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