California officials rip state’s ‘soft-on-crime’ policies after mayor attacked by homeless criminal: ‘Travesty’
Marysville Mayor Chris Branscum and Councilman Dom Belza joined ‘Fox & Friends First’ to discuss why they blame the state’s crime policies, implemented under Kamala Harris, for the surge in violence after the random attack on the mayor.
California officials blamed then-Attorney General Kamala Harris for the state’s soft-on-crime policies after a small-town mayor and council member were reportedly attacked at random by a homeless criminal.
Marysville Mayor Chris Branscum and City Councilman Dom Belza were both allegedly assaulted by the suspect during the daytime attack last month. Branscum said he was standing by Belza and the chief of police in the middle of a crosswalk assessing damage to a historic building that was recently devastated by a fire when the unprovoked assault occurred.
“The next thing I know, I think I’d been hit by a car. I am hit so hard in my lower back, and time slows,” Branscum told “Fox & Friends First” on Thursday. “In the moment, I figured out what really happened is this guy slides around me and takes off on a dead run with Dominique Belza right on his tail. Unremarkable.”
“I’m an elected official, so it made the news and brings some focus on the homeless problem,” he continued. “The element of the homeless population that behaves like this.”
Following the alleged attack, Belza said his “instincts kicked in” and he bolted after the fleeing suspect. The suspect, who was later identified as 36-year-old Derek Hopkins, took off running after the incident.
The suspect, identified as 36-year-old Derek Hopkins (Yuba County Sheriff’s Department)
Belza eventually caught up with Hopkins, who reportedly came in for a second punch, successfully hitting him on the side of his head.
Belza said after that he was able to “engage” the suspect and restrain him until the chief of police got to the scene. Shortly thereafter, he was taken into custody and arrested.
He blamed Harris’ crime policies while she served as attorney general of California from 2011 until 2017, arguing the state is now dealing with the fallout.
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“I think really what this speaks to in the whole situation… is the soft-on-crime policy that we’ve experienced in California for the last 10 years or so, or maybe even further than that,” Belza said. “If you go back to AB 109 and the impact of prisons, the issues California had with that, the apex of this whole thing was, in 2014 when Prop 47 passed, Kamala Harris was our attorney general who named the proposition, and she named it the Safe Communities and Safe Schools Act.”
Prop 47 was signed into law in November 2014 and reclassified six minor felony offenses as misdemeanors, including shoplifting of merchandise valued at less than $950 and drug possession.
“In reality, it lowered what was felony crimes such as retail theft and drug dealing, drug possession, lowered those down to misdemeanors with basically no end in sight for as many infractions that somebody committed,” Belza said. “And since then, we’ve seen and have dealt with in California just an increase in crime, and it’s a travesty when things like this happen.”
Branscum noted that Marysville, which sits north of Sacramento and has only 13,000 residents, is having to grapple with the fallout of these lenient crime policies voted for by the elite communities elsewhere in the state.
“The coastal communities in California are the ones that passed the act,” Branscum said. “The communities in the Valley voted no, as you said, other than Sacramento County, and now that it’s become a little bit too much for them. They’re all bussing… their problem population out of their communities, and we’re seeing new members of our community, and having to deal with that.”
Hopkins is facing eight charges that include felony assault of a public official and felony elder abuse. His bail is set at $50,000.
Fox News’ Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.