Homicides in California’s major cities rose. (Photo: Eva Carre/Shutterstock)
Gavin Newsom’s Crime Spree
Those who were suspected and arrested for criminal activities and allowed to walk before their trial never bothered to show up for their trial
By Andy Caldwell, August 12, 2025 3:00 am
While Governor Gavin Newsom is closing one prison after another in California, criminal activity has not abated in our state for a myriad of reasons. In the City of Santa Barbara, at their recent annual Old Spanish Days Fiesta celebration, one person was murdered while two others were wounded.
Sergio Rivas has been charged for murder at the fiesta with gang enhancements. In addition to a couple of previous drunk driving-related offenses, he was arrested by the Sheriff’s department in 2016 for “street terrorism”. That is, he previously stabbed three people on the very same street as the current charges!
Luis Gerardo Terrazas was also charged with attempted murder at the fiesta with gang enhancements- he attempted to kill Rivas.
A man named Juan Fernando Rios was also charged with murder at the fiesta with gang enhancements. His is the most interesting of the three people arrested in that he was just arrested on July 26, 2025, just a week or so before the fiesta, on charges of DUI alcohol/drugs, addict in possession of firearm, possession of ammunition, carrying a loaded firearm with a previous felony conviction, and carrying a firearm when not the registered owner. He also has been suspected in the past of other serious felonies.
All that begs the question, how was Rios back on the street a week after having been arrested to allegedly commit murder during the fiesta?
Well, in addition to offering extremely cheap bail, Santa Barbara County Supervisors have also pushed for a policy that allows people who are accused of serious crimes to walk freely after having been arraigned as it is their policy to not detain people in custody while awaiting trial. In other words, they would rather give people with long records a break rather than err on the side of public safety! They have foisted this policy on their fellow electeds, that is, our District Attorney and the Sheriff, by way of controlling their budgets. Foisted? Read that coercion, as in making them an offer they can’t refuse!
Did somebody just lose their life because of these policies?
Another telltale sign this policy is not working has to do with the fact that local courts have had to issue some 10,000 warrants for failure to appear in court in Santa Barbara County. What does that mean? All those people who were suspected and arrested for criminal activities and allowed to walk before their trial never bothered to show up for their trial. Regardless, these same county supervisors are in the process of seriously reducing the carrying capacity of our jail because they are sticking to their story that low bail amounts and pre-trial diversion are a success!
Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom has just announced the closure of yet another prison in our state. He is aiming to close five total. The reduction in prison population has been made possible by gutting California’s Three Strikes Law that sent people to prison for decades, if not a lifetime, for committing three felonies. California’s naive and gullible voters gutted this law by a variety of means including changing the definition of what constitutes a felony, violent or otherwise. For example, as Katy Grimes of The California Globe reported, Proposition 57 rendered the following crimes in California “non-violent” felonies: human trafficking, raping an unconscious person, drive-by shooting, assault with a deadly weapon or firearm, serial arson, exploding a bomb to injure people, solicitation to commit murder, and domestic violence”! Nonviolent? That is how Gavin Newsom and his friends in communities like Santa Barbara have justified keeping criminals out of our prisons and jails.
Other California soft-on-crime factors, besides low bail and pre-trial diversion, came in the form of other ballot propositions. Proposition 47 reduced serial retail theft and several drug offenses from felony to misdemeanor status. The amount of retail theft in CA resulting from the same was staggering, resulting in over $100 billion in losses in some years before voters repealed Prop. 47 by way of Proposition 36. However, Governor Newsom, who actively opposed Prop. 36, has refused to allocate any funds to enforce Proposition 36 at the local level in support of prosecutors!
California was once considered a paradise. It is now only a paradise for soft-on-crime democrat politicians and their number one fan base comprised of so-called non-violent felons. It is an appalling thought that such a beautiful city as Santa Barbara would have their annual Old Spanish Day’s Fiesta celebration marred by a modern-day version of the bandoleros, but that is both the old and new California way.
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Can anyone cite a better and more effective way to affect societal and economic breakdown.
Those among us who relentlessly proclaim Newsom’s actions are predicted on incompetence are blatant morons and unaware traitors to California and America. Newsom knows exactly what he is doing to be followed by marshall law as occurring in DC.
The problem is the plans enacted to destroy us require enhanced bandwidth to be recognized. From afar the convergences are horrifying.
I have mixed feelings on this. Before I experienced for myself manufactured evidence, search of my residence without a warrant, creative fiction mascarading as police report, wildly inflated bail, and being forced to take a plea bargain on a false charge, I was a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” kind of guy. So, being quite angry about being railroaded, I mistakenly voted for prop 47, but now am dismayed by the harm it has done. So, how to maintain law and order while keeping LEO, prosecutorial and judicial abuse down?
Any action derived from law enforcement is never the cause of a problem. The absence of enforcement leads to the far worse changes which we now experience.
It was certainly a problem to me in my case, with a quarter million dollars bail on a bogus 3 year felony charge, a judge looking straight through me while frostily saying “I don’t think so” when I asked for OR. My court appointed attorney told me “I don’t know why they’re keeping you because they don’t have anything on you, but you either sign this or you await trial in jail,” which, judging from the time others were spending waiting for trial could have been a very long time. The plea was to cop to a very minor charge similar to jaywalking and if I hadn’t of taken it I would have lost everything I owned except the dirty clothes I was arrested with, because rental facilities sell your stuff if you don’t pay the rent. Before I was released 60 some miles from my residence, the little cash taken from me was expended on the wildly overpriced snack cart that rolled around about an hour after the skimpy meal – I lost twenty pounds in 20 days, and that’s not an exaggeration, it happened and I paced almost nonstop. Then my driver’s license and credit cards disappeared from my possesions before I was released. Nearly every CO I encountered was a stone asshole. With 3 years of unsupervised probation, there was a good chance of being violated and having to spend a full three years in prison, so I gathered my stuff and got the hell out of that county, which was probably the plan. Every cop I have asked about how I was set up has told me that the person who did it knew exactly what they were doing. I’m not going to explain here because no one needs to get ideas. Do you think I was pissed off? You bet I was pissed. It gave me a whole new outlook on the criminal justice system, and not for the better.
One more comment then I’ll shut up. $250,000 bail and after 20 days in a pretrial facility the DA offered me a plea bargain to a nothing charge? But the hook was in taking the deal, because in taking the plea bargain and avoiding the risk of a jury trial (I believe juries convict somewhere in the high 90s percent, or the loss of everything I owned, including my vehicle, if the case was dropped at first day of trial, I was lucky by a fluke I didn’t lose my job) I was essentially pleading guilty to the full felony charge. With the three years of probation and the probability that “they” would be actively looking for me on something minor and bam, three years in prison. The cop who arrested me told me they wouldn’t have bothered with me except for all the heat that was generated. Then, I had to be medically evaluated due to a very recent surgury. A nurse asked the cop about me, and the cop replied “we got the wrong guy.” After being processed I only got one dose of the medication prescribed by the eroom physician. After being processed, another prisoner in the holding cell studied me a bit, then came up to me and said “you don’t belong here, why are you here?” He asked to see my paperwork then his eyes popped wide open and he said “$250,000 bail? What did you do?” It seems $10k was extremely high for the crowd I was surrounded by. And then they let me loose on a spit on the sidewalk level plea bargain with the sentence including time served. I hated cops, judges and district attorneys for a long time after that, and that’s why I voted for prop 47.
Just not true. Soon to emerge from Orange County is an expose of the total breakdown of authoritative rule.
You will readily conclude one can never trust a judge nor the police and no not sour grapes as I was not nor have ever been charged with a crime however occurrences I am knowledgeable of vanquished any and all trust of police and judges.
Appreciate Andy Caldwell’s article. I’ve been trying to put together a big picture timeline of CA criminal justice starting with the malevolent-passage-in-benevolent-disguise of Prop 47 in 2014. As I try to recall the context, one of the main negative effects, besides $950 theft allotment, generally recognized by the public of Prop 47 was that the drug-addled-homeless-vagrancy crisis grew and deepened from 2014 on, with each passing year.
I recall 2018 as being the most recent semi-normal year in CA, although our situation in CA was not exactly wonderful even then. But then in June 2018, radical change came with the sneaky almost-totally-under-the-radar passage of a budget trailer bill, AB 1810, that essentially “legalized” CA felonies, offering a “mental health diversion” provision for those charged with murder, rape, torture, aggravated assault, arson, and the like, which would have completely escaped the public’s notice if not for the L.A. D.A.’s Association catching it and publicizing it. The diversion program meant that upon completion of a rather short course of “mental health treatment,” or so they said, those charged with felonies would be able to avoid trial and would have their records scrubbed, tying the hands of prosecutors.
This huge, alarming sea change in our criminal justice system in CA was met with shock from the public when they learned of it (as I recall), but I know for a fact there was scarcely ANY press coverage of it at the time, although we eventually saw “opinion” pieces against it by newspapers who hadn’t covered it in the first place; e.g. L.A Times, SD Union-Tribune, OC Register. Odd. KFI’s John Kobylt (and Ken at the time) covered it on radio, and interviewed many California D.A.s who wanted to “negotiate” with then-Gov Jerry Brown, who had signed it.
We all waited and hoped for a fix. Whether a “fix” was ever applied we never knew for sure, in that this also was not publicized, but in any case we were then quickly overwhelmed by the horde of leftist D.A.s: Chesa Boudin in S.F., George Gascon in L.A., and others across the country, who essentially achieved the same thing as AB 1810 by not prosecuting felons. No-cash bail also a continuing issue at the time, as well as Newsom’s routine closure of prisons. And other criminal justice changes that threw out the book.
Newsom was inaugurated in 2019 and CA began going downhill in a landslide of problems. 2020: Covid scares and lockdowns. The leftist politicians legalized all their pet agenda items during lockdown; e.g. Vote by Mail and so much more. “Summer of Love,” BLM and all of that nonsense began in earnest Memorial Day weekend 2020, Biden was fraudulently elected in Nov 2020, another distraction and help to those pushing societal chaos.
There’s more, but actually you all know the rest of the highlights from then to now…
I have been thinking about this and Andy Caldwell’s article gave me an excuse to put it out there. Apologize as usual for the length.
We also have Gov. Jerry Brown’s Assembly Bill 109, the “Prison Realignment” bill was the first move by California Democrats to dismantle California’s criminal justice system.
Assembly Bill 109, in 2011, was then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature legislation he sold as “prison realignment.” However, AB 109 only served to overwhelm county jails by moving “nonviolent” state offenders from prison. Gov. Brown could have built more prisons, but instead reduced the population by releasing or pushing inmates to local county jails, which are not designed to house someone past a year, and prevents law enforcement from taking low-level offenders in.
Oh, YES! AB 109. How could I forget? That was a hugely destructive one. And as you said, why not build more prisons to solve prison over-crowding? Made no sense. Or did it? To them?
Husband, whose City Prosecutor career preceded the era of AB 109, reminds me that L.A. County had ALREADY been doing “early-release” for awhile. Meaning those who had been given a 180-day sentence did ONE DAY in County Jail and were released. Thus we already had a big enough problem on our hands down here before AB 109. I remember telling people about “early release” in 2005-06 and no one was aware of it. I suspect that with AB 109 they simply let ’em all out upon arrival. Thanks so much Katy.
Gavin Newsom has been criminally responsible for California’s billion dollar losses, soaring crime rates as well as let’s not forget, the thousands upon thousands of deaths during Covid.
He’s quite literally a criminal who should be arrested, charged and prosecuted fully. how could there not be any evidence of any of this?
I’m a regular citizen and free thinker and even I have found verifiable evidence of his criminality. Oh, and let’s not forget his complicity in the recent fires and subsequent land grab.
President Trump…please arrest and charge gov Newsom and help us take back our once great state.
The Commucrats are at it again with SB 551. Prisons are supposed to be like resorts according to the Commucrats. Also anyone who has had any “trauma” in their childhood gets a reduced sentence. Every criminal is a victim.
https://californiaglobe.com/fr/the-cushy-prisons-for-murderers-act-of-2025/
Looks like the legislature is probably going to try to sneak in passage of SB 551 soon.
Contact your assembly rep and tell them to Vote NO on SB 551. Might stop it if enough people are up in arms about it.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers
SB 551 – Tell assembly rep to VOTE NO