Steve Smith
Blog
Learn how looters are adding to trauma being experienced by fire victims
A Tale of Two LA’s
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens The toll of the recent Southern California fires is shocking. Together, the seven fires known colloquially as the “Los ...
Blog
Hell on the Highways in the West
The Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) reports that cargo thefts increased 24 percent in 2024 and even more, the value of cargo theft per incident increased from $187,895 to $202,364 – an increase of 7 percent. In comparison, the average bank robbery yielded just over $4000. The value of goods ...
Blog
Policing in America Just Got Harder
A somewhat obscure author of a much-forgotten book struck lexicon gold once with the quote “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Gerald Seymour was writing about the violence and murders during the “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and Britain when he coined the phrase in Harry’s Game, ...
Commentary
State Budget Week - Learn How the Newsom Public Safety Budget Will Impact You
The Newsom Public Safety Budget: Budgets are a Reflection of Values
Governor Gavin Newsom spoke recently at Cal State Stanislaus highlighting his workforce initiatives and used the opportunity to introduce his 2025-2026 budget… State budgets are exceptionally complex documents full of granular data but a birds-eye view of spending places our tax dollars in a number of buckets of broad spending ...
Blog
Prop 36 and Deterrence – Sometimes Incarceration is the Right Thing
California’s death toll to crime and drug overdoses is staggering. From 2014 to 2023, 19,396 Californians have been murdered and from 2014 to 2022, the last complete years of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a total of 61,009 have died from fatal drug overdoses, mostly from ...
Blog
Read the latest on California's growing crime problem
The De-crminialization, De-carceration, and De-legitimization Decade
The passage of Prop 47, Prop 57, the Racial Justice Act, and the progressive agenda of reducing so-called “mass incarceration” has meant that California was no longer prosecuting drug crime and a host of racial inequity arguments that have redefined crime led to dangerous criminals being released. The 2022 PRI ...
Blog
California’s Next Crime Wave – Fuel Theft
Here are a few examples: On September 27, an Inland Empire resident drove away from her job at an area hospital when her pickup truck puttered to a stop. An investigation showed her tank had been drilled and emptied. A Valero Station in Fremont lost tens of thousands of gallons ...
Blog
Immigration in California (By the Numbers)
According to Pew Research, immigration ranked second, after the economy, in a top ten list of potential Trump voter concerns going into the 2024 presidential election. For potential Harris voters, immigration ranked last. Upon his Nov 6th election, President-Elect Trump made immediate plans for the “mass deportation” of millions ...
Blog
Learn why even Bay Area progressives voted to stop rising crime
Progressives Reject Progressivism
If Democratic party registration is any indication of the popularity of the progressive agenda – which Gov. Gavin Newsom calls “the California way” – then San Francisco and Alameda counties are the most progressive in California. Yet, in the last two years amidst rising crime, exploding overdose deaths, and dying ...
Blog
The End of Violence? Not Quite.
In 2019, the San Francisco Chronicle published an in depth look at juvenile justice in California. So struck was the paper by the decline in juvenile crime, the article was titled, “Vanishing Violence.” The numbers were indeed striking. In 1995, juvenile homicides stood at 382. By 2017, the latest year ...
Learn how looters are adding to trauma being experienced by fire victims
A Tale of Two LA’s
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens The toll of the recent Southern California fires is shocking. Together, the seven fires known colloquially as the “Los ...
Hell on the Highways in the West
The Commercial Carrier Journal (CCJ) reports that cargo thefts increased 24 percent in 2024 and even more, the value of cargo theft per incident increased from $187,895 to $202,364 – an increase of 7 percent. In comparison, the average bank robbery yielded just over $4000. The value of goods ...
Policing in America Just Got Harder
A somewhat obscure author of a much-forgotten book struck lexicon gold once with the quote “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Gerald Seymour was writing about the violence and murders during the “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and Britain when he coined the phrase in Harry’s Game, ...
State Budget Week - Learn How the Newsom Public Safety Budget Will Impact You
The Newsom Public Safety Budget: Budgets are a Reflection of Values
Governor Gavin Newsom spoke recently at Cal State Stanislaus highlighting his workforce initiatives and used the opportunity to introduce his 2025-2026 budget… State budgets are exceptionally complex documents full of granular data but a birds-eye view of spending places our tax dollars in a number of buckets of broad spending ...
Prop 36 and Deterrence – Sometimes Incarceration is the Right Thing
California’s death toll to crime and drug overdoses is staggering. From 2014 to 2023, 19,396 Californians have been murdered and from 2014 to 2022, the last complete years of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a total of 61,009 have died from fatal drug overdoses, mostly from ...
Read the latest on California's growing crime problem
The De-crminialization, De-carceration, and De-legitimization Decade
The passage of Prop 47, Prop 57, the Racial Justice Act, and the progressive agenda of reducing so-called “mass incarceration” has meant that California was no longer prosecuting drug crime and a host of racial inequity arguments that have redefined crime led to dangerous criminals being released. The 2022 PRI ...
California’s Next Crime Wave – Fuel Theft
Here are a few examples: On September 27, an Inland Empire resident drove away from her job at an area hospital when her pickup truck puttered to a stop. An investigation showed her tank had been drilled and emptied. A Valero Station in Fremont lost tens of thousands of gallons ...
Immigration in California (By the Numbers)
According to Pew Research, immigration ranked second, after the economy, in a top ten list of potential Trump voter concerns going into the 2024 presidential election. For potential Harris voters, immigration ranked last. Upon his Nov 6th election, President-Elect Trump made immediate plans for the “mass deportation” of millions ...
Learn why even Bay Area progressives voted to stop rising crime
Progressives Reject Progressivism
If Democratic party registration is any indication of the popularity of the progressive agenda – which Gov. Gavin Newsom calls “the California way” – then San Francisco and Alameda counties are the most progressive in California. Yet, in the last two years amidst rising crime, exploding overdose deaths, and dying ...
The End of Violence? Not Quite.
In 2019, the San Francisco Chronicle published an in depth look at juvenile justice in California. So struck was the paper by the decline in juvenile crime, the article was titled, “Vanishing Violence.” The numbers were indeed striking. In 1995, juvenile homicides stood at 382. By 2017, the latest year ...
