Speaker 1: Welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Sheriff Chad Bianco
Speaker 1: of Riverside County first elected in twenty eighteen, re elected
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two to his second term. A twenty
Speaker 1: nine year veteran of the sheriff's office, Chad is the
Speaker 1: chief law enforcement officer of Riverside County and beautiful southern
Speaker 1: California Sheriff.
Speaker 2: How are you, sir, I'm doing well. Thank you, Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me on.
Speaker 1: Oh it's our pleasure. We played a bit of audio
Speaker 1: from you the other day in which you are describing
Speaker 1: the California Sheriff's Association and its long history of meeting
Speaker 1: with and conferring with governors, because obviously the chief executive
Speaker 1: of the state needs to be in touch with law enforcement.
Speaker 1: And we are just shocked and appalled and not like
Speaker 1: fake talk show host appalled, but just appalled by the
Speaker 1: fact that Governor Gavin Newsom has not met with you, folks.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: That is one hundred percent correct, and it's in the
Speaker 2: first time ever. I mean, we talked about all the
Speaker 2: sheriffs have a long history of meeting with the sheriffs,
Speaker 2: and the Sheriff's meeting with the governor about crime in
Speaker 2: the state. It's a unique place to meet with only
Speaker 2: fifty eight sheriffs and talk about what everyone is experiencing
Speaker 2: across the state in terms of public safety. And Newsom
Speaker 2: flat out refuses to meet with us. We've begged, we've pleaded,
Speaker 2: we've tried, and he's the only governor that anyone can
Speaker 2: remember that has refused. And so you know that did
Speaker 2: me saying that, and that play did get a lot
Speaker 2: of traction. And the funny thing about it is his
Speaker 2: crazy little run for governor, which our for president, which
Speaker 2: I hope the rest of the country clues in on
Speaker 2: what we already know. He immediately reached out and said, oh,
Speaker 2: we need to work together and we need to please
Speaker 2: stop stop Sheriff Bianco from saying that. And so now
Speaker 2: he met with a group of five sheriffs. It was
Speaker 2: completely uneventful. It was a token meeting. So technically I
Speaker 2: can't say he doesn't meet with us, because he did
Speaker 2: arrange one meeting, but it was useless. It was a
Speaker 2: tool so he can kind of keep me quiet, but
Speaker 2: it won't work.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is astounding. So just a word to the
Speaker 1: audience all across the country and around the world, not
Speaker 1: in California. If you know, if our fifty states are
Speaker 1: indeed laboratories of democracy, you need to know what some
Speaker 1: of the progressive experiments in law enforcement are doing to
Speaker 1: a beautiful, beautiful state. I think it's worth hearing no
Speaker 1: matter where you live. But Sheriff, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the recent you know, ballot measures and changes to
Speaker 1: California law and what that has meant to citizens and
Speaker 1: what you see on the street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been so many and they and they didn't
Speaker 2: start this just today. They didn't start yesterday. They started
Speaker 2: a decade ago, a little bit more than a decade ago.
Speaker 2: And the policies that they have put into places there
Speaker 2: are policies of decriminalization. They they are policies of emptying
Speaker 2: our prisons, not because people aren't committing crimes. It's because
Speaker 2: people will never go to prison anymore. They have overcrowded
Speaker 2: our jails by forcing state prisoners into county jails where
Speaker 2: they do not belong. So now none of our county
Speaker 2: jails have room for the regular people that we arrest
Speaker 2: every day. That should you know that spend a couple
Speaker 2: of days or a couple of weeks or months in
Speaker 2: jail and then go back into society. We're housing state
Speaker 2: prisoners now, and then they close state prisons, so once
Speaker 2: they've emptied out enough bed space in prisons where they
Speaker 2: can consolidate and empty a prison. Governor Newsom's stated goal
Speaker 2: is to close as many prisons as he can. And
Speaker 2: it has nothing to do with eliminating crime. Everyone in
Speaker 2: this state knows that crime is through the roof. They
Speaker 2: have changed the definition of crime, so crimes that were
Speaker 2: felonies ten years ago are now misimeanors or infractions or
Speaker 2: sometimes not even a crime anymore. And then for people
Speaker 2: that don't know, that aren't paying attention, you get people
Speaker 2: like Newsome that get up and tout his you know
Speaker 2: how well he's done with fighting crime because his crime's down. Well,
Speaker 2: anyone with common sense knows that if nothing's a crime anymore,
Speaker 2: there isn't going to be any crime. So they're legalizing drugs.
Speaker 2: They want date rate drugs legalized. They're trying to prevent
Speaker 2: law abiding residents from having guns, while they flat out
Speaker 2: refuse to penalize criminals who commit crimes with guns. It
Speaker 2: is a very bizarre situation. We are here living in California,
Speaker 2: and I hope the world learns it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for folks who haven't heard this, we've been tracking
Speaker 1: a handful of the radical left DA's in LA and
Speaker 1: San Francisco and Oakland, California, among other places. And while
Speaker 1: the left is always howling from stricter and stricter gun control,
Speaker 1: if you are caught committing a felony with a gun,
Speaker 1: these das will not apply the use of a gun enhancement.
Speaker 1: I mean, how insane is that?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too hung up on that.
Speaker 1: So the prison thing is speaking of insane. So the
Speaker 1: federal judge said a number of years ago, California's prisons
Speaker 1: are way too crowded. You got to do something about it. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have that many people breaking that many laws,
Speaker 1: you clearly need more prisons. But the answer from the
Speaker 1: one party state, and it's only in recent years, what
Speaker 1: a dozen, fifteen years that California has become a one
Speaker 1: party state, the answer was, well, we got to empty
Speaker 1: out the prison. As Sheriff Bianco pointed out, we're going
Speaker 1: to jam the state prisoners into the county jails. Now
Speaker 1: the county jails have no room for the local bad guys.
Speaker 1: Then you have prosecutors won't prosecute, and so you get
Speaker 1: the revolving door of committing sometimes very serious crimes and
Speaker 1: you're just out on the street to commit another crime. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about it's recently come out that
Speaker 1: a lot of the system, the what do you call it,
Speaker 1: the organized shoplifting rings as are some of them are
Speaker 1: actually controlled by the Mexican drug cartels because it's become
Speaker 1: so popular. How is Riverside County doing with the rampant
Speaker 1: shoplifting thing. Are all your you know, shampoos and bottles
Speaker 1: of scots and everything behind lock and key, like in
Speaker 1: northern California.
Speaker 2: No, they're not. Well. I will have to say that
Speaker 2: some stores, if they're like large department stores that are
Speaker 2: all across the state, if they have a policy of
Speaker 2: doing that. Yes, we have some stores that are locking
Speaker 2: up their merchandise. But here in Riverside County, we are
Speaker 2: an extremely proactive law enforcement area county, not only with
Speaker 2: me and my large department, but all of our police departments,
Speaker 2: and we have a very pro law enforcement DA who
Speaker 2: actually believes that criminals should be prosecuted and held accountable
Speaker 2: for their crimes. So I'm not going to say that
Speaker 2: we're immune to these these smash and grabs and these
Speaker 2: retail thefts. But when we have them, they seem to
Speaker 2: be coming from other counties, and they we catch them
Speaker 2: and we prosecute them, We arrest them, we jail them.
Speaker 2: So the criminal element knows that we are a little
Speaker 2: bit different here because we are very proactive in our
Speaker 2: law enforcement response, and we hear that from the criminals.
Speaker 2: But it is certainly across the state. They have emboldened
Speaker 2: criminals to the level where the cartels and the gangs
Speaker 2: are now taking advantage of these situations and running rings
Speaker 2: crime rings because they know they're not going to get prosecuted.
Speaker 1: That's amazing and astounding. Sheriff Chad Bianco, policy matters so much.
Speaker 1: We got an email from a cop that was just priceless.
Speaker 1: I can't remember precisely the counties that were involved. It
Speaker 1: was in the Bay Area, California, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about busting somebody who did one of those big shoplifting sprees.
Speaker 1: And the guy looked at the CoP's badge and said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I didn't realize I was in Santa
Speaker 1: Clara County. He was like on the side of the
Speaker 1: street that was that county. He thought he was still
Speaker 1: in whichever other county it was where they don't prosecute
Speaker 1: at all. Policy matters. Doesn't it to quality of life?
Speaker 2: Oh? One hundred percent? And I'm telling you the criminals
Speaker 2: know it. We recently arrested a jewelry a smash and
Speaker 2: grab at a jewelry store that we linked to several
Speaker 2: others in our county and out of county, and their
Speaker 2: response when we caught them was, where did all the
Speaker 2: cops come from? We didn't know you guys did enforcement here?
Speaker 2: And it truly is policies mean things. Policies mean everything,
Speaker 2: and we California is under the leadership of Newsom, at
Speaker 2: the direction of Newsom, is in a state where we
Speaker 2: have decriminalized everything. We believe that criminals are victims of
Speaker 2: society and it's the law enforcement's fault that someone commits crime.
Speaker 2: It's not theirs, and it's hurting us. It's really it's
Speaker 2: killing our communities. It's driving our business. Isn't our residents
Speaker 2: out of state, it's driving our law enforcement officers out
Speaker 2: of state, and we're going to collapse.
Speaker 1: I was just going to ask, how's the riverside County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department doing Do you have all the deputies you need?
Speaker 1: How staffing well?
Speaker 2: We are actually doing well, and we are unique to
Speaker 2: law enforcement in California. I meet with chiefs and I
Speaker 2: meet with other sheriffs all of the time, and we
Speaker 2: talk about our issues with recruiting and with retention, and
Speaker 2: because I am so vocal, because we are so pro
Speaker 2: law enforcement, and you know, we want to go out
Speaker 2: and rest as many people as we can, and we're
Speaker 2: very vocal about it. Law enforcement officers that want to
Speaker 2: be in the job come here. So we are not
Speaker 2: while well. We experience the same less applications across the
Speaker 2: country because people are just not coming into law enforcement
Speaker 2: like they used to. Our agency, we're actually doing fine.
Speaker 2: We're hiring enough to keep up with attrition. We're increasing
Speaker 2: increasing our ranks a little bit, so we're doing well,
Speaker 2: but the rest of the state is not.
Speaker 1: You know, they say a good lawyer should know the
Speaker 1: answer to a question before he asks it. I didn't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that question, Sheriff, but I had
Speaker 1: a really strong feeling, given you know, the reasons you gave,
Speaker 1: and that you have a pro law enforcement DA and
Speaker 1: everything I had a feeling you were doing a lot
Speaker 1: better than a lot of places where the cops know
Speaker 1: the brass doesn't have their backs because the politicians don't
Speaker 1: have the chiefs back or the sheriff's back or whatever.
Speaker 1: And these are the cities that are hundreds of officers short.
Speaker 1: Whether it's you know, San Francisco or Portland, Seattle, you know,
Speaker 1: LA policy matters once again, Sheriff Chad Bianco or Riverside
Speaker 1: County Sheriff really enjoyed the Chad. I hope we can
Speaker 1: stay in touch. This stuff is important.
Speaker 2: Absolutely anytime I'm available, I'm strong