La Puente Mayor Blames Prison Realignment For Surge In Violent Crime

January 12, 2012 10:27 AM

Reporting Jon Baird

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Crime, Inmate, La Puente, Mayor, Prison, Realignment, Sexual Assault

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LA PUENTE (CBS) — The mayor of La Puente said Thursday that a federal mandate to cut the inmate population in California prisons is to blame for a sharp jump in crimes in the city.

KNX 1070′s Jon Baird reports now La Puente is spending $50,000 to beef up its police presence.

According to Mayor John Solis, sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide since the realignment plan took effect a few months ago.

Under the realignment plan, many non-violent offenders end up in the county system instead of state prison and then get released early because of overcrowding.

Solis believes that makes the perpetrators even bolder.

“I think more crimes are being committed because, ‘Go in for a year, I’ll be out in a week, I’ll take my chances, it’s worth it’,” he said.

In addition to regular patrols by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies, the city will set up a task force to deal with the crime surge that will work 7 days a week for the next 3 months “to curb these crimes and pick these people up”.

The city recently offered a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of a man suspected of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl at a La Puente apartment complex.

La Puente Mayor Blames Prison Realignment For Surge In Violent Crime

ginny

Is anyone surprised?
Alan Di

Does La Puente have some magnet to attract criminals?

jay

if its nonviolent criminals being released why is there more violent crime. this doesnt make sense.

yarply

It’s easier to blame them instead of the illegals.
FusterCluck

Most of them are not truly non-violent offenders. They may have been convicted of a non-violent crime, but that’s because they pleaded down to lesser charges. It’s one of the ways they sold this BS to the public. Non-violent offenders my arse.
Darla Anderson

Right??!!! That’s stupid. Suggesting that a human being is going to commit a crime because the punishment is more reasonable now….It’s stupidity and it’s politics and fear-mongering. Adding $50,000 to their budget–what does that mean? They hired one more cop? Where’s the quote that I read somewhere that we put law enforcement on the job to prevent so many thousand crimes, and in so doing we have so many thousand crimes perpetrated against the people by the law enforcement.
mike

Darla, you sound like a complete IDIOT! get an education, then try again to write a halfway understandable paragraph. MORON!

Captain Incredulous

If you aren;t familiar with the area, it is largely Hispanic, as are the surrounding areas. Lot’s of gang bang activity in the area…., i.e. Vario la Puente Trese, East Side Dukes, Bassett Grande, Lil Happy Homes, etc. Not a nice area.
Jwood

They’re just coming home.

http://losangelesforme.com/2012/01/la-puente-mayor-blames-prison-realignment-for-surge-in-violent-crime/ La Puente Mayor Blames Prison Realignment For Surge In Violent Crime | Los Angeles for Me

[...] Mayor John Solis says a federal mandate to cut the inmate population in California prisons is to blame for a sharp jump in crimes in La Puente. More from: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com… [...]
steveB

Latinos predominately vote Democratic. They elected Gov. Brown and they got what they wished for.

george

So did the rest of us.

Virtual Vigilante

There is another way to secure the perimeter, and it doesn’t involve reliance on the local PD or sheriff.
freeecheese

How is Gov. “Moonbeam” going to handle the revolving doors at the prisons. This is just aggrivatting the situation and recycling an old product: just released criminals. They will probably get their old cells back.
Big trouble for Kollifornia. They can’t even afford to lock up Lindsey Lohan, what are they going to do with a killer?

obozosux

Here’s an interesting concept .Maybe they should use what money they have to protect the legal citizens instead of using it to support the ILLEGAL immigrants. Just a thought.
lukuj

Isn’t the liberal answer to everything to raise taxes? As soon as taxes get to 100%, Brown will start looking for another answer – providing there are still people living in the state who have incomes that don’t come from the government. Just keep voting for the liberals, Californians, and don’t complain about the obvious, negative results. I do feel sorry for those who don’t vote the idiots in, though. It is a beautiful state that is being destroyed.

freecheese

You’re right sir, but all ghetto cities ran by democrats are having the same problems. Difference is: Kollifornia has more ghetto cities than other states.

Nick

I like how these statistics are manipulated. Drudge links always skew the facts. Violent crime in Los Angeles County is down 14% from last year. Don’t you think Los Angeles County (with over 9 million people) would be a better indicator of crime trends in California than La Puente (a city of less than 40,000 people)? What Drudge did is find an article with one city that had crime go up, while the vast majority of cities witnessed a decrease in all categories of crime (including violent crimes).
Nick

Freecheese: It’s funny that you say that, because Memphis, TN has a higher violent crime rate per capita than any city in California. Also, Minneapolis, MN and Anchorage, AK have more sexual offenses per capita than any city in California.
Curtis

Nick,

You miss some history. Nobody actually lives in LA. It is empty. Drive there some day downtown, even by the whossname center. Empty of life. Let’s never ever go there for crime stats.
Bell, well, they made the news didn’t they? I think the city manager was pulling in over a million$/year and the Police Chief was making over $479K/year and it was just an itty bit town of no more than 38 thousand.

Memphis, that used to be a nice town but then, all of a sudden, they and the feds decided to bulldoze all the public housing and they turned all those murdering rapists free from murdering and raping their own by subsidizing the murdering rapists housing throughout most of Memphis where they just continued to get on with their murdering and raping.

The Sage Waitress

A Paul Kersey needs to step forward. The government has–once again–FAILED in its duty.

KerseyNation

We’re gonna need a LOT of Paul Kerseys.

CyberKnight

The crime rate goes up when they release several thousand prisoners. What a big BIG surprise!!! I also think Gov.”Moonbeam” released several thousand state prisoners to help the budget

Nick

Actually the crime rate went up in one small city (population of less than 40,000), while the crime rate in Los Angeles county fell drastically (down 14% in one year). You’ve been intentionally deceived by the author of this article and by Drudge (who linked to this article). Both of them hope that you don’t have the time to do the research on your own, and that you will spread this misinformation to all of your friends and family.

Davis

Nick where are you getting your data? The UCR and SHR wont be out for 2011 for a while now. Are you going on partial data from LA County? If so could you like your link to the data so I can take a look at it.

Here is the link for the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports but the most recent data is from 2009. So I am concerned about where you are getting your data to be making claims of 14% reductions in the crime rate.

Here is the public link to the FBI data

http://ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/
Nick

Davis,

Here is the link. http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/01/11/violent-crime-drops-13-8-percent-in-los-angeles-county/

GottaLaugh

California is dying a slow painful death, just keep voting Liberal and get use to it.
Don

Leave it to California.

Nick

Yup “leave it to California” to decrease crime in Los Angeles county by 14% in one year. And, leave it to California to San Jose (331 violent crimes per 100,000), Anaheim (343 violent crimes per 100,000), San Diego (427 violent crimes per 100,000), and Santa Ana (443 violent crimes per 100,000).

Nick

Yup “leave it to California” to decrease crime in Los Angeles county by 14% in one year. And, “leave it to California” to have some of the safest cities in the country like San Jose (331 violent crimes per 100,000), Anaheim (343 violent crimes per 100,000), San Diego (427 violent crimes per 100,000), and Santa Ana (443 violent crimes per 100,000).

Rusty Shackleford

When they enter a house and the owner has a gun, what will be their career? Eating worms!

Roger Drew Williams

Actually, the new career would more accerately be described as “Worm Food”.
Presidnet Not Sure

Ahh.. Jawa love.. Do you advertise that position on Monster.com?

freecheese

I used to live in Oxnard back in the ’70s. Left and travled for many years. Last time I was in LA, I was an over-the-road trucker. I couldn’t find the location. I asked about a dozen passers-by for help, and nobody could speak English!
I used to think this was the United States. Thank you Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown. It is going to get worse before it gets better.
I will never move back to Kollifornia.
Liberal.Loser

California inmates get early release under new law

SACRAMENTO, CA - A new state law will allow California to reduce its prison population by 6,500 inmates over the next year. The law would allow some low-risk inmates to leave prison early and help reduce prison overcrowding.

http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=73928&catid=2
Mikey

There are over 450,000 school buses in the lower 48 states. Most of them sit empty for 2 or 3 months each summer. I say we load them up with illegal aliens, get positive ID on each (fingerprints, iris scans), make them pay for the gas, drive them to the Mexican border, and tell ‘em to start marching south. Come back and you will get 5 years hard time.
nelson

Don, you used to many words, Leave California would cover it.
obozosux

Dear Leader needs as many ex cons as possible released and aregistered to vote in time for the election. His homies won’t let him down. Jus’ sayin’
John

AMEN wildbill.
Blair

Ok folks, this is very, very simple to figure out. As a society, we have but two choices here.

Choice A: The government will arrest criminals, prosecute them and lock them away for LONG periods of time. This will provide some measure of deterrence but not near enough. While doing this, the government enacts draconian gun control measures in the belief that police and the threat of long term incarceration will deter crime.

Choice B: You know you can’t catch and hold everybody forever and the cost of doing this is completely prohibitive. Enable law abiding people to carry concealed weapons and encourage them to protect themselves as there is NO WAY police can protect everybody all the time. This will confront criminals with the very real possibility they will be killed immediately while attempting to commit these violent crimes. This is the best deterrent there is.

When you boil this down and study the statistics thoroughly, these are the only two choices. EVERY single state that has adopted shall issue concealed carry laws has seen a sharp decrease in crimes, those that have not, have seen an increase. It’s just that simple.

Start to learn how to take care of yourself and by all means, if you see something bad happening to somebody, get involved! Don’t just gasp and call 911. The police could be 20 minutes away! Help your fellow man.
obozosux

Best post I’ve read all month. Two thumbs up!!!!!!!!!
repooper

Perhaps we shouldn’t fill our jails with drug users? Or perhaps we shouldn’t have for profit prisons that encourage longer jail sentences so they can make more money?
Bryan Cook

I bet it’ll take about 5 years for a Government study to come out that correlates more criminals on the streets with higher crime rates…

Idiots.
JustAGuy

Unintended consequences of voting Obama into office.

If you vote for Obama in 2012, that’s like hitting yourself in the face with your own fist.

Both are self-inflicted injuries.
the Dude

California is done, stick a fork in it.

george

You don’t wanna eat it. Too much taco sauce.

Rick

San Bernardino and LA County are under court orders to empty jails also. This comes at a time when law enforcement officers are being cut. The answer is simple; instead of the Democrat controlled legislature/governor outlawing the open carry of UNLOADED handguns in public, they should have passed concealed carry and open carry laws like most of the rest of the states already have. Citizens would be able to protect themselves when police cannot.

Madison Jones

Agreed, but in the mean time, pull out those long guns and open carry those. Its legal and will make a statement. Time to take a stand!