A California sheriff blamed substance abuse for rising crime in his state and accused lawmakers of adding fuel to the fire with permissive drug laws.
“In the shootings that we are involved with, where law enforcement is involved with a suspect that is shooting at us or we get involved in some type of officer-involved shooting,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “almost all of them involve drug use.”
SHERIFF BIANCO DETAILS WHAT CALIFORNIA DRUG LAWS ARE DOING TO STATE:
WATCH MORE FOX NEWS DIGITAL ORIGINALS HERE
Bianco added that the majority involve a substance like methamphetamine, heroin or alcohol combined with marijuana.
“Those are the statistics that nobody wants to hear,” he said. “Our lawmakers just refuse to have any type of dialog that has anything to do with fact or statistics, because the facts and the statistics show that we’re correct.”
The data around drug use, criminality and officer-involved shootings are often outdated or limited in scope.
More than 70% of people shot by police in San Bernardino County over six years exhibited signs of drug or alcohol use, according to an investigation by KPCC and The San Bernardino Sun. But that rate was more than twice as high as in Los Angeles County, despite similar rates of drug use in both locations.
Historically, alcohol has been more consistently associated with violence than any other drug, factoring into 19-37% of violent crimes between 1997 and 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But that may be changing as more than 20 states have legalized recreational marijuana since 2012.
AMERICANS SPENT MORE ON LEGAL CANNABIS IN 2022 THAN CHOCOLATE, BEER: REPORT
About 35% of state prisoners reported using drugs when they committed a violent offense, according to a 2016 BJS survey, while 34% reported using alcohol. The gap widened even farther for property crimes, when 49% of inmates reported using drugs and just 24% reported using alcohol.
“Almost all crime can be traced back to some type of a…
Read the full article here
