violent crime increase (from 2014 to 2015) of 8.4 percent.

That’s certainly enough to spark concern, but it’s hard to assess crime data based on short periods of time – and even harder to trace crime increases or decreases to any particular policy cause. New research from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice looked at the entire 2010-2016 period of criminal-justice policy reform and found some mixed results. Overall, however, the group explains that the state’s crime rate was “stable” over that time.

“Urban crime rates in California declined precipitously through the 1990s and 2000s,” wrote author Mike Males. “Since 2010, crime in California has stabilized, hovering near historically low levels.” Males compared the first six months of 2016 (the latest reporting period) with the first six months of 2010 and found that “total crime rates experienced no net change, while property crime declined by 1 percent and violent crime increased by 3 percent.”

National crime data show a small overall uptick nationwide, which might suggest that something other than California-only realignment and sentencing reform policies were at work here. Crime data often is affected more by local factors, and indeed the study finds that “crime rates at the local level have varied considerably.” For instance, crime rates shot up 18 percent in Downey, but dropped an astounding 29 percent in Santa Clara.

Regarding the big cities, the report found increased violent crime rates in Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Jose – but lower violent crime rates in Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco. Likewise, some big cities (Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego) faced rising property crimes, but others (Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose) saw falling rates of property crime from 2010 to 2016.

The report found “no visible change” due to realignment and called for “more data” before “drawing conclusions about Prop. 47’s effect on crime.” Other studies from last year echo these conclusions. These numbers, based on the newest FBI statistics, suggest that current concerns about a justice-reform-driven crime wave are overblown.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The first of the policies was Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2011 decision to “realign” the corrections system and shift 30,000 prisoners from state institutions to county jails. With many county facilities as overcrowded as state prisons, this led to an estimated release of 18,000 people who were incarcerated in California. The second was state voters’ 2014 approval of Proposition 47, which reclassified some drug and property crime offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, which also led to more convicted criminals avoiding getting locked up. It was strongly supported by the governor.

What’s been the effect? That is a crucial question, given that California’s violent crime rate jumped significantly in the first half of 2015. In California’s 68 cities with populations of 100,000 or more, violent crime increased by 11 percent, according to statistics compiled by the FBI.

This suggests that “realignment” and Prop. 47 might have a cumulative effect. A December 2013 report by the Public Policy Institute of California downplayed any link between a smaller increase in violent crime in 2011 and 2012 and the effects of “realignment”:

We find that California’s crime rates increased between 2011 and 2012 — violent crime went up 3.4 percent and property crime went up 7.6 percent. These rates vary widely across the state, with California’s 10 largest counties generally seeing greater increases in crime than in the state overall. However, despite this pattern of increase, crime rates remain at historically low levels in California today.

 

How does realignment relate to the recent uptick in crime? Our analysis of violent crime finds no evidence that realignment has had an effect on the most serious offenses, murder and rape. The evidence on robbery is more uncertain, with a possible indication of a modest increase related to realignment. California’s overall increases in violent crime between 2011 and 2012 appear to be part of a broader upward trend also experienced in other states.

Did reducing felonies help ‘the crooks win’?

Now, 17 months after Proposition 47’s adoption, opinions are beginning to harden on its effects.

In November, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell depicted the initiative as a well-intentioned failure. And on PoliceOne.com, a website on police issues, a December opinion piece declared “the crooks won.”

Inmates are fans of Prop. 47 because it keeps them out of jail, allowing them to keep using illegal drugs and keep committing crime. Even if they miss their court date (which in turn gives them a warrant), inmates know the crimes and the misdemeanor warrants will not keep them locked up long. Inmates view misdemeanors as “not a big deal” and shrug their shoulders. It does not matter that there are hardworking citizens who are being victimized. Criminals usually never show remorse or empathy for their victims. Criminals have a great way of decriminalizing and minimizing their crimes. With Prop. 47, the state and the criminals both are doing just that.

But William Lansdowne, a veteran California police chief, strongly challenges this assessment in an op-ed posted Thursday by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Since Prop. 47 passed, critics have tried to scapegoat it for a rise in crime, but there’s no evidence proving such an assertion. As the former police chief for San Diego, San Jose and Richmond, I know all too well that every shift in crime must be addressed. There is nothing more important than public safety. But in paying close attention, we need to be honest about the facts and avoid misleading the public.

‘The studies are not done and the results aren’t in’

Others suggest that both McDonnell and Lansdown are too quick to draw conclusions:

Keramet Reiter, a criminology professor at UC Irvine, said the ballot measure has been used by critics as a “convenient scapegoat” for the rise in crime. The reality, she said, is more complicated in a state that is undergoing broad changes to its criminal justice system, including a massive shift of inmates from state prisons to local jails.

 

The Los Angeles Police Department has reported a double-digit increase in property crime so far this year, but Chief Charlie Beck said it is premature to fault Proposition 47.

 

“The studies are not done and the results aren’t in,” Beck said.

That is from a November Los Angeles Times report.

The rise of Big Data has led to many changes in policing strategies in recent years, most notably in New York City, where the NYPD uses algorithms to predict likely trouble spots. But big-think arguments over why crime has gone down sharply over the last 25 year have actually gotten more complex, not less. Last year, Vox detailed 16 different theories explaining the phenomenon.

Nearly one in six California school districts has dropped out of a federal outreach program for low-income student health that brings millions in unfettered dollars into schools, citing bungled state management and years-long delays in receiving funds … . The exodus is part of the continuing fallout from a 2012 federal investigation that found California had “serious deficiencies” in its oversight and management of the School-Based Medi-Cal Administrative Activities program. The program reimburses schools for a portion of the cost of referring students to Medi-Cal, California’s name for the federal Medicaid low-income health insurance program.

 

After the 2012 investigation, federal officials temporarily froze payments to school districts effective July 1, 2012, recalculated previously paid claims submitted in 2011-12, introduced a formula for interim payments and devised a new method of calculating claims moving forward.

 

As a result, some districts are still waiting to be reimbursed for 2009 expenses, while others have been told to return money from previous reimbursements that are now under review.

Lax oversight, poor Internet security and more

It’s the sixth highly critical audit of state government since June. That’s an unusual concentration of negative reports based on a review of the auditor’s archive of reports and a Nexis search of recent years of Sacramento coverage. Many audits in past years offered mixed reviews of government agencies, such as this October 2012 assessment of how public universities report crime. This summer, audits appeared much more likely to be harsh.

Last month, Howle issued a report about wrongdoing revealed by state whistle-blowers. This is from the San Francisco Chronicle:

An engineer for the California Department of Transportation was busy working on his golf swing when he was supposed to be at work, according to an audit released this week detailing bad behavior by state employees and public agencies. … [The} report found 10 substantiated allegations from whistle-blowers with more than $4.2 million in wasted money, improper payments and misuse of work time by public employees.

 

The Caltrans engineer was found to have played golf on 55 workdays in a 19-month period while his time card listed him as working. State auditors faulted the engineer’s supervisor for failing to manage the employee or ensure his time sheets were accurate from August 2012 to March 2014.

 

The employee said he played golf as much as possible — for an estimated 4½ hours a day — during hours the auditor found he was supposed to be working.

 

The audit also found a month in May 2014 in which no one could account for how much work the engineer had done, if any, because there was a miscommunication about who was supposed to oversee the employee.

Also in August, Howle faulted state bureaucrats for being indifferent about Internet security. This is from AP:

Many state agencies are not complying with the state’s information technology standards, leaving them vulnerable to a major security breach of sensitive data such as Social Security numbers, health information or tax returns, the state auditor reported Tuesday.

 

“Our review found that many state entities have weaknesses in their controls over information security. These weaknesses leave some of the state’s sensitive data vulnerable to unauthorized use, disclosure, or disruption,” Auditor Elaine Howle wrote in the report. She notes that the state is a prime target for information security breaches as government agencies keep extensive amounts of confidential data. Many agencies also have not sufficiently planned for interruptions or disasters, she found.

State not tracking mentally ill gun owners

In July, Howle knocked Attorney General Kamala Harris and the state Department of Justice. This is from the Sacramento Bee:

Nearly two years after that the state Department of Justice and courts failed to identify thousands of mentally ill gun owners who are prohibited from having guns, the state auditor said Thursday that the department has failed to resolve its backlog of such cases.

 

State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote that the department’s “delays in fully implementing certain recommendations result in continued risk to public safety.”

 

Lawmakers in 2013 approved legislation appropriating $24 million to the Department of Justice to address a backlog of cases of prohibited people having guns. But the state auditor said the department had failed to fully implement seven of eight recommendations made in 2013 to improve department procedures.

 

For example, the department has not taken sufficient steps to ensure courts and mental health facilities are reporting mentally ill people for review, the audit said, and it continues to redirect staff to work on other priorities.

 

As of April, the audit said, the department had a review backlog of more than 257,000 people who are potentially prohibited from having guns.

In June, Howle ripped the State Bar of California. This is from AP:

The nation’s largest state bar failed to consistently protect the public from bad lawyers by settling hundreds of complaints, many without adequate discipline for botched cases or ethical violations, according to a scathing audit released Thursday that also found the organization has spent money with little financial accountability. …

 

As the state bar scurried to settle more than 5,100 backlogged complaints in 2010 and 2011, the severity of discipline imposed against attorneys decreased, according to the State Auditor’s report.

 

In 2012, the California Supreme Court rejected settlements reached with 27 attorneys because of insufficient discipline; 21 of those attorneys later got harsher punishments, including five who were disbarred, the audit said. Additionally, 131 attorneys whose complaints were settled in 2010 and 2011 later were disciplined after new complaints were filed, including 28 disbarments.

 

To reduce its backlog, the state bar allowed some attorneys whom it otherwise might have disciplined more severely – or even disbarred – to continue practicing law, placing the public at risk,” State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to the governor and legislative leaders Thursday.

Call Medi-Cal, never get through

Also in June, Howle was sharply critical of the state Medi-Cal program. This is from AP:

Thousands of calls to California’s Medi-Cal complaint lines don’t get through, and thousands more that manage to ring the call center go unanswered, according to a new state audit.

 

For the year that ended in January 2015, the phone system to the Medi-Cal ombudsman’s office rejected up to 45,000 calls in a month, State Auditor Elaine Howle said in her report. Of the calls that did get through, only one-third and one-half were handled by ombudsman’s staff each month.

 

(B)etween February 2014 and January 2015, an average of 12,500 additional calls went unanswered,” the audit states. A department official blamed the unrelenting backlog and unanswered calls on inadequate staffing and “hardware limitations” that cause the call database to crash.

It is difficult to know what to make, if anything, of this rash of harsh audits. But former state Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, complained for years about a state government culture that he felt tolerated mistakes and poor performance. Perhaps the relative budget austerity of 2007-2013 led to even lower standards at some agencies.

BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons

With gripping yet measured words, Jim Steinle — whose daughter was recently slain in San Francisco by an unlawful immigrant released under the city’s rules — urged Congress to quickly pass new reforms.

“While Steinle was careful to acknowledge that the nation’s immigration laws were complicated, he made it clear that his family wants to see legislation ‘to take these undocumented immigrant felons off our streets for good,” Politico reported.

“Unfortunately, due to disjointed laws and basic incompetence on many levels, the U.S. has suffered a self-inflicted wound in the murder of our daughter by the hand of a person that should have never been on the streets in this country. We would be proud to see Kate’s name associated with some of this new legislation,” he said.

Steinle wasn’t alone on Capitol Hill. According to the Associated Press, he “testified alongside several other relatives of people allegedly killed by immigrants living in the country illegally.” As their testimony drew swift headlines, members of Congress hastened to show their responsiveness to the brewing controversy. “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle offered bills to crack down on the hundreds of ‘sanctuary’ communities like San Francisco and Santa Clara County that have openly defied federal immigration enforcement, while officials in those communities vowed more cooperation,” the San Jose Mercury News noted.

Bipartisan reactions

Not every player involved in the debate over illegal immigration shifted toward a more hawkish stance, however. Activists, predictably, urged caution. In a letter to members of Congress obtained by Politico, a coalition of groups including the National Immigration Law Center and United We Dream warned against sweeping changes to the current patchwork regime.

“Good policies are made over time, by examining our shared values and opinions, and by working toward equality and justice for all people. They are not made based on a single, tragic incident or by taking the actions of one individual to justify a policy that criminalizes an entire community,” they wrote.

Some free-market groups issued warnings of their own, discouraging lawmakers from buying in to rhetoric that presents unlawful immigrants as especially prone to break other laws. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center, for instance, which compared crime statistics to rates of unauthorized immigration, drew favorable notice in a Wall Street Journal editorial by Manhattan Institute scholar Jason Riley.

Between 1990 and 2013, Riley noted, although the population of illegal immigrants “more than tripled” to over 11 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%,” according to the study — a figure “which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”

By Katy Grimes

The current buzz around the Capitol City is Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, will run for Sacramento District Attorney in 2014.

Steinberg, 53, has worked as an Employee Rights Attorney for the California State Employees Association prior to running for public office in 1992. Since then, he’s spent all but two years holding political office: Sacramento city council member, 1992-98; state assemblyman 1998-2004, then the state Senate from 2006 until now. He’s term-limited out of office in 2014. It’s the common musical-chairs routine, staying in office but switching seats because of term limits.

The CSEA, a public employee labor union, is affiliated with the SEIU, and represents more than 141,000 state employees.

His biography says, “Prior to state public service Steinberg worked for ten years at the California State Employees Association as an employee rights attorney, and as an Administrative Law Judge and mediator.” But the dates are not listed.

His bio on the Sacramento Bar Association reads differently: “For the six years prior to his election to the Assembly in 1998, Darrell Steinberg balanced his duties on the Sacramento City Council against the demands of his legal career, first as an employment lawyer and later as an administrative law judge and as a private arbitrator and mediator.”

“When Steinberg was elected to the City Council in 1992, he cut his time at CSEA to half-time in order to meet the demands of public service,” the Bar Association bio says. “In 1994, he left CSEA to become an administrative law judge for the State Personnel Board. Two years later, Steinberg joined Mackenroth, Ryan & Fong, a Sacramento law firm in which one of his law school friends, Rob Fong is a partner. While on the City Council, Steinberg maintained a private arbitration and mediation practice at the firm. Since being elected to the Legislature, Steinberg has remained of counsel there.”

Steinberg’s professional history has little of the relevant experience usually expected of a District Attorney.

Sacramento’s current District Attorney, Jan Scully, “worked as a deputy district attorney in the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office. “Five years later, Jan became a supervising attorney, supervising various prosecution teams including Adult Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse, Felony Trials, and Research and Training,” her bio says. Scully was and is the real deal.

With the significant rise in crime across the state thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown’s prison realignment law (AB 109), Sacramento needs a tough-on-crime DA, and not a political office placeholder, waiting for higher office.

It is important to note Steinberg also has taken out a committee to run for Lieutenant Governor. It is obvious that he is not going back to the private sector, either way, despite his affiliation with Mackenroth, Ryan & Fong.

The music is playing and we’ll soon see where he tries to sit down.

By Dave Roberts

Oakland’s website prominently touts that it has been ranked by the New York Times as the fifth best place in the world to visit. It beat out every other North American city as well as Tokyo, Florence and Vienna. The Times praises Oakland’s sophisticated restaurants and upscale bars, which are “turning once-gritty Oakland into an increasingly appealing place to be after dark.”

Appealing, perhaps, if you’re a thrill seeker who agrees with Winston Churchill that “there is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.”

Oakland is the most dangerous large city in California and one of the most dangerous large cities in the nation. There were nearly 17 violent crimes per 1,000 Oakland residents in 2011, more than triple the rate in Los Angeles, according to the FBI. Violent crime increased 23 percent last year over 2011. Last year 126 people were murdered in Oakland compared to 103 murders in 2011, according to police. This year could be worse. Four people were shot to death in Oakland in the space of just six hours on Jan. 11.

Police officers are finding themselves outmanned and outgunned. Last week two cops were shot in the line of duty, one in the arm and the other in the leg. Budget cuts have reduced the force to about 615 officers from a high of 837 officers in 2008, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

City officials have finally had enough and are determined to fight back. However, they have been forced not only to fight the criminals and gangs, but also a large contingent of their own citizens who fear and hate Oakland police officers more than they do criminals. 

Leftists and anarchists

They are radical leftists and anarchists, many of whom participated in Occupy Oakland, which took over the plaza in front of City Hall in 2011. Since then they have organized numerous demonstrations, shut down the Port of Oakland on several occasions, held sit-ins and disrupted City Council meetings. Their purpose, according to their website, is to “plan actions, mobilize real resistance, and defend ourselves from the economic and physical war that is being waged against our communities.” They are frequently joined by their comrades from Critical Resistance.

The latest battles have been waged over city officials’ plan to hire former New York and Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton as a consultant, advising Oakland police on how to get a handle on crime, despite limited resources.

When the $250,000 contract came before the council’s Public Safety Committee on Jan. 15, activists did their best to replace democracy with mobocracy. Hundreds protested at a rally in front of City Hall before the meeting, then packed the council chambers where a councilman “struggled to hold back the crowd, who hissed, meowed, shouted and heckled city officials and supporters of Bratton,” according to the Chronicle.

Only the brave have dared to go against the mob. Such as the man who spoke at another rowdy Public Safety Committee meeting last year, saying, “It’s not fair to the public to have this kind of unruly behavior, which really borders on terrorism actually.” That sent the crowd into a frenzy and one guy got in his face and threatened, “Get your ass out of here. You can’t talk. You’re not going to make it home.”

As the crowd chanted “F— the police,” the chairman shut down the meeting. She and the brave man received a police escort out of the building.

City officials are starting to smarten up about crowd control. Before the Jan. 22 meeting in which the whole council considered Bratton’s contract, several council members sent out emails to supporters suggesting that they arrive early so that the protesters would not take up all of the seats in the council chamber. Many of those seats were instead filled by pastors and church members who support cracking down on crime. Most of the protesters were forced into four overflow rooms to watch the proceedings on TV. But hundreds still spoke, often shouting their opposition to Bratton in a nine-hour meeting that ended after 2 a.m. 

Stop-and-frisk

Their main beef with Bratton is that he champions a policy allowing police to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk someone if there’s a suspicion that he’s engaged in or about to commit a crime. Commonly known as “stop-and-frisk,” the practice has allowed police in New York City, where Bratton pioneered the technique, to become proactive, deterring crime rather than simply responding after the fact. Some supporters say it really should be called “stop-question-and-frisk,” because questioning usually is enough.

“Stop-and-frisk is not something that you can stop,” Bratton recently told the Wall Street Journal. “It is an absolutely basic tool of American policing. It would be like asking a doctor to give an examination to you without using his stethoscope.”

And it’s been effective. There were more than 2,200 murders in New York City before Bratton took over as top cop in 1994. Two years later, murders had fallen by 39 percent, robbery 31 percent, burglary 25 percent and car theft 36 percent, according to the Journal.

The problem, as far as the protesters are concerned, is that black and Latino males are the ones most likely to be stopped and frisked, which they consider racial profiling. What they’re unwilling to acknowledge is that minority males, especially blacks, are more likely to engage in crime than other groups. For example, blacks comprise 23 percent of New York’s population, but they committed 80 percent of the shootings in 2011, according to the Journal.

A Manhattan judge, according to BET.com, recently ruled that stop-and-frisk is unconstitutional. The judge said, “While it may be difficult to say where, precisely, to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters, such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops.” It’s likely that the issue will eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, where Bratton predicts stop-and-frisk will be upheld. 

No racial profiling

Oakland officials support Bratton while insisting they adamantly oppose racial profiling.

In a Jan. 18 open letter to the City Council, Mayor Jean Quan praised Bratton “as among the best minds in modern policing. His record is clear: as a chief in New York City and Los Angeles, he oversaw record drops in crime that were consistent and sustained. … We’ve been hearing worries that Bratton’s past policies could be used in Oakland in a way that contributes to racial profiling. I want to address those concerns in the clearest words I can find: racial profiling will not be tolerated in the Oakland Police Department. Period.”

She noted that Bratton’s tenure as Los Angeles police chief from 2002-09 was so effective the Los Angeles ACLU director called his leaving “a terrible loss,” adding that complaints about the police had dropped from more than 10,000 per year to “a trickle.” Homicides dropped 41 percent and overall serious crime was down 33 percent during his time in Los Angeles, according to Bratton.

Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, who is black, in his presentation to the council also emphasized his opposition to racial profiling. “I do not support it and won’t condone it,” he said. “We will stop people based on reasonable suspicion.” He also stressed Bratton will only be making recommendations, and that the implementation of policy changes would have to go through him (Jordan) and the mayor.

Of course, one person’s “reasonable suspicion” may be another person’s “racial profiling.” Not surprisingly, the protesters were not mollified by the chief’s words.

“I’m sad and scared to be having a black boy in Oakland,” a pregnant Jessica Hollie told the council. “I was sitting outside a café after a rally. Two boys were walking past me. An OPD officer slams on his brakes and looks at these two boys. I said, ‘They didn’t do anything. They are just walking while black.’ All of a sudden the officers hit a U-turn and with their guns on them screamed for them to get on the ground. Because they were black and have a blue t-shirt on, that’s how they were treated. I don’t want the police to criminalize my son because they hate his father and tear gas him on May Day. We don’t trust the police.”

Police victim martyr

Also mistrustful is Adam Blueford, who is black and whose 18-year-old son Alan was shot and killed by an Oakland police officer last May. The officer was cleared in the shooting because Blueford had pointed a gun at him. The incident began when Blueford and two others were stopped by police on suspicion they were engaging in a drug deal. Blueford ran and was chased by an officer, which led to the shooting.

His father told the council that Alan “was racially profiled before he was murdered. This stop-and-frisk thing will blow up in your face. Our kids will be killed in the streets of Oakland [by the police]. Are we really here to sell our kids out? To ride up on someone for no reason at all, take their rights away from them, be able to harass them, is really wrong for Oakland. Oakland is a diverse crowd of people. Eighty percent of the people who get racially profiled are black and brown kids. Stop-and-frisk is a way to have more people killed and put in jail and a lot more problems for Oakland. Martin Luther King fought and marched for our rights. We can’t give away our rights for our kids. We are Americans, we are free. If you stop someone any time you want to, you have taken away their freedom.”

Alan Blueford has become a martyr for the activists, who cited him frequently throughout the evening. None of them mentioned the 125 other people who were killed last year in Oakland, many of them gang members or innocent people caught in the crossfire. The job of remembering them was left to a group of pastors who support hiring Bratton as a consultant.

“Black and brown boys are dying in the street,” said the Rev. Bob Jackson. “Gunshots every night. We know they don’t have enough police officers to protect and serve the community. 911 calls go unanswered. Automatic weapons are being used in our community. I have to go through this almost every day in the East Oakland area. Families with broken hearts. The mothers, siblings, they have such a hard time with their family members being gunned down senselessly in our streets. It’s just a war zone that’s going on. We need a strategist who can help us keep the public safe in the city. I’m for Bill Bratton coming in. It’s time for us to do something. Desperate times has to do with desperate measures.”

Another pastor told the council, “You should be in my place where a sobbing mother falls into your arms and all she can say is, ‘My baby, my baby, they killed my baby.’ It behooves us to come together as a city as we have never came together before. It behooves us from the hills to the flatlands to say we will no longer tolerate the level of violence in the city.”

The council agreed, voting 7-1 to authorize the contract for Bratton and his associates. After they took the vote, one woman shouted, “Shame on you!”

By John Seiler

Our country still mourns the victims of the horrible mass killing in Newtown, Conn. New gun-control legislation is being advanced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and in the California Senate by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. More bills are likely to be introduced in the federal and state legislatures.

But the fact is that, despite the recent spate of mass killings, murders have been declining sharply for two decades across the United States, including in California. The data are easily available at the Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics database of the U.S. Department of Justice. Yet it’s hard to find opinion and news leaders who have checked this data. You can go to the site and access the data directly.

The database extends from 1960 to 2010. The embeded links get you to the closest part of the database. Then push “get table.”

I have obtained 2011 data from other sites and added it to the charts.

U.S. murder rate

Here is the chart of the U.S. murder rate per 100,000 population; 2011 number from here:

It clearly shows a sharp decline in the murder rate over the past two decades. Criminologists and demographers have several explanations. Probably the best is that most crimes, especially murders, are committed by young men between the ages of 15 and 30. Because of the Baby Boom that began in 1946 and ended in 1965, the birth rate doubled. When the Boomers entered the 14-30 age group in the early 1960s, the murder-rate doubled.

Later, the Boomers themselves had children at a much lower rate. So when their kids grew up, proportionally there were fewer of them; the population was aging. So crime rates fell.

The past 20 years also saw the passage of more flexible “conceal carry” gun laws in most states, although not California. Here, concealed weapons permits are granted mainly by county sheriffs. In rural areas, the sheriffs grant them fairly easily. In urban areas, including even supposedly “conservative” Orange County, the sheriffs are stingy.

Another factor credited for the crime drop of recent years has been cell phones. A person being stalked by a criminal can call for help immediately, instead of looking for a pay phone.

The increased abortion rate also has been used as a reason why murders and other crime dropped, but that theory was debunked by John Lott and others. Abortion was legalized in 1968 in California and New York, then our two largest states; and nationally in 1973 with the Roe vs. Wade decision. Adding 15 years, the years the aborted potential criminals would have been absent from the scene should have begun in 1983-88, so murders should have dropped. Instead, as the chart shows, murders surged as part of the crack cocaine epidemic.

California murder rate

Let’s now look at a chart of the California murder rate; the 2011 number is from here. It also has dropped sharply in the past two decades.

California’s passage of a three-strikes law 20 years ago was credited with a drop in crime, including murders. But in that period, crime dropped in states without three-strikes laws.

Connecticut murder rate

Let’s now consider Connecticut, the site of the horrible murders. Its murder rate also has dropped sharply in the past two decades; 2011 number from here.

There has been a slight increase in the last couple of years, to 3.6 per 100,000 people. But that rate still is below the rate in California and the nation as a whole.

I won’t put up another chart, but for 2012 New York City is projected to record its lowest murder rate ever. This has occurred despite — or because of — the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision, District of Columbia vs. Heller, which threw out restrictive gun laws in such major cities as D.C., New York City and Chicago, all of which since have seen drops in murder and other crime rates.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been calling for strict gun control. And he has credited the murder drop to better police work. But the real reason murders have dropped is that more New Yorkers now are armed and can defend themselves. Potential killers no longer enjoy attacking universally unarmed victims.

Getting all the data

The point is that national tragedies such as the Newtown shootings should not be used to override rational analysis of what’s really going on.

In a similar fashion, when a plane crashes and kills hundreds of people, it gets international news coverage for weeks. But a local car accident will get a small mention in the local newspaper. Yet air travel remains far safer than travel by car.

The TV news shows and national newspapers have been using the Newtown tragedy to scare people into accepting radical new gun control measures. But I’ll bet few of our readers here have seen the above statistics on the general decline in murders, even though the data can be easily obtained and analyzed. I just plugged the numbers into the free online chart program, ChartGo.com.

This has occurred even as the number of guns in America now exceeds the number of people.

As the late Paul Harvey liked to say: That’s the rest of the story.

By John Seiler

California’s gun control fanatics took a rest this year because of the election. Gun control loses for Democrats. But they’ll be back next year for sure. We’ll be reminded of the Aurora and other massacres.

In fact, it’s gun control that is most deadly, disarming decent, law-abiding citizens and leaving them at the mercy of criminals. This video shows what happened when Australia, formerly a free country, imposed gun control: Armed robberies up 69 percent, assaults with guns up 28 percent, gun murders up 19 percent and home invasions up 21 percent.

(Hat tip to LewRockwell.com.)