In a recent social media post, Santa Ana Mayor Vincent Sarmiento told residents that “Serious Crime Down in Santa Ana” – despite the fact the city is experiencing a huge surge in the number of murders – a 43% spike in 2021. 22 people have been murdered in Santa Ana in 2021, up from 15 murders in 2020
and 14 murders in 2019.It makes one wonder what Mayor Sarmiento considers to be a “serious crime.” If not murder, then what?
The Santa Ana Police Department’s most recent Federal Bureau of Investigations Uniform Crime Report Stats Monthly July 2021 shows 13 homicides as of July 2021. There have been an additional eight homicides as of December 2021.
What changed in Santa Ana from 2020 to 2021? Anti-police/Black Lives Matters protests, a “defund the police” movement and an election that dramatically changed the political/policy make-up of the city council.
Elections, as they say, have consequences.
In the November 2020, long-time Councilman Vince Sarmiento was elected mayor, running on a progressive political platform. Also winning election to the council – albeit more narrowly — were three youthful progressives with no prior experience as elected officials: Jessie Lopez, Thai Phan and Johnathan Hernandez. The three promised to scale back public safety spending and subject law enforcement to even more heightened scrutiny.
Sarmiento, Lopez, Hernandez and Phan have stuck to their progressive Left guns, cutting $1.1 million from enforcement services – funds intended to support the police department’s ability to engage to be pro-active in preventing the commission of serious crimes.
Crime prevention is a continuum, and when public authorities take a permissive attitude toward less “serious” offenses, criminals perceive such lassitude will extend toward more serious crimes. And when elected officials endorse the rhetoric and agenda of the “defund the police” movement, it demoralizes the police rank-and-file – with real world consequences for public safety,
Take, for example, how the progressive council bloc of Sarmiento, Lopez, Hernandez and Phan have blocked criminal penalties for those who participate in street racing as spectators – increasing the nuisance and danger of street racing as scofflaws are allowed to take over public streets for illegal activity.
Or the progressive bloc’s direction to the Santa Ana Police Department to abandon enforcement of “minor” traffic violations. Official tolerance of public disorder leads to more disorder, encouraging criminals and making us less safe.
Back to Mayor Sarmiento’s statement that serious crime in Santa Ana is on the downswing – a claim rebutted earlier this year by Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin:
“What you’ve seen across the nation is actually an increase in violent crime. Here in our city we also experienced an increase in by the first quarter of this year.”
Chief Valentin made that statement to the city council on June 3 of 2021, when the murder rate for the year was about half where it stands today.
Serious crime in Santa Ana isn’t declining, but the ability to take Mayor Sarmiento and his progressive council allies seriously on the topic of crime, is.
