A California sheriff said legislation touted as creating safer neighborhoods and schools is to blame for the state’s soaring addiction and homeless rates.
“When we stopped enforcing drug rules and laws,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told Fox News, “we started seeing a major, major, major increase in what we see now as the severe mental health problems of people that are living on the street.”
‘WE WERE LIED TO’ — SHERIFF SOUNDS OFF ON PROP 47:
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Bianco said a large portion of California’s homeless population is suffering from severe drug addiction, which has made many individuals unpredictable and potentially dangerous.
“They’re just whacked out, sometime’s they’re uncontrollable,” he said. “You never know how to act or react around them because it’s uncertain what they are going to do.”
The problem stems from Proposition 47, approved by voters nearly a decade ago, Bianco argued.
Also referred to as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, Prop 47 changed crimes like theft of goods under $950 and drug possession from felonies to misdemeanors and ultimately reduced California’s prison population by more than 13,000 inmates. More than half the money saved on prison costs is earmarked for mental health services, substance use disorder treatment and other programs.
“It was astonishing that people did not do the research of what they were voting for, and they trusted the government to be honest to them when they said it was safe schools and safe streets, because everybody’s for that,” Bianco said. “But we were lied to.”
California’s fatal overdose rate rose more than 35% between 2014 and 2019, then skyrocketed the following year amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
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