Why California Can't Stop The Rise of Lawlessness | Chad Bianco

You lost two deputies. They were killed. It was just a traffic stop. He was holding a gun. He was waiting for the deputy to approach the window. And as soon as the deputy approached the window, he shot him. It's been 20 years since we lost a deputy to a murder while they've been working. Can this be a coincidental thing that's happening in California? I've been doing this for 30 years now. The people that we're dealing with are becoming more and more and more violent. They sense handcuffs are coming out. It's a fight. My guest today is Chad Bianco, Sheriff with Riverside County. His department lost two police officers in just two weeks, which created a shockwave in California. But are there underlying reasons behind the incidents? Criminals just being completely emboldened and empowered to commit more crimes because there's not a consequence. Have you had discussions with the politicians? Absolutely none. They will not talk to us. It is extremely frustrating. Extremely frustrating because they are passing laws that make absolutely no sense. I'm Siamak Khorrami. Welcome to California Insider. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. We want to talk to you about something that happened last month. You lost two deputies and they were killed. And since 2003, this hasn't happened in your county. Can you tell us what happened? Yes, it was certainly tragic and you're right. It's been 20 years since we lost a deputy to a murder while they've been working. The first one, Isaiah Cordero in December, December 29th. And it was just a traffic stop. And he approached this person and began a dialogue with him for to obtain his driver's license and registration and he was shot and killed. And it happened that fast. Completely unexpected. There was no, there was no, nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you know, that person shouldn't have been there. I mean, what we know now is he shouldn't have been out of custody. He should have been in custody. The person that shot him. And the bad thing about that is, is that person, he knew that eventually he was going to get caught. He knew that he was supposed to be in jail. He knew that he was going to jail for a long time. And so he had nothing to lose. He was already in custody and set free. And in his head, he knew that once he is caught again, he's never getting out of jail. And so the bad part for our deputy is the deputy didn't know who he was stopping. You know, we can't see who's in a car. Contrary to all of the negative publicity about, you know, cops racial profiling and stopping certain races more than others. The reality is, is when we pull over a car, we have no idea who's in the car. We don't know if it's a man, a woman, what race they are, nothing. We just see a car. The car did something wrong in our eyes. It either didn't stop at a stop sign or maybe the registration was expired or something like that. But we don't know who's driving. The person driving in the back of his head, he's paranoid, of course, because he knows he's going away for a long time. He thought he probably is getting caught. Is that what? So he's going to do everything he can. He was holding a gun. He was waiting for the deputy to approach the window. And as soon as the deputy approached the window, he shot him. Now, what about the second incident? The second one was a domestic violence call. And in this particular case, we didn't know anything because the person that called 911 called 911 and then just set the phone down. And we're assuming that they didn't want the person to know that they had called 911. So the dispatcher was listening to it happen in the background. And there were words being said that made the dispatcher believe that there was a child involved and it could possibly be like a kidnapping type of a thing where the husband was trying to take the son and the wife was not allowing him to take the son and they were fighting over it. So that's what we went into. That's what the deputy showed up for. And when he arrived, the people were out in the front yard. And as he approached them, the male subject pulled out a gun and shot him. And it was within 15 seconds of him arriving. So there was another deputy that was shortly behind him. And when that deputy arrived, the suspect also shot at that deputy. And then they had a little gun battle and the suspect was hit. Today's episode is sponsored by Birchgold. Despite the U.S. blowing through the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling in January, White House still is not planning to reduce spending. 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The first deputy that was killed, he was supposed to be in custody, right? Is that? He was, he was. He is a career criminal. He has been convicted and sentenced to 30, 40 years maybe in prison since 2000, but he only does a fraction of those sentences because of the way our system is set up. But this last crime that he committed, he committed a, basically a kidnapping. All of the facts of this case are almost undisputable. It was a kidnapping, a beating of a female, dragging her around. There was, there's, there's allegations that he was stealing money from her or forcing her to give up money. And he was convicted. Now the judge, he went to a trial by a judge instead of a trial by jury. And even though all of the elements were met for the kidnapping charge, it's not, you know, a lot of people are saying, you know, it was dismissed. He was found not guilty. That's not true. The judge just dismissed the charge. Even though it's all there, the judge took away the most heinous part of, of the, of the charges, kept the rest of them. But still he is a third striker. So he has a history of violent crimes against people. And he did it again and he was convicted. So with that conviction, he should have gone back to prison for 25 years to life under the third strikes law. Instead, the judge let him bail out. And that's another, that's another topic. The judge lowered his bail. He was allowed to be released. And then he failed to show up to his next court date. So a warrant was issued. While he was out, while he had that warrant, he committed another crime. He was arrested, sent back into jail and the judge released him again. Wow. And so he was out again pending another court date, which we know he's proven he's not going to show up because when he shows up, he's going back to prison forever. So he fails to show up to that court date and now he's on the run basically. And that's when our deputy contacts him. Now, Sheriff, when these two shootings happen, when these two killings happen, I kind of, I started thinking, can this be a coincidental thing that's happening in California? Or is this like, is there an underlying policy factors or factors that are going on that are kind of short? These are the impacts of them, can you tell us? Yeah, that's a good question. In my line of work, and I've been doing this for 30 years now, and I stay very active. I stay, I still go out and I still pull people over and I still, I'll show up on deputies calls or I'll handle a call, so one of them don't have to come out. And what I have noticed and what law enforcement leaders have noticed across the country, not just California, is that society as a whole, or at least the people that we deal with, and we know that we only deal with a small portion of our population. The majority of the population never has law enforcement interaction. That's really, the reality is that's all we deal with. So we either deal with people that have been victimized or we're dealing with the suspects. And what we have noticed, especially in the last several years, but certainly since my time on patrol 25, 30 years ago, the people that we're dealing with are becoming more and more and more violent, more and more resistive to arrest, more against law enforcement. The lack, there's just zero respect for law enforcement. There's no respect for authority. There's no respect for our laws. And it's getting more and more. We, I mean, we're, where normally you would come into a situation when I was a deputy and for the most part, you told someone they were under arrest and you explained it to them and you tell them to, okay, turn around, put your hands behind your back. And they did it. And now you fight with them. As soon as that person knows that they're getting placed under arrest or they sense handcuffs are coming out, it's a fight. And it's, I don't know what to attribute it to. I mean, I have it in my mind. I know several things have happened in the recent past. And when law enforcement leaders come together and we talk about it, which we do all the time, there are certain things that have happened recently in society that we feel are contributing to this. There's obviously in the mainstream media and some outlandish groups that are just extreme activists that are really labeling law enforcement as bad. They want everyone to think that law enforcement is all bad. We're all criminals. We all break the law. We all arrest people that shouldn't be arrested. We all frame people and we kill people. That's just not true. That is so far opposite of what reality is. I mean, it's not even funny. It's so far opposite. But what that does is those people that we deal with, it emboldens them. And they don't like law enforcement anyway, so it makes it worse. And it makes them believe that law enforcement's just out to get them. And it makes them believe that they should fight them. And then when you hear politicians and supposed leaders in our community, when they make comments that you need to resist and stand up against them and fight back, that takes a toll. And people listen. And it can't be a coincidence that that has started recently and we're seeing this increase recently. Drug addiction and drug use is increasing, which is causing mental health. Like mental illness. Mental illnesses. So nothing in our DNA changed. Nothing in our makeup changed. So the only thing that's changed over the last 10, 15 years is the unbelievable amount of drugs and alcohol that we're using. And when you fill your- We're also decriminalizing drugs. Absolutely. We're okay with it. Oh yes, I mean, this is, we can go down this entire rabbit hole of our politicians being completely responsible for all of this. And the political ideology agenda that is being driven right now, especially in California, but unfortunately is taking hold in some other states, is the real culprit of all of this. The decriminalization of drugs, this move to close down jails and close down prisons, and nobody's responsible for anything. It's always somebody else's fault. Blame it on mental illness. Blame it on your parents. Blame it on the police. There's no personal responsibility for anything. Now you mentioned the politicians and you mentioned that you guys, you're in touch with other law enforcement leaders across the country. Have you had discussions with the politicians that are actually- Absolutely none. They will not talk to us. The current governor has been governor for, how many years? Four years. He just got reelected. So we're talking five years now? He's never met with us once. And every governor before him met with us every two months. So the sheriffs, there's only 58 of us in the state, and we come together for meetings every three months. And at those three month meetings, every governor in our history has met with us and talked about us, about the problems we're experiencing, about public safety, about public safety issues. This governor refuses. He has never met with us, ever. And he has no desire to. And he has no, he doesn't want to hear reality. I mean, they're making all of these public safety laws and changing laws that are on the books that concern public safety, closing down prisons, letting people out early. He has never consulted with the public safety experts, the ones that deal with it every single day. Never. You're gonna have to ask him that. So you've tried to reach out to him? Absolutely. And there's no reason, there's no clear reason why he doesn't? He's busy. That's the answer. Every governor in our history hasn't been that busy, but apparently he's too busy. Now, is it frustrating to see what's going on with the state leaders and what you guys, the position you are in, is it frustrating to see all of this? It is extremely frustrating. Extremely frustrating because they are passing laws that make absolutely no sense. Absolutely no sense. There's a bill now, and I can't remember, I just lost his name, the one that did it. But it's to make hallucinogens legal. What person in their right mind, knowing the problems we have with mental health, the problems we have with psychosis, what person in their right mind would say, we need to make LSD and mushrooms and all of these other psychedelic hallucinogens, we need to make them legal. Who does that? And so for us, dealing with the consequences of that, it is unbelievably frustrating. And then we- You have to go and deal with it- I have to deal with it every day. I have to deal with the consequences every single day. Marijuana, they want to believe that marijuana is, they want everybody to believe that marijuana is good. That the lie told to us and spread to us that it was medical marijuana. It's, oh, medical marijuana, the Medical Marijuana Act, and oh, we need, you're gonna deny someone medicine. It's not medicine. They all just wanted to get stoned. They wanted to get high. Those were the people that were pushing it. They didn't want a consequence for getting stoned every day. And they sold it to politicians on a medical lie. They refused to look into it to see if it was a lie. They sold it to all of us. And now we're having problems with marijuana. I had a 14, 15 year old kid yesterday, so stoned out of his mind, he fell down a flight of stairs, smacked his head, he's got a brain bleed. We don't know if he's gonna live, but just smoking marijuana. It was medicine, apparently. It's horrible. Two years ago, I don't know the statistics yet for last year, but two years ago, we had 19 officer involved shootings for my department. 18 of them involved drugs. And it was something like 16, 15 or 16 marijuana. It's a common problem. We know how dangerous fentanyl is. We know that if I sell fentanyl to you, I know that chances are pretty good you're gonna die. And yet they won't do anything to stop that, to have any type of consequence for that person selling the fentanyl. They just flat out refuse. For the last three years, it's died in our government. That bill has died. They won't even hear it because it adds a punishment and it adds a crime. The governor has made it very well known. He's very outspoken about closing prisons. The only way you can close prisons is if there aren't inmates there. So in his first four years, he did everything he could to let people out of prison early. He released thousands, tens of thousands of inmates that should not have been released. And when he did that, he lowered the population so low that he could consolidate prisons and then close the ones that he vacated. And that's his goal. He wants to close as many prisons as possible. You know, they made it so juveniles, almost impossible for us to arrest a juvenile. We can't interview them anymore. We can't talk to them anymore. Arrests, the juvenile halls are going away. They don't go to jail anymore. And so that criminal element, the older ones know that, well, here, you go in and steal it or here, you hold the gun because nothing's going to happen to you. So we arrest all, you know, we'll stop somebody, they'll commit crimes in their getaway car or whatever with a gun. And there's three people in the car. Two of them are 18. One of them's 16. Which one do you think is going to have the gun? The 16 year old, because they know that nothing's going to happen to that 16 year old. And our legislators are causing this. They're causing it. They're making this happen. What's the impact of all of this? So you have a pretty decent sized county. You're the sheriff and you're in the law enforcement. You probably see the impact of this on your force. How does your force feel about all of this? What's going on? When you are daily going out, so our deputies, when they are daily going out and handling these calls and they're arresting the same people over and over and over, we have to be careful that the morale doesn't fall so low that they are so disenfranchised with the system that they just stop doing their job. And the reality of all of this is as population grows, we know, and I mentioned earlier that we're a free country. So we have criminals. We have people that choose to do bad things. And it's a small portion of the population. I don't know what the percentage is, but for round numbers, say 5%. 95% of the people are good, wholesome people. 5% are the ones that we deal with all the time. As the population grows, that 5% grows also. So as that 95% grows, so does the 5%, so they can stay the 5%. That's the reality is some people just choose that. And without something to stop them or deter them from crime, they will just keep going and they will keep doing it. So for us, even though we're a large county, we have a small jail population and we have a fraction of the available beds that our surrounding counties have. And money-wise and time-wise, we're probably not going to get more jail facilities. If you expand that to the state, it's the same thing. So our deputies know that we keep arresting these people and there's no place to put them. So unfortunately, and this is happening all across the state, misdemeanors don't go to jail anymore. They may go to jail for a second, but they're going to get site released and they're going to get let out. The felonies, as long as it's not a crime against a person where the person was injured or a great bodily injury or something like that, or likely to cause, they're probably going to get released also. And we're at a point where only the very worst of the worst stay in custody. And we're having to get creative and use ankle bracelets and monitoring outside of the jail while they go through their court process. And then when they are convicted and the state refuses to take them and they're changing laws that they're not going to take them and they have to stay in county jail facilities that were never meant for that, it's causing more of an overcrowding situation where more people have to be released. It's a lose-lose if we don't start turning this around and trying to address the problem with crime and the problem of rising crime and the problem of criminals just being completely emboldened and empowered to commit more crimes because there's not a consequence. How far are we from the point where your team or other teams across the country that are arresting these people say, you know what, it's not worth it. Why should I do this? They're going to get out anyways. I will tell you that there are some jurisdictions that they've reached that point already. And they feel that they're not being supported by their administrations, by their chief or by their sheriff or by their city government or their county government. And so it's easier for them to just not do anything. It's easier for them to not arrest somebody because they don't want to be labeled a racist for arresting somebody that's a minority or somebody that is going to be easily thrown in that mix that you're a racist because you did that or you only arrested them because you don't like men or you don't like women or race. They don't want to be sued. I mean, we get sued for everything. Claims of false arrest and attorneys making allegations that are simply not true, hoping for some type of settlement. So it doesn't go to court. When we take them to court, we win all the time, but it's expensive. So for years, it's been just settle. So, you know, you come out and if I'm coming to arrest you and you fight with me and I have to fight back because it's my job to win, I have to arrest you. And so I'm going to win, but you're going to get injured in the process. So then now you're going to sue me for injuring you. And it's almost easier to settle it for 50 grand than pay $100,000 in attorney fees. And win the case and pay nothing, right? Right, and you can win, but it's going to cost you more than that settlement. And so it's easier for sometimes the deputies and the officers to say, it's too much of a headache. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to sit here and wait for that emergency call for service. And then I'll go out and do what I have to do at that time. In our county, it's not like that. Our deputies know 100% that we are there for our residents and we are there to provide public safety to our residents. And that provision of public safety is taking care of the people that are harming our community. So if they're committing crimes in Riverside County, we will find them and we will take them to jail. If they get out and they do something else, we will arrest them and take them to jail again. And if it happens again, we will do it again. And I and my staff, we make it very clear to our deputies that that's our job. We can't decide and control what our legislature does or what our district attorney does. if you have a bad district attorney or what our judges do if you have bad judges. All we can control is what we're doing at the time. If somebody violates the law, then they need to go to jail. And if it happens every single day, we can keep somebody in custody life weekends at a time. I mean, if they're committing a crime as soon as they get out, we will find them, we will catch them and we'll put them back in jail. It may only be for a minute, but they're going back into jail. And a lot of places have gotten away from that. Some still do, some believe the same way I do and the same way our department believes, but it's getting easier and easier to be that other. Now, what is the impact for the public, for our audience that care about California that allows them to live here? And what's the impact on them? So the impact is fear. The impact is quality of life. And their quality of life is diminishing because they can't let their kids go play in the park by themselves. They can't, they're afraid to go to the grocery store. They're afraid that their businesses are gonna get broken into. They're afraid that their house is gonna get broken into. So that fear of being victimized is becoming more and more possible as time goes on. We know crime is going up. We know violent crime is going up. And so people start feeling that law enforcement isn't protecting them. We don't know that it's our county and city governments not giving the funding to law enforcement or building more jails or building more prisons. We just think, or you're told that the cops just don't do their job. Where's a cop when you need one? I mean, that's, they're not doing anything. They're not protecting us. And so we get wrongly blamed for crime increasing and crime really running rampant when we're doing everything we can. And the calls, the 911 calls, it takes a longer time for LAPD to get there or San Francisco Police Department. We've heard complaints on that. They're not doing anything anymore. Absolutely. So if you have, for instance, I'm not saying this happens but I'll just put it out there so you can get a visual of it. If you're afraid, if a deputy or a law enforcement officer is afraid of all of those things, they're afraid of being accused of doing something wrong. They're being accused, you know, they're afraid to the reality of driving around. I mean, we drive, we're a 12 hour shift of driving. Look at how many accidents there are where people drive two hours a day, an hour to work and an hour home. And there are accidents all the time. So we're driving all day long so the chance of us being in an accident is much greater than the general public that only has a commute to school or a commute to work. And when we're being sued for traffic accidents or for injuries or for things like that, it's safer to just not drive. So you just park and then you don't do anything. You're not doing any patrol, active patrol because you don't want to do an active patrol and get in some type of an accident. Or you don't want to be in an active patrol situation and then be accused of being a racist because you arrested someone, you know, a black person or a Hispanic person or any other that we want to be accused of, of targeting, even though we're targeting criminal activity, not color. And it makes them, it makes them less likely to want to do anything. So you avoid the hotspots, you avoid the areas where you're going to get put in those situations. And when you get that call for service, it takes you longer to get there because you've distanced yourself from those places. And we all know, law enforcement knows, we have all the statistics to prove it, that there are certain areas where crime is concentrated. So if you're avoiding those areas because you don't want the liability of going in there, when crime happens there, it's going to take you longer to get there because you're not in the middle of it. And for San Francisco, for LA, that's what's happening. And they're staying away from those spots because they don't want to be accused of things they're not. And they don't want to be arrested for something that they really didn't do. And it's safer for them. Luckily for us, we are not experiencing that. And our city governments and our county governments in Riverside County are all very pro-public safety. We saw no calls for defunding the police. We actually saw increases in some of our police forces and even in my department, some of our contract cities, we saw them increase staffing and increase funding. And they know the value of law enforcement. And with crime increasing, they want us to do everything that we can to stop it, to make it go away and keep their community safe. And as long as you continue to do that, you have the support of the public, you have the support of me and my administration, then the deputies and law enforcement officers, then they feel comfortable going out and doing their job. They know the reality is they're not doing anything wrong most of the time. And they're not racist. They're not arresting people based on their color. And they just go out and do their job. And they know that their client, the person that they are helping is our Riverside County resident that's being victimized. And they're doing it for them and only them. And I guess really that's what brought us into this profession in the first place is that heart desire to help someone. I mean, it may sound corny and it may sound cliche, but I honestly have, and it doesn't have to be law enforcement. I could, I'd come build a wall in your head, you know, a block wall at your house, you know, just because I can, and you may not be able to, and I can do that for you, I would do that in a heartbeat. Help you build something, help you do anything. I enjoy helping people. And I don't like being helped myself. I say no to everything, but that's the type of person that gets into law enforcement. There is something in us that we get a very big reward for helping someone. And when we can come to work and do that all the time, and the people that are wanting our service, that need our service, you know, it only has to be once a week or, you know, once a month someone tell you, thank you, and you'll come back and do the same thing over and over and over again, because that's what drew us to this profession. I tell people all the time, I didn't pick this profession. This profession picked me. I ended up here and I've flourished here, and I absolutely love it. But if I had my choice, I'm supposed to be a professional baseball player. I mean, I would have picked anything other than being a cop. I would have picked, I mean, I wanted to be, I was a good athlete. I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Outside of that, I would want something that's gonna make me a whole bunch of money, and law enforcement is not it. And once I fell into it, I absolutely love it. I wouldn't, I would do nothing different. You promised me millions and millions of dollars to do something else. I wouldn't leave this. It's the reward is amazing. The reward, the heart reward for your soul is why I come to work every day and do this, despite the hurdles being put in front of us and the roadblocks being put in front of us and people making it more difficult for us to provide that service. We're still gonna find a way to do it. Do you have any other thoughts for our audience? I do, and what I need and what all of our law enforcement needs is we need your help. We are trying to do everything we can to be more vocal, to express to our politicians and our government leaders that we need help and we need solutions, and we have suggestions for solutions. We need people behind us, and we need people standing up and demanding of their elected officials something different. What we're doing now is broken and it's not working, and we need to demand them public safety. We need demand our safety from our public officials, and it's going to take that because I promise you, they're all afraid of getting reelected, and if they believe that they're not going to get reelected unless they start caring about public safety, then we're not going to fix this, and I want everyone to be clear that it's not all of them. It's just the majority of them, and it's very easy to find, to do your own research. Do you think it's the majority of them, or do you think it's the vocal minority that convinced the majority to? That's exactly what it is. It is a minority convincing the majority, and the problem is is we are so politically divided. My personal opinion, I could fix all of our government very easily if we take Democrat and Republican away from voting, and if we remove the D and the R from who you are and people are going to have to actually look into you and figure out what you stand for and what your morals are and what your values are, then we're going to elect the right person, but right now, we just vote straight D or straight R. That's it. You don't know who you're voting for. You don't know what they believe in. You don't know what their past is. You just see you're a Democrat, so you just vote Democrat. You absolutely refuse to vote Republican, and if you're a Republican, you absolutely refuse to vote Democrat, and that's why we're in the position that we're in. You get taken advantage of, and so right now, there is a far left activist wing of our current government that is basically bringing all the rest of the Democrats along with them because they don't vote R. They don't. It is impossible for a Republican to get anything through either one of our houses right now. Impossible, especially if it concerns public safety because the Democrats just won't support it. If you're a Republican, they have no need for you because all of the Democrats stick together and they vote yes on all of their things. They just do everything together, and they don't care about the tiny little amount of Republicans that are over here because they can't control anything, so if all of those people, the ones that are in the middle that just keep supporting that D, that far left agenda, if they were all afraid that now their base, their voters are not gonna vote for them, maybe they'll stand up to their conscience and maybe they'll stand up to their values and their morals and start doing the right thing instead of just what the party tells them to do. Chad Bianco, Sheriff of Riverside County, it was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. 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