Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he would expand the deployment of special California Highway Patrol teams in major California cities to fight crime, even as he touted crime numbers being down in the state.
These CHP crime suppression teams will work with local law enforcement in San Diego, the Inland Empire, Los Angeles, the Central Valley, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, the governor’s office said.
“These operations will be targeted. They’ll be data-driven,” Newsom said.
Newsom also trumpeted progress already made on crime in the state, but said the numbers alone mean little to Californians.
“These are aggregate numbers, but we don’t live in the aggregate. Everybody lives in a different community, with different conditions, different challenges, and we are mindful that we have a lot more work to do,” Newsom said at a news conference in the governor’s office. “That’s precisely why we are announcing this today.”
Newsom’s announcement comes amid frequent jibes from President Trump about crime in blue states such as California, and Trump threatening to expand his use of military forces to target local crime.
During an Oval Office talk this week, Trump described crime as being so rampant in Beverly Hills that residents have been leaving their car doors and trunks open to avoid having them vandalized by thieves. (Times reporters could not find any evidence of this happening in Beverly Hills, an affluent city famous for having law enforcement response times that hover below three minutes.)
Trump sent roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June amid immigration raids and ensuing protests. He has since expanded his military tactics in the nation’s capital, activating hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington to “reestablish law and order,” despite violent crime having decreased significantly in the city in recent years.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Thursday that she welcomed the assistance from CHP teams.
“We look forward to working with CHP to identify the best use of these additional resources to support ongoing local law enforcement efforts,” Bass said in a statement. “I want to thank the Governor for being a collaborative partner. The best way to address crime and other top challenges is through partnership and this is an example of that.”
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Newsom pushed back on questions about whether the CHP surge was intended to respond to Trump’s comments, or prevent the president from deploying more troops to the state. Newsom underscored the cooperation of local officials and said the only thing he was responding to were community desires.
“As it relates to the president, in particular, he’s doing things to people, not with people. It’s a point of profound and consequential contrast, the fact of militarizing American cities,” Newsom continued.
In recent years, Newsom has deployed CHP officers and the California National Guard to crack down on the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco, where they worked collaboratively with local agencies to target drug trafficking and drug markets in the city. The governor also has deployed CHP officers to Bakersfield and the East Bay.
Late last year, a CHP surge operation was utilized in San Bernardino, where rates of violent crime were around double the state average.
Newsom highlighted the success of those various operations Thursday, saying that more than 4,000 stolen vehicles in Oakland alone had been recovered as part of the operation, with more than 9,000 arrests made statewide.
But even with those results, it was hard not to see an element of political theater to Newsom’s briefing Thursday. At one point he held up colorful fliers, advertising how various GOP-led states and cities have higher crime rates than those in California, or certain California cities.
Newsom said he wanted to present these facts to Trump, since the president might not see them on Fox News.
Times staff writer Laura Nelson contributed to this report.
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