Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety

Number one, we are going to try to keep it as concise, both in the comments and questions, but also in the presentation to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak.

I do want to highlight that public comments will be at the very end and we will only be asking for name, potential organization, if somebody belongs to an organization and whether or not they support so their position.

We're going to keep it very brief because we know that there's a lot of people that want to speak on the item. I will just go over the agenda very quickly. This is an overview of Prop 36, which allows felony charges and increases sentences for certain drug and theft crimes.

We're first going to have opening remarks by Committee chairs, as well as part two will be the analysis of the measure by the Laos office, and then part three will be proponents of the measure. We'll have three speakers, and opponents of the measure will again have three speakers and then public comments.

The presentations of these speakers will be at that podium, one by one, and each of them have been told the time that they're going to be having to be able to speak and share their viewpoints and present what they need to present.

I do want to say again that Committee Members will try to keep their comments brief and concise. I do also want to highlight that there are some Committee Members that will join us either later or may have to step out. This is very common as there are a lot of competing schedules and so forth.

So I just want to be very transparent in that. And I will begin with this ballot measure would make changes to laws enacted by Prop 47, which was voted into law in 2014 by increasing penalties for certain theft and drug crimes, and requires some of these crimes to be punished in state prison rather than county jail.

This measure would also mandate drug treatment for specified drug crimes and require courts to give defendants a warning of possible murder charges in the future for selling or providing drugs to another.

California has struggled in the past to reform its prison system after being held by the US Supreme Court to be so overcrowded that conditions violated the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Criminal justice reform measures such as Prop 47 have allowed California to fall within the court ordered population cap and strengthen programs that focus on rehabilitation any attempts to roll back those reforms is very much in the interest of the public and should be reviewed very carefully.

That is the purpose of this hearing is to have a public discussion of the proposed ballot measure and hear testimony from various perspectives impacted by the measure. As we hear the testimony, let's keep in mind that public safety is something that we all care about, even if we sometimes disagree on what is the best approach.

Today we will start with an overview of the ballot measure from the LAO's office, the Legislative Analyst's Office. Then we will hear from proponents and opponents of the measure. There will be an opportunity for public comment at the end. As I stated, we're gonna only ask for their name, the potential organization and what their position is.

Before I get to panelists, I'd like to provide the chair of Assembly Public Safety a chance to make any comments and then open it up to other Members of the Committee for any Comments. Chair

Yes. Thank you, Chair Wahab. And you certainly, I think, laid it out so I'll be brief. And this is a Joint Hearing with the Assembly and Senate Public Safety committees. This is part of our statutory role, have an informational hearing on measures before the voters.

So certainly we have our opportunity in the Legislature to create our laws, and this is the public's opportunity through direct democracy by putting a measure on the ballot. So we worked on a robust measure, this measures this year to increase accountability for retail theft and drug use.

And certainly the electorate has the right to put their own measure on the ballot. And that's what we're going to be doing today, talking about the pros and cons, hearing from our legislative analysts, talking about the fiscal impact, and with that, look forward to the conversation and let's get going. Chair, thank you.

Definitely. Thank you. Are there any other comments from Committee Members to start out? Seeing? None, we're going to move on to our very first presenter. Again, you will be presenting at that podium. This is Caitlin O'Neil, Principal Fiscal and Policy Analyst of the Legislative Analyst's Office.

You are timed and I believe that you were informed how much time you have. And to be very clear, I believe it's up to 15 minutes. Up to 15 minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning. Caitlin O'Neil with the Legislative Analyst's Office. I'll be speaking today from a handout which is available in hard copy with the sergeants as well as on our website, LAO.ca.gov under the publications tab. Moving to page one, I'm going to provide a very brief overview of our Office's role in the initiative process, which is at two stages.

First, state law requires our office to work with the Department of Finance to prepare a joint and partial fiscal analysis of each initiative to be included on the petitions that are circulated for signature gathering.

The second stage of our office's involvement is that state law requires us to provide impartial analyses of all qualified statewide ballot propositions for the voter information guide. This analysis includes a description of the Proposition and its fiscal effects on the state and local government, and that's what I'll be talking about today.

Moving to page two, I'm going to provide some very brief background, which is that punishment generally depends on the seriousness of the crime and the person's criminal history. So punishment for felonies can include a sentence to county jail or state prison, depending on the person's crime and their criminal history.

In some cases, people can be supervised in the community in lieu of serving some or all of their sentence. In jail or prison. The length of the sentence mostly depends on the crime.

So, for example, a sentence for murder could be 15 years or more in state prison, whereas a sentence for selling drugs could be up to five years in jail or prison, depending on the person's criminal history. Sentences, however, can be lengthened based on details of the crime. This is called an enhancement oftentimes.

So, for example, selling certain drugs can, if the person sells a very large quantity of drugs, can be lengthened in addition to the base term for drug sales based on the amount of drugs that the person sold.

People convicted of misdemeanors can be sentenced to county jail, community supervision, and or a fine, and sentences for a misdemeanor can be up to one year in jail. In 2014, Proposition 47 reduced various theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Examples include shoplifting and simple drug possession.

Moving on to page three, I'm going to provide a high level overview of what Proposition 36 would do. It would make various changes to state law that generally fall into kind of three components.

So the first component is that the measure would increase punishment for some theft and drug crimes, and it would do so in three General ways. The first way that it would increase punishment is that it would convert some misdemeanor crimes into felonies. So, for example, as I mentioned, shoplifting is generally a misdemeanor under current law.

Under Prop 36, if the person has two or more past convictions for certain theft crimes, that person could be charged with a felony. These changes that shift some misdemeanors to felonies would undo some of the punishment reductions that were in Proposition 47.

The second way that Prop 36 would increase punishment is that it would lengthen some felony sentences. So, for example, Proposition 36 would allow felony sentences for theft or damage of property to be lengthened by up to three years if three or more people committed the crime together.

And the third way that the measure would increase punishment is that it would require some felonies to be served in prison regardless of the person's criminal history or some felony sentences, I should say so.

For example, as I mentioned earlier, under current law, people who sell very large quantities of certain types of drugs can have their sentences lengthened or enhanced, as you may refer to it, based on the quantity of the drugs sold. Currently, these sentences are served in either jail or prison, depending on the person's criminal history.

Under Prop 36, they would generally be required to serve that sentence in prison regardless of their criminal history. Moving on to the second kind of main component of the measure, which is that it creates a new court process for some drug possession crimes. So, as I mentioned, simple possession of drugs is generally a misdemeanor under current law.

Under Prop 36, if a person possesses certain types of drugs that the measure Deems hard drugs, which includes fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, and they have two or more prior convictions for certain drug crimes like possession or sale, they could be charged with what the measure terms a treatment mandated felony.

These people would generally get treatment such as mental health or drug treatment, and those who finish treatment could have their charge or would have their charges dismissed. Those who do not finish treatment could serve up to three years in state prison.

This is another one of the changes in the measure that would undo some of the punishment reductions that were in Prop 47.

Turning to page four to the third component of the measure, which is that it would require courts to warn people that they could be charged with murder if they sell or provide illegal drugs that kill someone.

In the future, this warning would be given to people convicted of selling or providing those drugs that the measure Deems hard drugs. Moving to page five, we'll get into our estimate of the measure's fiscal effects on the state and local government. It would increase state criminal justice costs in two primary ways.

The first is that it would increase the state prison population. It would do so by, as I mentioned, shifting some sentences that are currently served at the local level to the state prison. It would also lengthen the amount of time that some people who go to prison under current law spend there.

In total, we estimate it could increase the prison population by around a few thousand people. The second way it would increase state costs is by increasing state court workload. And that's because felonies take longer to process than misdemeanors. And this measure would convert some cases from misdemeanors to felonies.

In total, we estimate that the increase in state criminal justice costs likely would range from the several tens of millions of dollars to the Low hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The measure would also increase local criminal justice costs, and it would do so in two ways.

The first would be a net increase in the county jail and community supervision population. And the reason I say net there is because the measure would have some of the different changes in the measure would have countervailing impacts on the local population.

That's because it would shift some people from the local level to state prison, which would of course reduce have the effect of reducing local populations. On the other hand, it would cause some people who stay at the local level to spend more time in jail or on supervision, which would have the effect of increasing populations.

We think that on net there could be an increase of around a few thousand people in the total county jail and community supervision population. The measure would also increase local court related workload just like it increased the state workload.

The County actors involved in handling misdemeanor and felony cases, such as the Public Defenders and the District Attorney's offices, would also experience some increased workload. And then finally, the treatment mandated felony could create workload for some county agencies, like probation or behavioral health departments that are involved in providing the services.

We estimate that Prop 36 in total would increase local criminal justice costs, likely by the tens of millions of dollars annually. And finally, moving to page six, the measure would reduce the amount that the state must spend on certain services due to requirements in existing law.

And to explain that, I'll just touch on very briefly some additional background, which is that Proposition 47 created a process in which the estimated state savings from its punishment reductions must be spent on certain services. To give context, those estimated savings totaled $95 million last year.

So moving back into what Prop 36 would do by undoing some portions of the punishment reductions that were in Prop 47, Prop 36 would reduce the savings attributable to the Prop 47, which would reduce the amount that the state must spend on those designated programs, we estimate the reduction would likely be in the low tens of millions of dollars annually. That brings me to the end of my prepared comments, and I'm happy to try to answer any questions.

Thank you. Do we have any questions or comments from Members of the Committee, Chair?

Yeah, I want to start out by asking on the estimates for implementation of this. So, clearly, if there's more accountability, which means incarceration, that would cost more. And, you know, I guess we'll hear from proponents a little bit about the desire to have treatment on that side.

I was just curious, how do we come to the estimates for increased incarceration at state prison versus county jail? In other words, many of these lower level felonies through, you know, realignment and AB 109 have been kicked down to county jail anyway. So state prison's supposed to be for serious offenses.

And we've had county jail populations increase for. So are these lower levels. So. And, of course, state prison is $130,000 roughly a year. County jail is much less. So how do we, how do we assume how many people, if they are held accountable for their repeat offenses, would go to state prison versus county jail?

So we, for each of the different sentencing changes in the measure, we attempt to use whatever data is available, which often involves for us, a request to DOJ to give us conviction data for the specific offenses that would be affected by that particular change or something that is as close to it as we can get.

We also work with CDCR to get data on the number of people who have certain enhancements that could be affected by the measure. In some cases, like with the population that's currently in local jails, we don't necessarily have, there isn't much statewide data available on number of people with enhancements there, for example.

So we essentially, we use whatever data that exists that we can find that gets us as close to as possible, the populations that would be affected by each of these different measures. And we map out, based on kind of how the measure would change people's routing in the criminal justice system.

We attempt to estimate and keep track of the different changing in caseload of jail, felony, probation, post release, community supervision, prison. So it's a quite, it's really like 10 different estimates within one, given that the measure has various different changes and they each work in different ways, and then we calculate the net effect.

There's a lot of uncertainty in areas where we just simply don't have data. And so in those cases, we talk to various stakeholders, look at research, do our best to try to come up with what we think are some reasonable parameters, and then we sensitivity test to see how much changing those factors affects our bottom line estimate. And we also, as you see, give a range, which we think is reflective of kind of the amount of uncertainty that exists based on the unknown factors. Does that address your question?

Little bit. So it's more of an art than a science. And also, I'm sure it varies county to county, depending on the county jail population.

So when you focus on the tens of millions and hundreds of millions, is that in cost to society and taxpayers in General, or is that state cost added in with potential local costs, how do you kinda kind of add all this up?

We are. So our task is to report on the fiscal estimate, the fiscal effects for the state and local governments. And so the ranges that you see here on page five of the handout.

The first section is the estimate of the state costs, and then the bottom section is our estimate of the total cost to local governments, which, and we don't attempt to break out by county. So that's for local governments as a whole.

Thank you.

Senator Niello.

Thank you. Just one question kind of related to the previous questions with regard to prison population. In your analysis, you've indicated that it could increase prison population by a few thousand at the state, in state prisons and by a few thousand in local jails.

When you presented, I thought I heard you say 2000, but when you say if you gave a range with regard to dollars, is there a range that you think is relevant to that few thousand figure? And is it closer to the 2000 that I thought I heard you say.

A range in the population numbers... It's a few. I didn't intend to say two.

If I did, that was mis, I may have misheard.

We consider it to be a few, which is sort of what a General average voter thinks of, or what we hope the General voter thinks of when they see the word a few. So like two to five, perhaps, something like that.

The reason, and then we translate that into dollars by looking, making assumptions about or considering the range of plausible possibilities around how such a reduction in the increase in the population would be implemented by CDCR, whether that's just simply more food, clothes, more, you know, for additional incarcerated people that just fill in slots of existing facilities, that's a lower cost multiplier.

Or to the extent that that few thousand led to perhaps some facilities that would have otherwise been closed, not being closed, then that's a higher cost dollar value multiplier because we're talking fixed cost or overhead costs. So that's how we get from, and we consider kind of that, that whole range of possibilities in the context of CDCR. And that's how we get from a few thousand to the dollar value range that you see there.

Did I hear you say that in the dollar range that fixed costs would be included in that calculation?

In the upper end of it, totally. To the, basically we are, as we typically do when we are estimate, trying to put a dollar to population changes, we think about how might this be implemented? What would be the housing implications for CDCR? And there's kind of two possibilities there.

Given that a few thousand is roughly the size of one prison and the state has been kind of in the process of closing facilities, it's impossible to know. We can't predict the future. So we just consider it's one of various areas of uncertainty in our estimate that's part of this task.

Yeah. Thank you.

So I would like to understand a little bit about, do we have an estimate of what the new drug treatment program would cost to actually implement?

We didn't estimate that component of the measure specifically, or at least we. That is a significant part of the local cost, though I will say so. I mean, that's one area of a lot of uncertainty because we don't know how we have.

We do estimate how many people we think might be eligible for that based on conviction data. It's very difficult to know what types of services they would be receiving since the measure is fairly open ended about what services they would receive. It would depend on implementation, the needs of those individuals, what services are available.

When you say what services are available at these levels, could you elaborate?

I'm just basically saying that the cost of that component of the measure would depend on implementation and the actual services that people receive. But do we know what services would be provided? It's not clear.

I mean, we're just going off of, based on the text of the measure, which requires an evaluation by a mental health and drug substance use expert, I believe, and then says, kind of the services can include various things, including housing, training, and sort of not. It's not limited to these types of services, if I recall correctly

And the Services would be provided at a local level or at the state prison facilities.

So these people, because the treatment mandated felony, would basically say that it is the default for these people to have an opportunity for treatment in lieu of being convicted, at least as a, you know, as a first shot. And so they wouldn't be going to prison unless they failed treatment.

And then if they went to prison, they could receive services there just like anybody who goes to prison. But that wouldn't be part of the treatment mandated felony.

Okay, but the analysis of whether or not a person should get treatment or not or be in this program would be at the county level.

It would be done through the courts. So there's state and county actors involved there. We did assume that most of the service costs would probably be at a local level, given the. It seems kind of a lot of those types of services right now.

So thinking about drug courts, for example, are often provided by local behavioral health, probation kind of county actors right now. But there is a state court. The state courts are also involved.

Okay. So if this were to go and be, you know, voted on by the larger public, when would we know some of the more finer details of how this actually is going to work? I don't know that I have a clear answer for you on that. Okay. And then dollar implementation for the county versus the state.

I'm sorry, the dollar implementation for the county and the state is not 100% clear either. Do you mean, like the implementation costs. And then the maintenance?

Our estimates are of the full implementation, ongoing costs. We don't look at if there's initial startup costs or kind of things that are. I highly specific like that. Could you state the number of the costs that you guys do have?

So we estimate that the total increase in local criminal justice costs could be in the tens of millions of dollars annually.

Okay. And tens of millions of dollars would be like, roughly what? Let's give a little bit more of a definitive ballpark.

To us, that means anything in the tens of millions. That is the kind of range of uncertainty that we felt was appropriate, given the uncertainties. And so we wouldn't want to create certainty where it didn't exist.

Okay. And where would that money come from?

Those are county costs. So that would come from whatever revenue sources counties choose to use.

Okay. So the county would be on the hook for most of it?

That is what we estimate, yeah.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions, Senator?

A follow up to that with regard to the treatment mandated felonies, that is essentially the equivalent of what used to be drug court, which was pretty extensively implemented, I believe, before Proposition 47. So we have a model that would indicate what costs would be for this based upon that experience back then. Correct?

We did think about drug courts as a one possible example of how this might look, as we were thinking through what some of the fiscal implications might be. So I think, yes, drug courts are one possibility.

I think that could be a question maybe that's more appropriate for the proponents to ask them, kind of what they're envisioning the implementation would look like, because we are really just going off of the language that's in the Proposition and doing our best to estimate what costs might look like based on that.

But of course, there's a lot of decisions that would be made in the implementation process that would ultimately affect the details and the cost. Thanks.

Thank you. Really appreciate your presentation. We're going to move on to our next presenters. Our next presenter is the Napa County District Attorney, Allison Haley, President, California District Attorneys Association. All right, and you have up to seven minutes, and I believe you were told that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. I was 14 years old when my father was arrested. He was an alcoholic and an addict, and it turned out to be a prolific thief and embezzler. Asset forfeiture left my mother and me homeless and penniless in Orange County, where I grew up. He died in 2005, poor and addicted to prescription pills.

My love for him was and remains deep and wide. As anyone in here knows, loving an addict is a complex and many times deeply painful joy. My dad was charismatic, smart, very funny, and deeply, deeply ill. His choices and his addictions destroyed every good thing around him, including parts of me. My name is Alison Haley.

I'm the elected District Attorney of Napa County and the newly minted President of CDAA. I went into this profession because I thought that my lived experience could bring balance to the office of the prosecutor. The power of the criminal justice system is immense. I know this personally.

It's why prosecutors and law enforcement must be balanced and fair in its enforcement. Laws must be carefully designed to achieve a fair, just goal, to protect the public and victims and hold offenders proportionately accountable, all while minimizing unwanted or unwarranted collateral damage.

Prop 36 is reasoned and thoughtful, designed to narrowly address issues that are reducing the quality of life of Californians. That is, increasing homelessness, rising retail theft, and a startling proliferation of opioid related deaths. Prop 36 incentivizes drug treatment for addicts by giving them choices, by giving them determinative agency in their own lives.

They can affirmatively choose to enter into drug treatment or mental health treatment. They can choose to not go into custody. They can choose a suite of services, all aimed to give them hope and a life and a future. It allows prosecutors to treat an offender with a single theft differently than someone who is a serial offender.

It allows us to aggregate thefts so that the penalty, ultimately overseen by a judge, is commensurate with the amount of harm suffered by businesses in our communities. And it allows prosecutors to treat fentanyl like the scourge that it is. California couldn't sign Californians forgive me. Couldn't sign the petitions to put this on the ballot fast enough.

Conditions in this state have become, for many, intolerable. The support has bipartisan support and importantly, Prop 36, if passed, is still subject to the discretion of elected district attorneys and appointed Superior Court judges across the state.

Californians have the right to expect that Das are smart and surgical in how they will apply the changes and always mindful of the facts of individual case. I am not a District Attorney from the 1980s. I am a District Attorney who is deeply wounded by the policies enacted at that time.

My father's incarceration changed the very trajectory of my life, and in many ways, it was the most negative thing that has ever happened to me. I am not a DA who believes in mindlessly filling up prisons, but I'm also not a DA who apologizes for seeking resolutions that are commensurate with the harm suffered by victims or communities. And our state is suffering, and it's time to offer some reform. I appreciate very much your time and attention this morning.

Thank you. Do we have any questions or comments from Members of the Committee? Senator Niello?

Thank you. You have quite a compelling personal story to go along with your choice of profession, and I find that to be admirably balanced. Speaking specifically of your father and the troubles that that he had, I was asking the LAO about the treatment mandated felony and that in its relationship with what used to be drug court. Given your experience, how do you assess that piece of Proposition 36 and its potential effectiveness in dealing with drug addiction in our streets?

I believe that the disease of drug addiction robs people of the ability to make decisions in their own best interest. My dad would always pick drugs or alcohol. Always. And it's not that he didn't love me. He did. But I would always come second. Until drug treatment is made compulsory, I don't think he would have ever chosen it for himself.

My dad went in and out of sobriety through the course of my life, and the only time that it ever stuck, or the only time that he willingly went into treatment programs was after there had been other kinds of interventions that made it compulsory. If he had the choice to go to jail and get immediately released to use drugs, he might not have always taken it.

Thank you, chair. Senator Bradford.

Thank you. I was curious, would Proposition 36 cut funding to some of the provenity treatment. Programs and other victim services that exist right now?

There is always a priority list for the needs of a society, and prioritizing mental health and incentivizing drug treatment are priorities that most Californians agree would be paramount.

I can't speak specifically about what things would be cut, but I do think that there is money that is going to be earmarked for mental health treatment and for drug addiction treatment. And I think that that's valuable.

Chair, thank you. DA. Thank you for your presentation and as Senator Niello said, for sharing your compelling story. I never heard that before. So thank you for your public service. I wanted to give you the chance to address a couple of the issues that we'll hear from some of the opponents in a little bit.

And I'll conversely ask them the same type of questioning. So one we hear as far as the petit theft with a prior, which I believe was a shortcoming in our legislative package.

We deal heavily on the organized retail theft, but the petit theft with the prior I don't think is adequately addressed unless we go back to the voters, which we're doing.

So I think that this is the right approach and I think it's, you know, I talked to dozens of small businesses and, you know, they're not the big smash and grabs. They're not publicly owned companies, traded companies. They're small businesses and death by a thousand cuts. And I've heard their stories loud and clear.

With that, I did want to ask a hypothetical and question. We've heard over and over that individuals with, with two or more priors, if somebody goes in there and steals a 12 pack of bud light, is that worth having multiple years sentenced in a state prison? And what kind of hypothetical situation would you address to this scenario?

I think that this is where prosecutorial discretion becomes important. If you put that scenario in front of me, no, that would not be something that I would be charging with a felony potentially, but it is possible under Prop 36.

I think that what's really missing sometimes in the analysis of Prop 36, or what is ignored is the fact that it is always subject to the discretion of the District Attorney who can choose to charge as a felony or choose to keep it as a misdemeanor, and also the oversight of the Superior Court appointed, of course, to ensure that the ultimate punishment is commensurate with the harm caused to the community.

Okay, thank you. Question number two. What about this so called issue with a washout period? So, you know, I'm a 52 year old man. I did a bunch of stupid stuff when I was a teenager, and luckily we have statute limitations and we don't have lots of evidence on that.

So let's consider a hypothetical of somebody who had some arrests when they were late teens, early twenties and that's, you know, 30 plus years ago, and then they get arrested for the 12 or what? Have you any third offense?

So how would you, as the DA in Napa County and granted year one of 50 plus counties and 58 counties in California, how would you equate that with this whole notion that it could be over multiple years or even multiple decades? Because in my view, repeat is repetitive, like happening in a time certain period potentially over.

Well, I would want to know how crazy were you when you were a kid? I'd want to know the seriousness of those prior events. I want to know the recency of what you have spoken about. And I want to know whether or not there were victims at the time.

But if you're talking about a bunch of petty thefts in someone's history from the 1980s or 1990s and then suddenly we have a new incident, I have clients, the people of the State of California, and I dont believe that moving forward with a felony in those kinds of situations is what it is that theyre asking me to do.

I think that youve hit it that this is really designed, and parts of it are designed for those kinds of serial offenders that California is seeing. And again, its an opportunity for prosecutors elected by the constituencies to show that reasoned and measured discretion in application.

Yeah, and I guess that, I think that's an appropriate answer. And I'm confident that my DA here in Sacramento County, Tien Ho, would have a similar answer. But how do we know the DA, Inyo County or whatever county is going to have that same perspective? And this is a statewide policy, so how would you address that?

And that's going to be the question for the citizens of that particular county.

Okay, thank you. And lastly, can you, the LAO earlier talked about the impact could be in a wide range in the tens of millions to the Low hundreds of millions in combined county, county jail costs and potential state prison costs.

What do you think the impact will be to our, to our state correctional systems, by the state correctional systems and our county jails?

I think it will be significant. I do think that a number of the kind of damage that we're seeing is happening from a relatively smaller number of individuals. So it may be that those numbers are inflated.

But I do think that there exists already, certainly in Napa County, already in place in our county, our opportunities to receive drug treatment, mental health treatment and so forth, that we can leverage when and if it gets passed in November. But these aren't people to throw away. And I can't think of a more honorable place for us to use our money than to help people become healthier in all ways.

So, I do have a question: I think that some of my colleagues brought this up is that in regard to aggregation, there is no look back, period. Correct. It could go back 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.

That is what I understand.

Okay. And then as far as the fentanyl advisement, you know, it applies to hard drug convictions. You know, I think it states that for any scheduled one and scheduled two drugs in particular but does it exempt application to minors?

Are you saying that we wouldn't give that to a minor? So, in the event that we were to have a drug trafficker who is a minor, who was selling fentanyl.

So currently, the way it's written, it does not have any language that exempts this application to minors. Could you elaborate as to what is the thought process of that?

Nothing about that - well, I think that providing notice to defendants or minors does not necessarily follow that in the event that we are to have a later incident where there was sales and a subsequent death, it doesn't tie the hands of a prosecutor to therefore, absolutely seek the implied malice murder.

Meaning that even if I had a case where I had sales and there had been a death, and I find out that that warning had been given when that minor was a 16 year old or a 17 year old or a 14 year old, there is nothing about providing the provision for giving someone notice about the seriousness of the offense that ties the hands of the prosecutor and makes a second degree murder charge necessary later in the future.

Okay, but there's nothing that protects a minor currently in the current statute that is proposed, correct?

Certainly, the protection of the prosecutorial discretion and the oversight of a Superior Court judge.

Okay. And then with 58 different counties and 58 different DAs, obviously, that would be very different. I represent two counties. The DAs are very different from each other. Right. So, there's nothing in language right now in this proposal that legitimately and clearly states any protection for a minor? I just want a yes or no.

There is nothing that says that we cannot provide notice to a minor.

Okay, so that's enough. Thank you. Anybody else have questions? Assemblymember?

If I could just follow up on that: isn't it true that in juvenile court, though, that they're never convicted unless it's a crime as serious as murder?

They're adjudicated.

But in a drug court, in a drug offense, right? They're not convicted.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

But if it's in regard to murder and potentially with an overdose, it would potentially be on the table, correct?

So, in that scenario, we have a juvenile who's convicted of a fentanyl related murder and you're asking whether that's a conviction or an adjudication?

Potentially, where again, the minor is not necessarily protected. If a 16-year-old is selling drugs, right, and I think it was referenced, and I think that even to your story of, you know, whether you fully understand what they are doing, the depth of the consequences of their actions, and somebody does die in this transaction, what happens to the minor?

Oh, well, that's a question far beyond the scope of Prop 36. So, Prop 36 is only discussing that sort of Watson like murder advisement, not on the adjudication of murders or fentanyl related incidents as minors.

So, if somebody, again, there is no exemption clearly in the language regarding minors though.

There is no exemption about providing notice to minors. Correct.

Thank you. Thank you for your time. We're going to have our next presenter, Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper.

Good morning, Chairs and committee members. Great to be here. Prop 47 is clear. No meaningful changes can fix 47 unless it goes back to the voters.

While the recently passed legislative bill package has aggregation in it, aggregation has already been tested by the state courts and rejected the other legislative attempt to address Prop 47 issues with a bypass bill, ORC has proved to be almost useless for law enforcement. Prop 36 does not have this problem because it will be decided by the voters.

Prop 36 is straightforward. Here are the facts. The opponents will argue that proposition is unnecessary since reported theft is down. That is simply not true. It is underreported since a penalty is a mere misdemeanor, the same as breaking a window or spray-painting graffiti.

Here in Sacramento County, we've had 15 ORC operations ranging from one to seven days. The operations focused on more than 70 stores. What we found were that more than 1000 arrests and citations, 75% were misdemeanor arrests, 80% were repeat offenders for theft, 15% of offenders were homeless, and less than 10% were food related items.

While I've expended the funds for these ORC operations, I do not have the resources to go after every misdemeanor offender. In addition, I have no authority over whether the DA decides to prosecute an offender. The opponents are claiming all offenders will now go to prison, which is a lie.

You go to prison under Prop 36, but only if you are convicted of using a gun while you're dealing fentanyl. Having enough fentanyl as a dealer to kill thousands of people or have at least four felonies or convictions for felony retail theft.

Even prison eligible crimes for repeated retail thefts are wobblers. I want to say that again, wobblers. The courts have a jurisdiction over jail versus prison. Another key element of Prop 36 is court ordered mandated drug treatment diversion. When Prop 47 passed, it eliminated drug treatment diversion.

This resulted in a 70%, I'll say it again, 70% drop in participation of mandated drug court treatment in Sacramento County. That meant that all these offenders who could have gone through a drug treatment program and gotten their lives back and had their records cleared lost that option.

Prop 36 fixes this and helps those who need help with drug addiction get help and actually reclaim their lives. As for fentanyl, the number of Sacramento County deaths related to fentanyl increased more than tenfold from 2019 through 2023, according to the latest data from the Sacramento County Coroner's Office.

In the last year, there's at least one fentanyl death every day here in Sacramento County, and that's substantially underreported. Sacramento's had more than 400 fentanyl deaths in 2023, up 33 from 2019. In Sacramento County, in just seven fentanyl busts, officers retrieved 43 guns. They also seized 147 pounds of fentanyl.

That is enough fentanyl to kill the entire City of El Grove, which is the second biggest city in Sacramento County. Let's get the facts right. Prop 36 does not create mass incarceration, but rather puts people that need to be in jail, in jail and puts in prison criminals who put Californians lives in danger.

Addiction is ravaging my community. Prop 36 provides an avenue for those addicted, a way out of the cycle of abuse. This is not a war on drugs, it's a war on addiction. You think about Prop 47, which is enacted by the voters in 2014.

Every year, multiple bills have tried to be put through this body to address those issues and shortcomings. They never saw the light of day. This year, 13 bills went through. I asked you, why did 13 bills go through? Because it's so bad.

I was here for eight years, from 2014 to 2022 in the same building, and I saw the laws that were passed. Now, being sheriff, I see the impact of those laws. It is an issue. We don't want to send everybody to jail, but with a drug addiction, you have to have the carrot and the stick.

The courts do that. You've got to force them into treatment. Our homeless issues revolve around this, too. We don't want to do that. We don't want to be the adult in the room and say, hey, you need to get help. This does it. And that's the issue. We have to do it. And it's come to this.

And I keep going back to, why are all these bills passed this year? Because it's so bad, that's why. And we've got to change it. The public's mad. I hear them every day. I see them when I'm out there. They want us to change it and that's why we're here.

It could have been done a long time ago, but the opponents didn't want anything done and it's gotten out of control. So, I think it's a great thing. I think the judges have influence. Everyone's not going to jail on this. The court has discretion, the DAs have discretion, and that's why it's a wobbler.

So, if someone, a six pack of beers, Assemblyman McCarty stated, can do that, the judge has a discretion, the DA has discretion. So, we're not forcing people in. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. Members? Assemblymember Lackey.

Yeah. Part of the frustration, I think, that the public feels is that there's really very little accountability with theft. And so, what effect would the passage of Prop 46 have on law enforcement agency's ability to arrest shoplifters and thieves? Would they ever be arrested and booked?

Yeah. And it'll help us. Really the most prolific ones, and I think it's not everyone. You do have prolific folks that know there's no accountability. I'm not going to get in trouble. We've gotten folks walking out with big screen TV's, bringing their kids out to shop with them and pushing it.

So, in some of these instances, it's the same group of people that know I'm not getting trouble. So, I'm going to go ahead and do this. And I think it sends a message in some of these ORC operations which the legislature funded - thank you.

We've seen a decrease in that because they know we're out there enforcing the laws and that's really been a big issue. They know there's teeth to it. So, I think we're in a good position, and Prop 36 helps. And I keep coming back. We have to realize all the bills this year and the public is angry.

They want something done. They're tired of walking in there and pushing the button because the deodorant and soap is locked behind plexiglass. That's the big issue with them. They want it changed. And I think we have a chance to do that.

And finally, this has to do with our previous conversation when we were talking about minors. Isn't it pretty much true that minors cannot go to prison?

Correct. Minors don't go to prison.

That's all we wanted to.

DJJ was closed. There's no prison for minors. They spend their time in juvenile hall.

Thank you.

I just want to follow up. There is juvenile hall, correct?

Judah hall? Yes.

Yes. One of the questions I do have for you, and I do believe that more treatment options are needed, especially for those that have suffered from addiction.

The question I have, though, is that a lot of evidence-based practices clearly show that if a person is an addict, that the best success for them to stay clean is to self-select to go to treatment, correct?

I don't think so, Senator. And the reason I say that and having done for the past years with the homeless, we've offered those services to a lot of people self-select. They don't self-select the same thing for housing.

They don't self-select because drugs are so powerful and it's hard to get over drugs addiction, let alone alcohol. And that's where the forced treatment has to come into play. And I think I agree with you. Treatment is the best option.

It is a illness, but it has to be treated with a little bit of force and a mandate and force them in there. If you're not going to force them in there, it offers no hope because they're not going to do it themselves. That's why families have interventions. So, there's no family to intervene for these folks.

It's left up to us to intervene. And to me, the best way is to the courts, a neutral third party, not law enforcement, not the district attorneys, to make them go and get the help they need. So, I agree with you 100%. We've got to fix it. But up until now, no one's wanted to do that.

No one's wanted to change it. It's been status quo, and that's what truly hurt us.

So, you know, I personally do agree with treatment, and I think I've shared this. You know, we've even passed legislation that our chair here has implemented as even trial programs in the region to kind of force and persuade people to go into treatment.

But specifically, the fact that it's evidence based practices and clearly shows that there is data that shows the best success of keeping somebody clean is, of course, their willingness to enter these types of programs. Right.

And I want to base some of our commentary not on the emotional aspect of it, because I personally agree with you in the sense of there does need to be a carrot and stick. Right. And we do need rule of law and so much more.

But the concern that I have is that is this not going to necessarily just be an opportunity for somebody who gets picked up and decides to go into this type of treatment and then gets back out and then continues to be an addict and commit crime and much more because of the fact that it is not based.

Nothing in this is based via evidence-based practice through treatment and things like that.

I think your keyword is willingness and the willingness, and that's why family interventions and some folks that have family support, they might go through rehab two or three times. It is tough. I worked in narcotics for five years undercover. It's hard to get off dope and even alcohol. And that's the thing. And it's a willingness.

And a lot of these folks, we've seen, and I've seen personally, firsthand, and dealing with the homeless and some of these other folks, they just don't have the will, whatever it is, be it mental health issues or drug things, to do it themselves. And they need that stick from the courts to do that. And that's the issue.

The wherewithal hasn't been there, and we've seen that on the homeless front with everything that's been spent there and with these drug addicts and with fentanyl. The deaths, I mean, in my jail right now Senator, I've had inmate deaths over fentanyl because they smuggle drugs in and they know fentanyl will kill them.

But they still want to get that drug in their system, and that's - people can't, the normal public can't rationalize that.

How do they bring the drugs into these facilities?

So, inmates that are going to be turn themselves in will secrete drugs in their rectum, bring it in and pass it out and give it to inmates. We have inmates' families that are facilitating cash apps, paying dealers that have bought it in, phone calls, recorded phone calls.

They're talking about it, where inmates laugh about overdosing and being bought back to life with Narcan. So, it is a real deal.

Do we have a percentage of fentanyl users or drug users in our current prison system?

I don't have any numbers, but I know it's a problem here. It's a problem in a lot of county jails.

Do we have it in our jails? Do you have a number for even the Sacramento County jails?

No, but it happens. We've had multiple overdoses behind it. We've saved a lot of folks, but it happens.

And then, as far as you know, some of the concerns that I have in even the previous conversation, what is the, since you are a county sheriff, what is the type of treatment that will be offered to these individuals if Prop 36 passes?

I think court mandated treatment, which is proven, and drug court goes way back, a long way back. They have the information that talks about the success stories, and it works. It's proven.

What does that treatment look like?

The court mandates it through CBOs and it's done out there. So, I don't, I've never been, I'm not a judge. I've never mended someone, but I've seen the results of it.

Okay. Do we know how long this treatment lasts?

No, I don't know. I don't have that details.

Okay. Do we know how much it would potentially cost the counties?

We paid for it before. It's still there right now. It's just not being used. So, the folks that go right now to drug court and drug treatment, they want to get their records expunged for a job is what it is, basically.

Okay, and why isn't it being used right now?

Because the court can't force them to use it.

Why not?

Under Prop 47.

Okay. So, in Santa Clara County, we have drug courts, and we have one of the biggest judges that's a leader even in the nation, judge manly, that is a big proponent of this right treatment. So, I just want to understand why in Santa Clara County we can kind of push this, and yet in other counties, we cannot.

They can push it, but you can't mandate it. And that's the big issue. So, if you look around and talking to my fellow sheriffs and DA's that I know for the majority of them because the courts cannot mandate it, that's been a big issue.

You may have a judge who's good and gregarious and talks to people, but the average judge is not going to force someone to treatment.

Okay. But we do have judge's discretion that was mentioned as well as prosecutorial discretion. Correct?

It is my understanding; it's not what it was prior to Prop 47.

Okay. And then in regard to the retail thefts, you know, you mentioned that and, you know, the bill package that was passed by the legislature this past year and signed into law, do we have data?

Again, I want to be very specific on the data in regards to the closure rates of successful cases that have been completely closed by law enforcement in regards to retail theft.

Well, the grant just came out, so the information is still new.

Okay. But in the last course of several years, do we have any data that shows the success of law enforcement closing cases that have been opened by the public that says, "Hey, this robbery took place" or, "Hey", things like that. What is the closure rate? A percentage?

So, a robbery is different from retail theft. Obviously, robbery cases, yes. For a simple retail theft on that, and I keep going back, Senator, is that for a lot of your retail theft, it is a misdemeanor. It is the same as graffiti or breaking a window. And that's been the big issue with it.

Are they being tracked?

Is what being tracked?

This type of misdemeanor that you've -

When it's reported, but it's vastly underreported. Here in the City of Sacramento, the target on Broadway, the city got mad at them for reporting it so much and threatened to find them. So here you have. They're having a problem. They're trying to report it, but yet they're being fined. So, it doesn't work both ways.

Okay. And then, so there's no clear data on exactly, you know, some of the closures of, you know. So, if an average resident, you know, fills out the paperwork to report a crime like retail theft or anything like that, even a business, there's no clear data on the closure rates is what I'm understanding.

We don't have the resources for the misdemeanor stuff, the day in and day out stuff because of Prop 47. The resources to investigate those -

And you believe with Prop 36 you will have the resources.

Yeah. It gives you a hammer on that to deal with this individual.

And how do you get resources through this Prop 36?

Well, number one, the legislature; you guys helped us with that through the funding on the ORC grant. That's been very helpful. And I'll tell you, the big stores can afford the losses, but really, the backbone of small businesses, small and mom pop stores, they don't have a board of directors or corporate board.

They're taking it in their shorts and they're closing. So really, that's my emphasis on the small mom and pop that can't afford to sustain the losses. And that's really the big issue with that. A lot of them don't call in, they don't report into insurance. They just take it in the shorts.

And that's the big issue: how we help those small businesses that are closing every day, 100%.

And do we truly understand the root cause of retail theft and drug addiction?

I think we do, a lot, but I think with the advent of 47, with a lot of these folks we're seeing right now, they're still going to be stealing. Because there's no accountability, they will not get in trouble. Like I said, we go back to the folks that stole food, 10%, folks that were homeless, 15%.

I've been there on the operations. They're housed; they're stealing because they know they can't get in trouble, and that's the issue. It's hard to fathom that, but that is what's going on out there with boots on the ground.

Do you believe that the housing crisis has anything to do with the exasperation of retail theft and much more?

I don't think it plays a big part in it, and that goes back to folks offering housing for the homeless. A lot of them have turned it down because of mental issues and because of drug addiction issues.

But yet we don't want to force treatment for mental addiction or conservancy for some folks, and we don't want to force drug treatment. But here we're having the conversation because of Prop 47.

All right. I appreciate it. Thank you. Does anybody else? Assemblymember Nguyen?

Thank you Chair and thank you Sheriff for being here. You talked about the bill package that has been passed through here and there has been several bills that we passed here as a legislator through just retail theft, and the fentanyl issue. Some may argue that this is enough. The package is enough. It might be even stretching it.

And yet we're here talking about Prop 36. Can you talk about the deficiencies in the legislative package and how Prop 36 would address this, but also why it's needed?

Sure. So, to fix this, just be honest, it didn't need 13 bills to fix Prop 47. That's just what it is. It could have been one bill that really dealt with the issues on it. But we got 13 bills and, for instance, aggregation. So, the state appellate court said you cannot aggregate theft.

We talked to some of the folks behind this, behind the bills, and they're saying they think they can. Well, you have a court ruling that says you can't. You have a state Supreme Court ruling, the 950 limit that applies to cars. Who's driving a car that costs less than $950?

An immigrant? Somebody black or brown? No one talks about that. And that's the big issue with that. So, we've seen that. And I think 36. The biggest thing I like, what I love is drug diversion, drug diversion court. And it says in there in black and white, if you complete it, your record is expunged. That is helpful.

That's tremendous for the serial people that are coming back and back and back again. We hold them accountable to our small businesses and our folks, and we're all suffering right now. And I think that's why the public backlash is there. So, I think 36 does a lot. Like I said, we got here because it's gotten so bad.

That's the only reason we're here. We're having this conversation. This committee is here because of that. Otherwise, this committee wasn't here between 2015 and last year.

Thank you. Senator Bradford?

Thank you. Thank you. Sheriff. You mentioned the effectiveness of your ORC operations. Doesn't that prove that the current laws are working?

It helps out, but what it is the overtime, because obviously we're taking folks from other jobs and making them work the overtime on this because we still have priority calls for services, felonies, life, health and safety we deal with. And this is, like I said, the way the law is a misdemeanor.

So, if you call in because someone did a lawn job or slashed your tire, we're going to take a report over the phone, you're going to go online and do that report. So, this gives us the tools and resources to combat it. And it really has slowed it down some.

It has been effective, but that infusion of cash, is that sustainable? I don't think so. It can't go on forever. So, something has to give some way.

And we're also hearing reports that law enforcement, I think you just gave an example, are not responding to misdemeanors. Is that not true?

Well, it's calls for service. So, depending on what it is, domestic violence, other things. Drunk driving, yes, but if someone comes to your house and breaks your front window, most agencies will say, "Hey, file a report online, we'll take the report, or someone will take it."

But as far as having an officer respond because we're so overwhelmed with other priority calls, that's been the big issue. And am I gonna have someone investigate someone that breaks your window out? That's not gonna happen. I'm not gonna lie to you about that. I don't have the resources. I wish I did.

But doesn't that contribute to the repeat offender offenses, I should say?

I think these repeat offenders are doing, as far as the theft piece, that's different. I consider it. But when they're coming in and stealing, they know how the law is, they know what they can and cannot do. When someone brings a calculator in, when someone says, hey, it's less than 950, you can't arrest me. So, it's just the brazenness.

And it took us a long way to get here and that's been the big issue. So that's the thing. It's been going on for so long. You know, so how do you change that, that learned behavior?

And if this were the past, how would we compare it to other states, say Texas, because their current level is $2,000. No, $2,500.

I guess that's a good question, Senator. But when you ask the business owner that has that small store, that's a lot of money to them, to most folks. And you think about 950, that's a lot of money to going in. And these folks are being robbed blind. And people just walking out with handfuls of stuff.

The big stores, they write it off. They charge us higher prices as a consumer. But for those mom and small pops, which the majority of businesses in our state, it's unsustainable. And a lot of them have gone out of business.

I get that. So, I'm just curious, why don't you see the same pattern? You can't answer this, but in Texas, I mean, again, if my theft level, misdemeanor level is not a felony until it gets $2,500, why aren't they running in those stores, too?

I don't want to be compared to anything in Texas. They got a bunch of bad laws over there and other things. I mean, I can't. Texas is much more stringent on a lot of other things, a lot of other laws than we are.

And I think this is a good approach, and I wish it would have went through the legislature and not had it gone to a ballot measure. There was a ballot measure in 2020, Prop. 20, for the same thing.

I did that in the proposition.

Yes, Assemblymember Arambula? Sorry, Alanis. So sorry.

Sheriff, thank you for coming in. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your service. I think just to help out also with the Texas question that had came up, I was on the select committee for retail theft. That came up also. I think the biggest part that came up for Texas was deterrent.

What was the punishment for the crime? Well, it was much more harsh than it is here in California, which, as you know, will determine whether or not somebody will commit a crime or not.

But I was hoping maybe you can also explain to us and those listening differences between a misdemeanor and a felony, because I found when I came here to the legislation, as a prior law enforcement officer, we talk about misdemeanors, we talk about felonies. And they always wonder like, well, why aren't you doing anything with the misdemeanor?

If we can maybe talk about arresting while in prison and stuff like that, if you can just define that a little bit.

So, misdemeanor is punishable by county jail time, and a misdemeanor is not going to do time in a jail because jails are reserved for felons for our most serious offenders. That's been the big issue.

And with Prop, I'm sorry, AB 109, you have inmates that are getting sentences, five or seven years that are serving their time in the county jail. And that's the big issue with that. So before, obviously, a year or longer, you went to state prison, year or less, you're in county jail.

So, misdemeanors and misdemeanors for the most part don't come in the only time someone's in jail for misdemeanor domestic violence are a DUI in court order, typically. Otherwise, I'll be honest, we don't have misdemeanors in jail.

And Sheriff, if, let's say I was to commit a misdemeanor, you did not see it.

We do not see it. Some will come in and book them. Sometimes we'll cite them out right away just because of jail overcoming and consent decree. If you're in jail, it's because you got some serious charges, not on a misdemeanor with the two exceptions I mentioned earlier. Gotcha.

Yes. And so, if it's true or not, if you can answer this, are a lot of the arrests down because these misdemeanors are not taken in the place of a law enforcement officer?

Correct. And I'll point to the drug issues. A lot of folks don't arrest on drugs these days. We saw the arrest drop on that. The problem is still there. Addiction is still there. You're just not seeing folks arrested because it's a misdemeanor.

So then back to the further question that the Senator was asking you about closing out calls. I think this kind of goes to the misdemeanor part.

Is it harder to prove the misdemeanor as opposed to the felony or is it easier for me to make an arrest on a felony that wasn't committed in my presence, as opposed to a misdemeanor that wasn't committed in my presence, that I don't have anybody signing a citizen's arrest form or somebody who's coming forward to say, I want somebody arrested.

It's easier on a felony. Much easier.

Thank you.

And I want to be very clear. In regard to the $950, it's considered a wobbler, correct?

Correct.

Okay, and a wobbler can be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor, correct?

Correct.

And it could be punishable with jail time, correct?

Correct.

Okay. So, we do have those on the books right now based on Prop 47?

Yeah. But the drug thing is, and I'll be honest with you, seeing how it's applied, it's always gonna be on the misdemeanor, and a lot of wobblers, to be honest.

But is that prosecutorial discretion or judge's discretion?

I would say both, whether it's charged or sentenced.

Okay. But overall, you know, this type of theft, $950, that we hear community members complain about daily are not really being even pursued.

They are being pursued over 950.

But anything under 950 is not being pursued, correct?

It's a misdemeanor. And right now, in Sacramento County, I have 30,000 outstanding misdemeanor warrants because people just don't show up for court. The FTA's are a big issue, and we've got a whole bunch of felony warrants also. But way more misdemeanor warrants, they just don't show up, and no one has.

And the goal of Prop 36 is because prosecuting a felony is easier, as you stated, correct?

And those are prolific criminals on that, on the theft piece. And the fentanyl piece has a separate track.

And you stated jail is not where is where people. I'm so sorry, you stated something like, and you could correct me if I misheard felonies: people who commit felonies are awaiting trial, or misdemeanors are not held, something to that effect?

Correct. Only misdemeanors that are held are domestic violence or DUI or a court ordered thing, and those are a small percentage.

Okay. I appreciate it. I appreciate your presentation and answering all the questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator.

What needs to really be clearly understood, it's not only easier for an officer to make a felony arrest, but unless the crime is committed in the presence of an officer in a misdemeanor, you have no authority to place someone under arrest unless you have somebody who witnessed the crime make a citizen's arrest.

So, I think that that's not understood by most people. So, if you have an offense that's a misdemeanor, a peace officer cannot place somebody under arrest unless they have somebody who witnessed the crime be willing to place that person under citizen's arrest. And I don't think that's understood by most people.

Thank you. And I would love to hear the Sheriff make any comments about that, including the fact that many residents, you know, have video cam footage that is clear evidence in 4K and *K that clearly shows an individual's face committing potentially a crime.

All the big box retailers that have a significant amount of cameras and security and surveillance, including security guards, that, you know, people commit a crime and walk out of the store, and yet nothing is happening right now. Could you be able to explain that?

I think you talk about capacity. You're talking about responding to calls for domestic violence, for robberies, for burglaries, vehicle burglaries, business burglaries. So, a lot of things, we only have so much capacity. I don't have a million officers. If I had a million officers, I would respond to every crime, and that's every agency around.

Do you believe with Prop 36 you're going to have full capacity to prosecute these crimes?

It will help with the frequent fliers, so to speak, our most prolific people that do that. It will give us a tool to really deal with them. And for the most part, a lot of homeowners, when they have things happen, they don't report it. That's just a fact of nature. Most don't report it

Because potentially it's not pursued? Right, because of the lack of ability, resources?

That's part of it, depending on what the crime is.

All right, some we do, though, and we do believe that, and factually and, again, based on data, we do have a huge, let's say our police ranks are not completely filled in every city and every county. Correct? We have vacancies?

Correct.

At roughly about what percentage across the board?

Well, CHP is down 1000 officers. I'm down 100. So, everybody's down. And they're doing signing bonuses up to $100,000. No one wants to be a cop. The legislature made it harder. Now you have to have a degree in two years. So it is tough to hire in this environment.

No one's calling you because they had a good day, Senator. They're calling you because crap's happening.

Okay, and you disagree with the education requirements.

Number one, when I came in, I only had - I'd been in college for a year or two. Most folks don't have it. Common sense is what plays out to that. Just because you have a degree doesn't make you have good common sense, and that's what it comes down to. And screening and backgrounds.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be here right now. And a lot of people that are black and brown that don't have a four-year degree, that don't have mom and dad paying for it, they can stay at home and do that, don't have that opportunity.

Understood. And then as far as mental health calls and homeless calls, do you believe that should be, you know, part of the scope of work of police officers?

I believe someone else should respond to those calls, depending on what it is.

Okay. And that would help with capacity, correct?

And law enforcement wants that. But quite often, these things involve other things and not just the mentally ill. It involves a whole range of things. I support something like that.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Senator.

All right, our next presenter will be Council Member Mark, and I apologize if I mispronounced your last name, Mezzano: City of Redding, League of California Cities.

You actually got it right. Good morning. Chair McCarty. Members of the committee, it's an honor to be here before you today. My name is Mark Mezzano. I'm a 29-year veteran of the California Highway Patrol.

I'm currently a Council Member for the City of Reading, and I'm here to testify on Prop 36 on behalf of the League of California Cities. One of Calcities priorities in 2024 was to address retail theft, shoplifting, and crime without going back to the days of mass incarceration.

Calcities was in support of the most of the legislative package on retail theft, and we believe the package can work in concert with. With Proposition 36, the Calcities board voted to support Proposition 36 on July 11 after hearing from both proponents and opponents of the measure. Unfortunately, Prop 47 has led to unintended consequences over the past decade.

Cities throughout the state are experiencing a spike in repeat and organized retail theft, the shuttering of local businesses, and an increase in fentanyl related overdoses. Cities also report that it is becoming increasingly difficult at the state since 2020 to convince people to seek drug and mental health treatment. Commercial burglary has increased across the state since 2020.

This is especially evident in the larger counties with an increase of 13% among 14 of the 15 largest counties. California's opioid related deaths have skyrocketed 121% in the last three years. Our communities are overwhelmed, and the status quo is not working.

City officials are hearing from their residents, law enforcement officers, and small business owners that these are there are gaps in our system. We need to address the pieces of Prop 47 that are making it harder for public safety officials to keep our communities safe.

Calcities is in support of Prop 36 because it addresses one of the key issues that the legislative package does not and that is amending Prop 47 to address some of the unintended consequences.

One of the major issues that Calcities has been trying to address is repeat offenders, and we do not believe you can adequately address this issue without amending Prop 47.

Proposition 47 repealed the penal code for felony theft with a prior, which has unfortunately resulted in the inability for law enforcement to identify and potentially divert those individuals to the correct treatment and services.

Currently, many cities and businesses are experiencing daily shoplifting without a way to identify those individuals and to try and prevent additional repeat shoplifting from occurring. Proposition 36 is a common sense, bipartisan effort that brings back the tools we need to make our communities safer and connect our most vulnerable to the services they deserve.

Proposition 36 will hold repeat retail theft offenders and serious drug traffickers accountable while incentivizing drug treatment for those with serious addictions. For example, the measure allows judges to sentence convicted drug dealers who traffic in large quantities of hard drugs, including fentanyl, and authorize greater consequences for the hard drug dealers.

Proposition 36 is not, and I say not, about returning to the era of mass incarceration. It provides smart, tailored tools that help protect our businesses and create safer communities. Calcites has been trying to effectuate change in retail theft, shoplifting and fentanyl issues for several years without much success.

We appreciate the legislature addressing some of the issues through the legislative package, but our members still believe that the changes in Prop 36 will provide additional tools for law enforcement and district attorneys to address the surge in crime that has been occurring in our communities.

In conclusion, I want to thank both the legislature and both public safety policy committees for their attention to these important crime issues that have plagued our community since 2014. Calcites wants common sense solutions that will keep our cities safer, protect our residents, and allow small businesses to stay in business.

Thank you and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.

Thank you. Seeing we have no questions or comments, appreciate your time. We're going to move on to our next panel. Opponents of the measure. Our first speaker will be Cristine Soto DeBerry, Executive Director of Prosecutors Alliance Action. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairs. Members of the select committee, happy to be here with all of you today. Cristine Soto DeBerry, I'm the Executive Director of Prosecutors Alliance Action. We work with line prosecutors, victim advocates and community members across the state. Over 4000 members in most counties in the state.

I've spent most of my career in government, as a public defender in the San Francisco local government, overseeing police departments, and then 10 years running one of the largest prosecutors' offices in the state. And I have seen the crime trends that happen over time. My time in the District Attorney's Office, we had a problem with smartphone thefts.

We had a problem with retail theft. We had a problem with car burglaries. And when those issues came up, we found solutions with the existing tools in our toolbox to solve them.

When smartphone thefts was a problem, we looked at upstream solutions, much like the one that this legislative body just passed around retail theft to focus on shutting down the market for those stolen goods.

When we had a problem around retail theft, much like we've seen in other parts of the state, we invested in large scale investigations to understand who were the repeat organized drivers of that activity, to make sure that we could work with our law enforcement agencies to apprehend those individuals, hold them accountable in court, and have appropriate consequences.

The good news is all of those tools exist today. From what you're hearing about Prop 36, you would think it's a $200 billion funding measure that's going to put more police officers in communities, that's going to fund treatment in those communities, and it does none of those things.

What it does is add more low-level offenses into the state prison eligible category and suggest to us that that is going to solve the problem. The limitation of that is data, and decades of experience in law enforcement show us that that is not true. What deters crime is the likelihood of getting caught.

We just heard from the previous sheriff that most of these cases are not even responded to. To Senator Wahab's question about the solve rate, in California, the solve rate for property theft is 8%. Prop 36 will not change that.

There will not be more deputies in the Sacramento sheriff's office to respond to target or a mom and pop store. Whether it's a misdemeanor or a felony, we are not going to change this problem that way. It's unfortunate that that's what's being told to voters, that we want treatment, but we're not funding treatment.

In fact, we're doing the exact opposite. With this ballot measure, we will lose hundreds of millions of dollars that currently go to Fund the kinds of treatment that the proponents are saying they want. We all agree on that. We all agree on treatment.

But what is not agreed upon is that it needs to be funded, that it needs to be a priority. So, it is unfortunate to see that being pushed as like Prop 36 will bring treatment. The difference is Prop 36 will hold a felony over somebody's head and say, "No, you must do treatment."

But if a county does not have that treatment available, it will not be given. There is no money in this proposition to ensure that that treatment is available and taken up and used by the individual in need of it. None.

In fact, what we will do is lose the very smart work we have done collectively of saying we want to treat problems with the right solution. If somebody is struggling with addiction or mental health, we want to treat that.

We don't want to put them in a jail or a prison that will make that situation worse, where apparently, they can still get drugs, we're hearing. So, we need to focus on the solutions that work to solve the problems. Increasing punishments does not deter crime. You don't have to believe me.

You can look to our US Department of Justice. The National Institute of Justice has studied this, and they tell us repeatedly what deters crime is the likelihood of getting caught. So, if we are worried about the amount of drugs being consumed in our communities or the kinds of that we're experiencing, we need to start there.

We need to focus on prevention instead of reaction after the fact. It's one thing to say we want treatment. It's a whole other thing to fund it. And I hope that this legislative body and the voters will pay attention to what's actually at stake. We are going to lose desperately needed funding for treatment with this measure.

Happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Do we have any questions from committee members? Assemblymember Lackey.

Thank you for your testimony. The ballot rebuttal argument in favor of Prop 36, which you signed, says the following, and I quote, "This measure is also so poorly drafted that it will simply create confusion in the courts and not lead to higher penalties in many retail theft cases".

So, can you clarify what provisions the court will be unable to understand? Where's the ambiguity that you refer to?

Thank you for the question. I think the situation we will end up with in courts is we are going to have, as we see now, it will vary by jurisdiction. We're going to have a whole new set of laws come on the books and a lack of clarity about what is misdemeanor conduct, what is felony conduct.

We heard a lot in the earlier presentations about prosecutorial discretion, and I think that will come into play. We will see counties that enforce much harsher charging and pursue much harsher sentencing than others. I don't think we'll see reductions in crime as a result of that, but I do believe that by - we're going to have competing aggregation conversations that need to be had. We're going to have confusion around the murder advisor. There's going to be many things that are going to create confusion in the courts.

My only answer to that would be that discretion is not to be confused with ambiguity, in my opinion. But thank you.

Thank you.

All right, I did want to highlight a couple of things that you mentioned. I'm a big proponent of treatment. I truly believe that this is important for society to have treatment options available, both in just regular addiction, that there is no crime committed, whether that's alcoholism, whether that's drug addiction, and so forth.

But one of the main problems that I've seen in the state legislature and tackling this issue of treatment is that there is today not enough beds, not enough spaces. Some counties, and again, I represent two different counties, and when we're talking about the 58 counties in California, their funding resources vary greatly.

And as was presented in the earlier presentations, that this would vary based on county and county would be the ones that would have to pay into some type of effort. Could you elaborate a little bit more on whether or not we have beds? And let's say that an individual does select treatment, right, as their option, and there is no beds available for them to be treated. What happens to them?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, I spent 10 years in a county that's relatively service rich. San Francisco county does a very good job of prioritizing treatment and services for people coming through the criminal justice system.

We did not have enough treatment spaces, either inpatient or outpatient, ever, at any time in the decade that I served there, did we have adequate treatment, and that was not for people not caring about the issue.

All of our mayors and our board of supervisors were repeatedly allocating public health resources to try and meet that need, we simply were incapable of that. And that is in a really fortunate county.

There are more counties in this state than not that don't have any treatment, particularly in the Central Valley, in the more rural communities, it is very hard to fund and sustain those kinds of programs.

So, when someone comes to court and says, "yes, your honor, I would like to take treatment?" The judge will say, "Great. Probation, please find them treatment bed." And depending on the case, they will either keep them in custody while they look for that bed or they will release them.

Even the individuals in custody, after a certain amount of time of not finding a treatment bed, they will come back to court and ask to be released until that treatment is available. Or they will say, "Just give me the jail time, and I don't want to do the treatment."

And currently the measure says state prison, correct?

Yes.

Okay. And so even the people that are seeking treatment with the goal, and obviously the statement from the proponents that even if a person wants treatment, even if the judge wants to give treatment, even if the DA wants to give treatment, it's prison time. Correct?

You can want it, but if it doesn't exist, it is an impossible thing for any of us to deliver it to the person.

And there's no uniformity in the funding mechanism for the different counties. So a rural county with far more need in so many different ways would not be able to provide a lot of the resources for treatment, correct?

There's $0 attached to this, and it will reduce that even further, taking away the few dollars that do exist and redirecting them to jails and prisons.

Okay. And it was stated in the last presentation that the priority calls, like a DUI, like domestic violence, like, you know, god forbid, rape and murder and so forth are priority calls with this ballot measure. Do you believe that even if the voters voted for this, that retail theft and drug crimes would be prioritized?

Not, no, nor should they. Right. Over a crime of violence, as you say, something as serious as a sexual assault or a gun, those will always be the top priority of law enforcement, as we would expect they would be.

Theft, whether it has a misdemeanor next to it or a felony next to it, is going to fall beneath those and will not be responded to any differently.

Okay. And so why do you believe the proponents believe that this will make a dent in the, the crimes that we see?

I won't speculate on that, but I would encourage us all to think more about the kinds of investigative tools we have that the Governor has funded up and down the state as a much more effective way to apprehend and reduce this kind of theft than increasing punishments on the back end.

Okay. And then the fact that some have stated that on a wobbler, the $950 that's often debated in the public, can that be pursued today under current law via Prop 47? That's in statute today?

No, under 950 is a misdemeanor. But there are many ways that most of the thefts we've all seen on the news become felonies. Right. It is not just about the dollar amount, it's about the conduct of the person in the store.

You could steal a $2 candy bar, but if you pull a gun on the store clerk or you punch them in the face on your way out the door, you've now got a felony consequence coming your way, probably multiple.

All right, I do appreciate it. Thank you so much for your presentation. Senator Bradford? You can go, Senator.

Thank you. Sheriff Cooper stated that the opponents were opposed to any changes to Prop 47. I'm just curious, are there some improvements that could be made to Prop 47 w1ithout this ballot initiative or some of the changes you would make or suggest?

I think we've just done. You all have just done that with the package of bills you passed. And what I appreciated most about that package is it was very broad reaching. Punishment was contemplated. The kinds of offenses you can charge was contemplated. Those are fine. And you looked at upstream solutions.

We had a bill to try and put more regulations on Amazon and Facebook marketplace where we can see all the stolen goods going.

We had a bill to increase staffing in the big stores too, because we see in Lowe's and Costco, there's not as much theft because they have people working in those stores versus places where you're pushing the red button for 30 minutes hoping you can get your face cream.

So, I think that this legislative body has done an incredible job of thinking about the issue from the front end of what it looks like when you charge a case to the more preventative measures we can take, as well as how do we bring those consequences in court.

Thank you. Chief - Chair? I've been like messing up all day today.

Is that a promotion?

Chief of the Assembly. Yeah. I wanted to talk about the drug side and also the petit theft for the prior. So let's start with the drug side.

So as our Chair mentioned earlier, I've supported measures to push forward more treatment for people who are repeatedly arrested for drug related crimes or retail theft, crimes fed by their drug addiction. Because I don't think the current system with voluntary is working.

And I think you go to most cities and talk a lot of communities across California, and you'll see in that same. You'll hear that same perception. So, I just want to ask, so is your belief that that incentivized, enforced treatment should never be utilized and drug treatment should always be 100% voluntary?

So, I don't really deal in absolutes that way. I do know that chosen treatment, self-selected treatment, has a much higher success rate. It does. That's not my opinion that's studied. There are moments, of course, when we have someone's attention where we want to put treatment in front of them. Absolutely.

Up and down the state do that every single day. Does everybody take us up on it every time we offer? No. I'm not gonna say, I'm not standing here to say. My biggest point of contention with the measure is that it mandates treatment. My biggest point of contention is it doesn't fund it.

Yeah, well, I guess that's one of the pushbacks, too, because funding residential treatment, inpatient treatment, is very different than outpatient, and many times that's what drug courts were about, is you get probation, you go to your classes or AA, whatever.

You have classes, you take drug tests, and then if you succeed, then your sentence will be reduced or go away, and conversely, if you don't, there'd be some accountability. So, what's wrong with that? Having those. Those outpatient opportunities where you incentivize, you know, good behavior for a better outcome for an individual?

I think outpatient treatment is fantastic, and I think for some people, it works very well.

Don't you think that if this measure passed, that the majority of people that were arrested for repeat drug possession use, when they get adjudicated through the court system would have that it wouldn't all be inpatient? It would be outpatient drug treatment, which are, what's my understanding, are pretty empty now in the last 10 years after Prop 47.

No, that's not true. So, there's a shortage of treatment beds. There's a shortage of -

Those are beds. Those are different things.

Excuse me. There's a shortage of treatment programs every single day.

When you're in court, you're trying to get people into programs, whether you're a prosecutor or a defense attorney, there's a pretty shared agreement that we want to get people into treatment as often as we can, and there are not enough programs available almost anywhere in the state.

I'm not aware of a county in the state that the minute someone says they want outpatient treatment, they're enrolled in that treatment. They're getting tested. They're coming back to court. I'd be happy to see that. I'd be happy to see that in all 58 counties in the state. But Prop 36 is not going to create that.

It is a wish; it is a hope. It is not a funding plan for making that happen.

Yeah, I guess maybe I'll just go back to this issue that I think Senator Niello asked earlier with the loss, the drug courts in the last 10 years with Prop 47 on the book.

So, when I hear from our local DAs or law enforcement, well, before I, you know, on Public Safety Committee and shared it, they've said that participation in the outpatient. And I 100% agree on the inpatient. We have, you know, severe shortage, but the outpatient, they say - sorry. They say - my watch disagrees with her.

They say that there's plenty of space in these outpatient drug rehab programs, that people just aren't participating anymore after Prop 47 went into effect. Do you think that's accurate or inaccurate?

That was not my experience from 10 years in the courts, no.

10 years in the courts after Prop 47 passed or before?

Before and after.

Okay. It's only been 10 years.

So, 2011 to 2020.

Okay. Yeah, fair enough. And then back to the petit theft with a prior. So, we didn't address that in our legislative package. We were attempting to do so in a compromise measure to go to the voters that fell apart, as we know. Do you think that there is any flaw in current law?

Because you say that we can provide new tools and you articulate that.

And you supported some of these measures. Your organization, actually, I think your organization didn't support a lot of them. But do you think that there are adequate tools on the books today to deal with petit theft with a prior.

Personally, I do. So petit theft can be punished by up to six months in jail for a very small amount. No one really gets six months in jail for petit theft. Not that it's not available to us. It would be a relatively significant sentence for someone to serve. People serve less than that for misdemeanor domestic violence.

So I think that the, if we're looking to have punishment consequences available to us, they do exist. Whether they're being implemented in counties by prosecutors and judges is another question. Whether we, when we're evaluating those cases, think it's a necessary or appropriate consequence. Obviously, we're deciding much differently up and down this state.

So you say that tools exist. So why do you think that prosecutors in law enforcement aren't using those tools if they exist? Because we heard from sheriff Cooper say there are no tools, and you're saying there are tools. So why do you think they're not using the tools that you outline?

Well, I think you need to separate those two. I think prosecutors up and down the state are using the tools that are available to them. We have almost two dozen theft offenses we can charge, and I think they are being used. If you look, I just looked at La County's number.

They're charging over 90% of the cases that are brought to them on this theft. What is not happening is the arrest. There's a very Low arrest rate for theft, 8% if I've got a 92% shot of running into the store and running out undetected. And that's motivating me. There's very little deterrent there.

It is not about whether this is my second or third, and now I'm going to get a year in jail or I'm going to get a state prison sentence. That is just not the way that the, that the decision making happens around that kind of activity.

So why do you think arrests are not being made?

Well, you had a law enforcement official here who explained to you that he doesn't have the resources. I think that there's also been, like, an unwillingness to enforce misdemeanor laws in this state since Prop 47 passed since 2014. Those data are available too. You can look and see what the arrest rate has been. A misdemeanor and felony offenses. It has gone off a cliff. It has dropped into a ditch.

Okay, thank you.

Senator Niello.

I'm thank you.

I heard thank you, and I walked away.

Or anyone else who wants to address this. Is there a connection between drug addiction and retail theft?

I'm sure that there is. I wouldn't say that. I think that that's the biggest driving force, more of what we're seeing in the kinds of activity community Members come forward and are so distressed by when we see, you know, clothing turnstiles be turned over and cabinets being smashed. Much more of that.

We're learning from the CHP investigations and other really is driven by calls from a few people to say, go and take as much of these kinds of products as you can. I'll give you $200 and bring them to me. And then that's being resold in the online and other marketplaces.

That seems to be the biggest driver of it. But are there people who have a drug addiction issue or a drug use issue that steal for the sustenance around that? Sure. I don't know what the numbers are.

So there is a connection. It's just an issue of to what extent. Now, Proposition 47 was passed in 2014.

Yes.

And drug court was utilized to a significantly greater extent prior to that than since that number one. Number two, housing first was adopted in California as an official policy for homelessness, meaning that shelter can be provided only with treatment services being optional, both mental as well as drug addiction.

Since 2016, homelessness in California has exploded, and untreated drug addiction among homeless people has been part of that explosion. So we have two situations, Proposition 47 and housing.

First, creating a more significant problem with regard to drug addiction than we had before, largely because there isn't a mechanism for incentivizing it or forcing it, whatever terminal you want to use, would you have a reaction to that phenomena?

Can you pose me a question? You're asking, is there a connection?

We've gone down the road of not doing our best to incentivize or force drug treatment, both by decriminalization of Proposition 47, which provided the incentive for drug court before, as well as the homeless policy of not trying to incentivize drug treatment as part of housing for homelessness.

Both of those issues coinciding with a significant increase in homelessness and drug addiction among homeless people. Don't you think that a system that would more effectively incentivize or force treatment would be a better way of trying to address that issue and bringing it back into control, as the numbers that existed before Proposition 47 might suggest?

So I think what I would do in response to this question is, look at the history of our response to drug use and drug sales in this state. We can look back at the eighties and nineties and early two thousands when we had very strict punishments for drugs possession, use, sales.

And then we can look post 2014 where we addressed some of the use issues. Drug use was higher than that time, than it is in the post Prop 47 period.

I think that the issue that gets brought up around drug court is that drug court used to be based on the fact that it was a felony, that possession of drugs, all of the hard drugs, was a felony, and that post Prop 47, obviously, that they are misdemeanors.

And the suggestion that then therefore people don't take treatment because it's a misdemeanor instead of a felony, that doesn't really mesh for me in terms of why people would or wouldn't get into treatment again on a misdemeanor. Let's remember, a person can still serve up to a year in county jail for drug possession.

That is a significant punishment for the individual serving it, even if us giving it out may not feel that that's substantial. So I don't believe that the change in the law had anything to do with drug use. I think what has changed around drug use is the kinds of drugs that are available.

Fentanyl did not exist pre 2014 or even right after. Right. This is a new phenomenon. There's further evidence when we look to other states. You can look at a place like Pennsylvania that has not passed anything similar to Prop 47 or tried to change the way they handle those drug cases. And they have had the exact same challenges we're having with fentanyl because of the substance it is, and the addictive nature of it.

So I think it is much more correlated to the substances that are available, the newness of them, and our ability to find strategies around it, than it is that we reduce the punishment to a misdemeanor.

So you believe that the explosion and the homelessness numbers since those two policies were adopted, to the extent that drug addiction is part of the homelessness issue, is driven by a different array of drugs that are on the market?

No, I don't believe homelessness is driven by that. I believe homelessness is driven by a real estate market.

Oh, okay. A lot of people would disagree with you on that.

They could, but I think that we can see the studies that will show you, for every $100 increase in rent, the numbers of people that fall out of housing and into homelessness. A much higher predictor of homelessness is the cost of housing than it is the availability of drugs.

And you deny that drug addiction, untreated drug addiction, and mental illness is not a major part of homelessness.

I think it is present in people that are unhoused. I don't know that it is what causes homelessness? I don't think any of us could point to any information in that regard.

It's quite a debate going on outside this chamber on that particular point. Thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member.

Thank you, chair. I have a few questions. We keep talking about people volunteering for treatment. Can you give us examples of those who volunteer for treatment? Who would that be and what treatment?

A lot of people volunteer for treatment rather than jail time. Absolutely. All the time in courts up and down the state.

Okay, so give me. Is that somebody I'm gonna see on the street that's, you know, been there for weeks, months, or is that somebody that just got introduced to drugs? Like what? What's an example of that? I'm just hearing somebody is volunteering. That's not really saying much.

I think that could look a lot of different ways. You will have individuals that come in that are just started using drugs where treatment is a much easier off ramp for them. They say, great, I'll take it.

In that moment, you have people who are on their 9th or 10th time through the court system and realizing jail is not dealing with the issue that they have, and maybe treatment would be a better path. I think you have everything in between there.

And how long does a treatment last?

Well, that varies by the case that's in front of the court and what the prosecutor and defense can agree to or what the judge imposes.

And what are we talking, two days? We talk in a week. What kind of treatment?

I'm unaware of any two day drug treatment programs.

Well, I'm not either, but I want to hear something. The sheriff was up here. He couldn't answer it, but I was hoping maybe you can at least give us an idea. Are we looking at like a year treatment, two year treatment?

Well, it's going to vary. As you know, having been in law enforcement, we will come to the person and say, all right, you have a misdemeanor case or you have a felony case. We'd like to offer you treatment instead of jail time. Are you interested in that? Yes, I am. And then in our best work, we will bring in a health professional who actually knows what the individual is struggling with, because I, as someone who went to law school, do not know how to diagnose drug addiction or drug treatment.

When we bring in those professionals, they will tell us this person needs an inpatient program because their addiction is so severe that an outpatient program won't support them. This individual will do fine in an outpatient program. We should look at a three month and come back in three months and check in or a six month. It will vary and be tailored to the person's needs and what resources are available in that county.

And did you find that some people would rather do the time than the treatment because the treatment took longer than the time they would have to put in?

Yes. I saw a lot of people choose jail because treatment was so indefinitely unavailable.

And then you had mentioned that they'd be doing a year. Would they actually be doing a year, or would it be like six months, four months?

It varies, right? It varies by the individual, the severity of the crime they have, the severity of their drug use issue. It would be different in each case.

And then just one last thing. You had talked about how arrests misdemeanor arrested drastically, and I want to say 8% was something. I don't know. I could have had that mixed up. Do you know why the lack of arrest is happening with misdemeanors?

I won't. I don't know if it's the same across the state. We heard the Sacramento sheriff say that he does not have adequate resources to enforce the law. I know that when Prop 47 passed, many law enforcement officials said they were not going to bother with misdemeanors.

I think it's probably a whole range of things that are happening there, both resources and sort of a disagreement about the way the state has moved on these issues. But the arrest rate currently for property crime is 8% across the state. So it's not just a Sacramento issue.

Okay. And just so everybody's aware, again, misdemeanors have to be committed in law enforcement's presence. So now, as a law enforcement officer showing up to the scene, they have to have that person that witnessed it make the arrest, making them ultimately the bad guy, which a lot of people obviously aren't doing.

So these misdemeanor arrests aren't being made. I'm sure some people have gone to retail stores and have actually witnessed a theft happening, but they're not all willing to sign a citizen's arrest. And I don't blame them either because they don't want to get involved or they don't want to become victimized later down the road.

So I think that attributes to why these misdemeanor arrests have dropped. It's not that the law enforcement aren't doing their job. It's just that it has to now be committed in their presence for it to happen, where, as opposed to it used to be a felony, they can investigate and make the arrest. Thank you.

Thank you. I do appreciate all your commentary. I do just want to highlight a couple of things. You provide a lot of data which was not previously provided, and I do appreciate that. And I think that data speaks for itself. Right. And it's uniformly gathered.

And, you know, when you mentioned evidence based practices, again, it's incredibly important to highlight the fact that it is clearly proven, especially as a person in social work, that treatment, for example, when we talk about it, it is the one time drug user.

So it could be a high schooler or a college kid that goes to a party, is handed something and says, why not? You only live once or when. And in Vegas, whatever the case is, they do it once and they could potentially die from that particular drug that they ingested. That's one piece.

And then there is the frequent true addict that is looking for their high every so often, every few hours, every few days, whatever the case may be. And I want to highlight the discrepancy there. Right.

And a lot of what we have focused on, and just as chair of public safety, I want to highlight this to the public because I think it's incredibly important, is that there are two types of individuals that we tend to have to focus on when we're talking about law enforcement.

One is the drug user and one is the drug dealer. Both crimes, right? Purchasing drugs or taking drugs and so forth, is illegal, especially all of these illegal substances that we've talked about, especially the most deadly fentanyl that we are seeing and much more. And then it's the drug dealer.

And sometimes that drug dealer is completely unaware of what they are doing, in the sense of what is in the mixture, what is in the compound, and they're handing it out as party favors or whatever the case may be, and not truly a drug dealer, but just a friend who wanted to have a good time with other friends.

And I really want to highlight this because when we're talking about treatment, it varies based on the patient and the client. It also varies very much on the problem. Right. And so I personally believe that laws have the opportunity to have public input, more stakeholders, more discussion.

And again, we need to be very cognizant of how important and how laws really do affect lives, especially when it comes to public safety, both positively and negatively. Right.

And I am a true believer of rule, of law and having enforcement and making sure people are held accountable, but then also making sure that we have the right tools and resources to provide the support that society needs.

To the comment earlier, I will say that I do believe housing and quality of life issues are one of the biggest factors that are, in my opinion, plaguing Californians. And in my district, an average home costs $1.5 million. How are people really surviving?

So I really want to highlight that, that there are many other issues that really plague people's quality of life, and obviously public safety is a big piece of that. But I do appreciate you coming with facts. So thank you so much.

Our next presenter is going to be again, I'm going to apologize for the name Charles Vignola, public policy and community engagement manager, LA Regional Reentry Partnership thank you.

Yes, thank you so much. That was close. The g is silent, Italians. My grandfather would kill me if I didn't correct that. Good morning, Assembly Members and Senators of the Joint Public Safety Committee. As mentioned, my name is Charles Vignola.

I'm the public policy and community engagement manager for LARP, the Los Angeles Regional Reentry Partnership, and we're here to discuss what we see as the most significant dangers of Proposition 36, specifically with regard to how crucial community safety and wellbeing services stand to be affected if this Proposition passes.

Since 2015, service providers across the state have utilized funds and resources allocated by Proposition 47. California voters embraced a vision that sought to empower localities and communities to invest in unique programming and infrastructure to help those most vulnerable.

This funding goes to programs that have provided housing services, mental health care, substance use disorder treatment programs, and job training for people who have been arrested or incarcerated, which makes our communities healthy and more stable.

Over the past decade, organizations like the Los Angeles Department, county Office of Diversion and Reentry, or ODR, which LARRP Health established in 2015, have implemented novel approaches to community supported care, beds, and mental and physical health support for vulnerable Californians.

These programs include projects like Project Impact, which is designed by the Los Angeles Mayor's Office of Reentry, which provides employment, behavioral health, and legal services to improve employment outcomes and reduce future criminal justice system involvement for men of color.

Another program, the LA County Reentry Integrated Services Project, Reentry Intensive Case Management Services, or RICMS, links people with prior criminal justice system involvement to community health workers aimed at improving their well being and keeping them out of the criminal justice system.

Together, these and other programs have helped move thousands of individuals into community supported programs, delivering extremely positive outcomes for these individuals and their communities. Unfortunately, Proposition 36 threatens to undo this progress by gutting funding for these successful programs.

Keeping an individual in California incarcerated is expensive and, as noted, can cost upwards of $130,000 per year in a state prison. If Proposition 36 were to pass, the LAO stated that it estimates both the number of incarcerated individuals would increase and so would the needed support staff staff to handle these new incarcerated individuals, including prison staff, jail staff and court staff.

In a time when the budget is already a challenge to balance, why would we take money away from proven diversion and reentry programs and spend even more to lock people up?

These funds will be spent in one of two ways, either by investing in effective wraparound services to get folks the help they truly and successfully need to integrate into society as we have for the past decade, or by locking folks up and not taking proactive steps to bring them back to their homes, families, and communities.

Service providers are able to take already earmarked funds and fundamentally change people's lives for the better rather than funding a system with the sole intention of punishing the incarcerated population without helping rehabilitate them.

For nearly a decade, service providers have been working to understand the complex contracting and grant requirements in order to help thousands of justice impacted individuals return to their families, secure stable housing and find gainful employment, as well as contribute meaningfully to society.

This progress would be impossible if we choose to invest in more jails instead of expanding diversion and reentry services. Proposition 36 is a regressive step that sacrifices the long term achieved progress of our network of 500 service providers for short term and costly changes at the expense of our taxpayers, our communities, and the most vulnerable populations.

Money spent on prisons does not help rehabilitate individuals who have committed crimes, nor does it benefit the communities who are most impacted by over policing. Sending more low-level offenders to jails and prisons only serves to further disenfranchise them, creating a feedback loop that bars them from receiving the care and services needed to successfully return home to their communities.

Proposition 36 is not an investment in the people who need it most, but rather an investment in the walls that keep them from being the people we know they can be.

I am here on behalf of more than 500 service providers in the Los Angeles Regional Reentry Partnership Network across the entire State of California to stand steadfast with the community organizations that have helped work tirelessly to implement successful, fiscally responsible and practical programs and services to the justice impacted community, and I urge you to do the same. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Seeing no comments, we'll go on to our next speaker, Tinisch Hollins, Executive Director of Californians for Safety and Justice.

Good morning to the Committee. Again, my name is Tinisch Hollins. I am the Executive Director of California for safety and justice. I am also a survivor of a crime lost two brothers to homicide. One of my brothers struggled with addiction and was actually introduced to drugs while incarcerated.

I am a friend who has recently, in the last 24 months, helped three of my friends bury their children to fentanyl overdoses. First time users between the ages of 19 and 27 years old.

I represent a network of crime survivors in the State of California, over 50,000 from underrepresented communities who have been using their voices to call for solutions around public safety. Because victims and survivors know more about what it takes to make communities safe than anyone else.

Because they have had to struggle with being unsafe and having to pick up their lives and recover mostly on their own with very little support. I appreciate all of the comments that came before me to give context for what Prop 36 is and isn't, and I won't spend much time rehashing things that you've already heard.

But I do want to emphasize how important it is for us to focus on solutions right now. And I do want to emphasize that solutions should only increase access. They should only increase opportunities for folks to get direct services. They should only expand the resources specifically at the local level.

And if we hear that an initiative poses a threat to our ability to do that, we should take it seriously. We should take it seriously because it will do the exact opposite of increased public safety. We understand that everyone who stood here has a role in how public safety is implemented, both at the state and in the county and local level.

We should take that responsibility seriously by thinking about exactly why the tools that we have at our disposal are not being utilized the way they should be to increase public safety, and that we should be looking at measures that are going to support us being able to effectively deliver public safety now so that we can provide relief.

I want to also name that Prop 47 savings. LARP is an example of the type of programming that Prop 47 savings has directed to. We've also been able to increase the number of trauma recovery centers in California from 14 to 22.

That deals with an immediate driver of crime, unaddressed trauma victimization, the need for ongoing long term support, social services, mental health, those are the types of things we want to see available to address the issue of crime. Same with addiction treatment.

I know from lived experience the number of times that my brother was offered treatment, and treatment was not available on demand for him. That was a driver of his addiction, one of the main causes of his loss of life. He lost his life in 2017 at the same site where he would go every day to get high.

And he was a victim of a homicide that had nothing to do with his addiction. We know that public safety requires more than us relying on law enforcement. Much of what we talked about today are also public health issues.

And I would have loved to hear from a public health professional about the exact needs of the populations who struggle with addiction. You have people here who have represented interest in getting folks safe reentry and getting them access to housing. Long term supportive housing is critical for people who struggle with addiction.

If this measure does not increase our capacity to do that, it is a failed measure. I want to thank the Committee for the work that you all have done at the legislative level to pass solutions around things like retail theft. We support our small businesses.

We support the right that every individual has in this state to be safe. But I can tell you, as someone who has lived most of their life feeling unsafe and unprotected by the systems who are supposed to uphold that, that relying on incarceration will not get us the outcome that we want. I want to yield the rest of my time and take any questions that you have. Thank you.

Do we have any questions? Seeing none, but I do appreciate your presentation. I also want to highlight that one again. One of our fastest growing substance abusers tend to be seniors. And so individuals that are suffering from addiction are not all the same. That is the stereotype in people's minds.

And again, their treatment, their support very much varies. So you have, again, the one time user, you have the student experimenting, you have the partygoer, and then you have true addicts. So thank you for that clarification. I appreciate your time. Again, thank you. We're going to move on to public comments.

We are allotting a total of 20 minutes for everyone to be able to speak. However, the public comments can only be your name, your organization, if you represent one, and whether or not you support Prop 36. Sorry.

Good afternoon, chair and Members. My name is Ed Little with Californians for Safety and Justice, and we are opposed to Proposition 36. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Glenn Backes for Drug Policy Alliance. Not for Drug Policy Alliance. Sorry, that was my former client. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is strongly opposed to Prop 36. Thank you.

...here on behalf of the Center for Employment Opportunities in strong opposition. Thank you.

Bobbie Singh-Allen, representing 2000 from the. American Petroleum and Convenience Store Association and the mayor of Elk Grove, in strong support for Prop 36. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Eric Henderson, on behalf of Smart Justice California, Vera California and Whole Consulting in opposition to Prop 36.

Good morning. Duke Cooney, on behalf of ACLU, California. Action, in opposition to Prop 36. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Teja Stephens with Catalyst California in strong opposition to Prop 36. Thank you.

Hello. Andrew Bianchi with Decarcerate Sacramento, in strong. Opposition to Prop 36.

Katrina Reese with Initiate Justice in strong opposition of Prop 36.

Courtney Hanson with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, strong opposition to 36.

Sarah Brennan, on behalf of Nextgen California, in opposition.

Good morning. Pedro Ayon with CEO, Center for Employment Opportunities, Sacramento. Strong opposition to Proposition 36.

... with also of Center for Employment Opportunities in strong opposition for this Proposition. Thank you.

April Grayson, Policy Director for Sister Warrior Freedom Coalition in strong opposition of Prop 36.

Emily Wonder, on behalf of the Young Women's Freedom Center in strong opposition to Proposition 36.

Pamela Smith, Mothers in Grief support group, in favor of Prop 36.

Rebecca Gonzalez, Western Center on Law and Poverty, in opposition to Prop 36.

Jim Lindburg, Friends Committee on Legislation of California, Friends Committee is recommending a no vote on Prop 36.

Kellie Walters, Staff Attorney with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and All of Us or None, and All of Us or None Action Network in strong opposition to Prop 36.

Hi, I'm Bernice Singh Rogers with Initiate Justice and dream.org. I am in strong opposition to Prop 36.

Hi, I'm Laura Larios with Initiate Justice with strong opposition on Prop 36. We're here on behalf of the prisoner's voice organization. We're voting no on Proposition 36.

Hello again. Teja Stephens, on behalf of the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation and Truth. No on Proposition 36.

Good morning. Mica Doctoroff, on behalf of ACLU of Northern California, in strong opposition to Prop 36.

Do we have any other public comments? Seeing none, I'll allow any Committee Members to make their final statement. All right, again, we appreciate everybody's presentation and commentary. I do want to highlight that this is a very sensitive issue to many people, so we try to be as fair as possible in this informational hearing. And again, we appreciate your participation and just your viewership. So thank you and meeting adjourned.

Yes, I just want to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

And also, I think this is the last, last time that I will speak as an Assembly Member. So. All right, farewell. Thank you. And I'm sure the electorate will vote on this and weigh in and I'm glad we're able to engage a little bit today. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.