Newsom counters Trump’s claims about California crime with stats

Governor Gavin Newsom used his final State of the State address to highlight California’s jaw-dropping crime numbers; He said these statistics disprove the president’s claims of widespread murder and mayhem.

To put some of the numbers the governor cited Thursday into perspective:

The last time homicides were this low in Oakland, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was visiting Joan Baez at Santa Rita Prison to praise her recent arrest in protest of the draft in Vietnam.

Murders haven’t been this rare in San Francisco since superstar Marilyn Monroe married baseball legend Joe DiMaggio at City Hall.

And violent deaths in the city of Los Angeles have fallen to rates not seen since the Beatles’ penultimate public show at Dodgers Stadium.

“We have seen double-digit declines in crime overall in the state of California,” Newsom said. “We have more work to do, but I will repeat for those of you with California derangement syndrome, it is time to update your talking points.”

The governor’s remarks follow reports from The Times that the murder rate in Los Angeles is nearing record lows, mirroring trends in other cities across the country.

Given the counts based on data from the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, President Trump insists: crime in california His spiraling out of control began to look more and more exaggerated. Recently, the president shifted his messaging to warn of a possible crime resurgence.

“When crime starts to rise again, maybe we will come back much different and stronger,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social announcing the end of his legal battle to keep National Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. “It’s just a matter of time!”

In his speech Thursday, Newsom attributed the huge drop in violence to the infusion of cash released by the California Legislature to fight crime.

“Nobody walked away from public safety,” Newsom said. “We did not turn a blind eye to this, we invested. We did not talk, we bowed.”

But experts say the truth is more complex. Those who study the root causes of crime say it may take years, if not decades, to unravel the reasons for the spike in violence during the pandemic and the rapid decline that followed.

Trump has taken on lawlessness on the streets of California during his 2024 presidential campaign and throughout his first year back in the White House. He rarely names Newsom without causing crime and chaos, and he regularly threatens to put armed soldiers back on the streets.

At the same time, the Trump administration has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding from school safety grants, youth mentoring programs and gang intervention networks that experts say are effective in improving public safety.

Supporters worry these cuts could threaten Los Angeles’ alternative crisis intervention programs aimed at easing the city’s reliance on law enforcement. In recent years, numerous groups have emerged to help people struggling with symptoms of homelessness, drug addiction, and untreated mental health disorders; all of which can increase perceptions of crime even as actual numbers decrease.

Some have warned that looming cuts in federal spending could hinder efforts to scale up these initiatives.

“I don’t know how we can continue to move in the right direction without continuing to invest in things that work,” said Thurman Barnes, deputy director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.

Major Cities Chiefs Assn. Homicide cases decreased in San Francisco, San José, Sacramento and Oakland, according to data published by . Other violent crimes, such as rape, aggravated assault and robbery, also declined, with a few exceptions.

Property crime is also down, the governor said Thursday.

Street-level disorder and the perception of widespread lawlessness helped topple progressive administrations in California in 2024, giving Trump an unexpected windfall in some of the state’s bluest cities.

Newsom acknowledged Thursday that those concerns are “at the core” of California voters’ frustrations.

“We are seeing the results of making the streets safer for everyone,” the governor said.

Jeff Asher, a leading expert in criminology, said it’s hard to tell whether the perception gap is closing “because we don’t need to track it in a very systematic way.”

But he pointed to a Gallup poll late last year that showed less than half of Americans believe crime is increasing; It was the first time in twenty years that the number had fallen below 50 percent.

“The pandemic has broken us in so many ways, and we’re starting to feel not so broken anymore,” he said.

Newsom also claimed that there were sharp declines in the number of people living on the streets.

The governor announced that unsheltered homelessness fell by 9% in California and more than 10% in Los Angeles; sought to compare this data to the 18% increase in homelessness nationwide.

Research shows that the sight of camps and people in the throes of psychosis on the streets triggers the perception of lawlessness and danger. Lowering this alleviates these fears.

But California’s overall homeless population remains stubbornly high, with only a small decrease. Experts have warned that federal funding cuts could hinder efforts to further reduce these numbers.

Rather than delving into the intricacies of crime, Newsom sought to portray the president himself as the driving force of lawlessness, describing the first year of his second term as a “carnival of chaos.”

“We are facing an attack on our values ​​unlike anything I have ever seen in my life,” the governor said. “Secret police. Businesses are raided. Windows are broken, citizens are detained, citizens are shot. Masked men kidnap people in broad daylight, people disappear. They use American cities as training grounds for the US army.”

“It is time for the president of the United States to do his job and not turn his back on Americans living in the great state of California,” Newsom said.