'Good Enough Never Is': Newsom Defends Increase In Law Enforcement To Areas Where Crime Is Down

4 months ago

During a press conference on Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) was asked by a reporter why he was deploying law enforcement units to areas where crime was decreasing.

Transcript

00:00I have a question that to your point about crime rates going down in some of these communities

00:03that you're deploying additional resources into. That's been an argument when it comes to where

00:07Trump has been deploying the National Guard in places where crime rates are actually going down,

00:11like places like D.C. So can you, how can you justify that? What's the reason for putting more

00:16resources and more law enforcement on the streets where communities might be seeing decreasing crime

00:22rates? Well, because as I said, good enough never is. A decrease is not, you know, I think, look,

00:28and this is more my own observation. This is not, this is more of a tonal observation. I don't think

00:39it's a very good argument to make that, well, we're down 15, 20 percent when you still have people

00:46whose cars are broken into. You still have crimes being committed. You still have murders. You still

00:51feel unsafe in certain parts of certain communities and all across this country. So I think we have

00:57to be very careful about that. And I'm not arguing to defend the status quo. Quite the contrary.

01:02We think we can do better still. Just because we have the second lowest homicides in modern recorded

01:09history, certainly my lifetime, doesn't mean we can't do better. We can. And that's what this is

01:15about. But again, I also would highlight that our efforts were focused in the initiation of this

01:23effort that we're expanding here today. We're focused on hotspots. We focused on parts of San

01:29Francisco two years ago that were of concern. We've seen progress, but not good enough. I talked to the

01:35mayor the other day about it. He wants to see more. He was very encouraged by our willingness to engage

01:40and re-engage back in San Francisco. We went to Kern County, which was the murder capital of

01:45California, Kern County, a few years ago, off the charts. I think for five out of the last six

01:52years, they've been the murder capital of the state. And we reached out to the mayor and the

01:57county and we said, look, this is not just about coastal cities. This is about parts of the state

02:02that we don't overlook, but often parts of the state that are overlooked. And those partnerships have

02:09proven unbelievably successful. By the way, I mentioned Mayor Goh because not only did she

02:13enthusiastically embrace this, but she's seen some of the biggest decreases in crime in Bakersfield

02:18in the state. We're using not just our mobile resources, we're using our air resources down

02:26there as well. And I appreciate the commissioner's work in that respect. We're going after side shows

02:30down there and we've seen some success. So their willingness to engage has been profoundly

02:34consequential and beneficial. And I think a lot of those communities that have seen declines

02:39think they could do better, can do more. And that's why we're going to find out.

'Good Enough Never Is': Newsom Defends Increase In Law Enforcement To Areas Where Crime Is Down

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