Sacramento sheriff calls out Newsom and state lawmakers over crime policy failures

Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper has a message for Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature: you are failing the people who elected you, and the voters already told you so. In a wide-ranging interview on KCRA 3's California Politics 360, Cooper laid out a detailed indictment of the state's approach to crime, from underfunded ballot measures to mental health loopholes that let violent offenders walk free.

The sheriff's broadside lands as California's legislative session winds down with roughly a month left on the clock. Lawmakers are racing to push bills to Newsom's desk. Cooper wants voters to know what those lawmakers are, and aren't, doing with the mandate they received.

Proposition 36: Seventy percent of voters, seven percent of the money

At the center of Cooper's frustration sits Proposition 36, the 2024 ballot measure that stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug crimes while giving eligible offenders a path to have felony charges dismissed if they completed court-ordered substance abuse or mental health treatment. The measure won roughly 70 percent of the vote statewide and carried every one of California's 58 counties.

That kind of consensus is rare in California politics. Cooper says the state's response has been anything but proportional.

State officials have claimed this year's budget includes $375 million to help implement Proposition 36. But budget documents tell a different story: only $50 million is specifically earmarked for the measure itself, with the money directed toward courts and pretrial services. Cooper put it bluntly.

"The issue is no funding, no funding came with it."

Cooper said the measure is already producing results. Retailers have reported declines in theft, he noted, and the law's framework gives prosecutors tools they lacked under the previous policy landscape. But without real investment, the gains stall.

"It is working. But without funding, it doesn't go anywhere."

Not a single statewide official supported Proposition 36 before the vote. Cooper called that gap between the political class and the public "troubling." The voters spoke with a near-supermajority. Their elected leaders looked the other way.

Mental health diversion: a loophole violent criminals exploit

Cooper reserved some of his sharpest criticism for California's mental health diversion program, which allows defendants to pause criminal cases and enter treatment instead of jail. If they complete the program, charges are dismissed entirely, and their records are wiped clean.

The Legislature and Newsom recently approved changes to tighten oversight of the program. Cooper's assessment of those changes was two words long.

"Not enough. Not enough."

The sheriff warned that some lawmakers now want to expand the program's eligibility to include theft offenses. He said that would "water it down" and undermine the progress Proposition 36 has started to deliver. His concern goes beyond policy disagreement. Cooper described a system that violent criminals have learned to game.

Fox News reported Cooper stating that inmates in Sacramento County jails openly discuss how to exploit mental health diversion to escape their cases, and that his office has recorded those conversations. Cooper cited cases where child killers and repeat offenders used the program to avoid prison, with their records erased upon completion. One case involved a defendant whose charges were dismissed after diversion, leaving the individual eligible to work around children again.

"Some crimes are so shocking... you shouldn't be eligible for mental health diversion."

Cooper's objection is not to mental health treatment. It is to a system that, as he describes it, treats the most dangerous offenders the same as low-level defendants, and then erases any record that the crime occurred.

Newsom has spent considerable energy on national political positioning, from parody driver's licenses aimed at the White House to media appearances that burnish his profile. Cooper's interview is a reminder that the governor's own backyard has problems no press stunt can fix.

Domestic violence: not even classified as a violent felony

Perhaps the most striking element of Cooper's interview was his discussion of domestic violence law in California. The state does not currently classify domestic violence offenses as violent felonies. Cooper wants that changed. The Legislature, he says, won't act.

"Domestic violence goes on every day. Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. Happens in every neighborhood. We have to treat it seriously."

Cooper described cases from his own jurisdiction that illustrate the stakes. He referenced an investigation involving a victim who was assaulted over a three-day period and another in which a victim's eyes were gouged out. These are the human consequences of classification decisions made in committee rooms in Sacramento.

When asked why some lawmakers oppose reclassifying domestic violence as a violent felony, Cooper offered a telling answer.

"They have no argument. They just vote against it."

That line captures something larger about California's criminal justice debate. The state's progressive leadership has built a framework in which accountability is treated as an obstacle rather than a principle. Lawmakers who refuse to explain their votes on domestic violence are not engaging in good-faith policy disagreement. They are ducking.

Sacramento's broader public safety crisis

Cooper's frustrations do not exist in a vacuum. Sacramento's public safety picture has deteriorated across multiple fronts. National Review reported that Sacramento's District Attorney, Thien Ho, threatened Mayor Darrell Steinberg with a lawsuit over the city's failure to address its homeless crisis. Sacramento's homeless population has increased 250 percent since 2017. One-third of the nation's entire homeless population lives in California, and Sacramento now houses more homeless people than San Francisco.

Cooper's own office tracked the toll inside homeless encampments: 300 arrests, 400 sexual assaults, and 420 physical abuse cases involving homeless women, all within a seven-month window. Cooper described conditions in those camps as resembling "the wild west."

The pattern is consistent. Voters demand action. Officials promise reform. The money never arrives, the laws stay weak, and the people who live with the consequences, victims of domestic violence, residents near encampments, shopkeepers watching their inventory walk out the door, are told to be patient.

Critics of Newsom's governance have raised similar concerns across other domains. Commentators have pressed the governor on California's broader decline, from the loss of the film industry in Los Angeles to the exodus of businesses and residents.

The lowest homicide rate, and the biggest asterisk

California recently reported its lowest homicide rate in nearly 60 years. That figure has been cited by the state's defenders as proof that current policies are working. Cooper did not dispute the number directly, but his interview made clear he considers it incomplete at best.

A falling homicide rate does not capture the full scope of what Sacramento residents experience. It does not account for the sexual assaults in encampments, the repeat theft that drove Proposition 36, the domestic violence cases that never get classified as violent felonies, or the offenders who cycle through mental health diversion and return to the streets with clean records.

Cooper's argument is not that nothing has improved. It is that the state's leadership uses selective statistics to avoid the harder work of building a criminal justice system that holds offenders accountable and protects victims.

Meanwhile, the race to succeed Newsom is already drawing candidates whose platforms suggest California's progressive consensus may be fracturing. Some gubernatorial hopefuls are doubling down on the very approach Cooper criticizes, promising even less cooperation with law enforcement at the state and federal level.

A sheriff who won't wait for permission

Cooper is not a newcomer to Sacramento politics. He served in the state Legislature before becoming sheriff, and his criticisms carry the weight of someone who has seen the system from both sides. His willingness to name the problem publicly, and to single out the governor, reflects a growing impatience among California's law enforcement leaders with a political establishment that treats public safety as a secondary concern.

"It's just frustrating that people are hesitant to do anything."

With roughly a month left in the legislative session, Cooper's challenge to Sacramento's political class is straightforward. Fund what the voters approved. Stop expanding loopholes that violent criminals exploit. Classify domestic violence as the serious crime it is. And stop pretending that a single favorable statistic erases the daily reality of victims across the state.

"We've got to get back to the victims."

Seventy percent of California voters told their government what they wanted. The question now is whether anyone in Sacramento, besides the sheriff, is listening.