California Sheriff Refuses to Enforce Lockdown: We're Too Busy Re-Arresting Criminals
Police have 'hands full trying to re-arrest' criminals freed on 'zero-dollar bail' policy
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A California sheriff has refused to enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) stay-at-home orders because the department is too busy re-arresting criminals freed due to Democrat policy.
On Tuesday, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said she would not be able to enforce the lockdown measures because she was too busy dealing with accused criminals who were set free under California’s new “zero-dollar bail” policy.
Sheriff Mims says her team has their “hands full trying to re-arrest” criminals who are free due to the policy that was implemented in 2019.
Mims made the remarks during an appearance on the Trevor Carey Show.
“I’ve heard multiple sheriffs, around the nation, state they will not enforce their governors’ shelter-in-place orders. Is that your position?” asked host Trevor Carey.
“That is my position," the sheriff responded.
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"We do not stop the public to find out what they’re doing when they’re not sheltering in place," Mims revealed.
"We don’t ask those questions, we don’t ask if they’re ‘essential’.
"We’ve got our hands full trying to re-arrest people that are released due to zero-dollar bail.
"So we’ve got other things that are on our mind that are more important than stopping normally law-abiding citizens.”
Sheriff Mims appeared on the radio show to discuss the challenges facing law enforcement during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the economic hardship.
Mims explained that government employees are also vulnerable to the economic damage.
She pointed to the decline in tax revenues, meaning that state and local governments would cut services.
In August of 2018, California set in motion their “zero-dollar bail” policy, according to The Daily Wire.
“California will become the first state in the nation to abolish bail for suspects awaiting trial under a sweeping reform bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown,” NPR reported at the time.
“An overhaul of the state’s bail system has been in the works for years and became an inevitability earlier this year when a California appellate court declared the state’s cash bail system unconstitutional.
"The new law goes into effect in October 2019.”
“Today, California reforms its bail system so that rich and poor alike are treated fairly,” Brown said in a statement.
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Moreover, as noted by The Los Angeles Times in March, the blue state granted early release to 3,500 inmates “in an effort to reduce crowding as coronavirus infections begin spreading through the state prison system.”
“Lawyers for Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday told a panel of federal judges the state is taking ‘extraordinary and unprecedented protective measures’ to slow the spread of the virus and protect those who live and work within California’s 35 prisons,” the report said.
“The accelerated prison discharges — affecting inmates due to be released over the next 60 days — come in the face of pressure to do much more.”
Tensions in Fresno over the lockdown are at a high.
As noted by The Daily Wire, liberal Fresno city council president Miguel Arias was cited for battery after a confrontation with anti-lockdown self-described independent journalists.
“An incident caught on video has resulted in three misdemeanor battery citations against a Fresno City Council member after he got violent with a group of self-described independent journalists pushing back on the city’s extended ‘shelter-in-place’ order,” the report outlined.
“The incident took place at the council member’s apartment building at around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, where a group of men and women appeared at the apartment to confront him about the damage done to people’s lives by the city’s ‘shutdown’ orders, which Arias supports and which Fresno Mayor Lee Brand recently extended to May 31, prompting hundreds of Fresno residents to protest in front of City Hall last week.”
