Latest news with #Proposition36
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Bakersfield man on probation arrested on suspicion of drug sales under Prop 36
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A man was arrested after a home search led to the discovery of cocaine and money in his home on Tuesday, according to the Kern County Probation Department. On June 3, officers with the probation department's Post Release Community Supervision Unit conducted a home call in the 100 block of Hudson Street, according to officials. Officers found about 240 grams of suspected cocaine and U.S. currency in various denominations at the home, officials said. Erik Gutierrez Vega, 19, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance, possessing a controlled substance for sales and keeping a place to sell drugs, according to the department. Gutierrez Vega was also arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs with two prior convictions under Proposition 36. Gutierrez Vega was previously sentenced to two years for another case involving similar charges related to drug sales, court records show. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
San Francisco Chronicle
15 hours ago
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
How a 77-year-old Manson follower has Newsom in familiar bind
Once again, a state parole board has found one of cult leader Charles Manson's followers – Patricia Krenwinkel – suitable for release after more than 56 years behind bars for her role in seven 1969 murders. And once again, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether there is any evidence that Krenwinkel, 77, would pose any danger if released – and whether a decision to free her would affect his political future. The Board of Parole Hearings, whose members were appointed by the governor, voted Friday to grant parole to Krenwinkel, the state's longest-serving female prisoner. The board had ruled against her 14 times before recommending parole in 2022, but Newsom vetoed her release, saying she had not shown 'sufficient insight' into her crimes. The governor gave a similar explanation in 2022 for vetoing the parole of another Manson follower, Leslie Van Houten, whose release had been approved five times by the parole board since 2016 but blocked each time by Govs. Jerry Brown and Newsom. But a state appeals court ruled in 2023 that Newsom had failed to justify his conclusions that Van Houten, 73, lacked sufficient understanding of her actions and could still be dangerous after 54 years in prison. She was freed after the governor decided not to appeal the ruling. 'The only factor that can explain this veto (of Van Houten's parole) is political optics, and California law does not allow governors to veto people's parole because it will look bad,' said Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco and author of the 2020 book 'Yesterday's Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole.' And she said the same thinking will most likely affect Newsom's upcoming decision on Krenwinkel, once the parole board's decision becomes final in 120 days. 'What does he think people have an appetite for in this political reality?' Aviram asked, noting California voters' approval last November of Proposition 36, which increased some sentences for drug crimes. 'It costs him nothing to oppose (her release). In the worst-case scenario, the court overrules him again and she gets out.' Manson ordered seven of his followers, including the 21-year-old Krenwinkel and two other young women, to kill nine people in three gruesome attacks in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles in July and August 1969. During her trial, Krenwinkel admitted chasing Abigail Folger, heiress of the Folger coffee family, and stabbing her 25 times in the home of actress Sharon Tate, another murder victim, and then helping to kill grocery store executive Leno Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, and using their blood to scrawl 'Death to pigs' on a wall. Convicted of seven murders, Krenwinkel was sentenced to death along with Manson and three others in 1971. But the sentences were reduced to life with the possibility of parole after the California Supreme Court overturned the state's death penalty law in 1972. The voters passed a new law in 1977 making capital crimes punishable by death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, but those sentenced under the earlier law, including Krenwinkel, remained eligible for parole. Another ballot measure, approved by the voters in 1988, authorized the governor to veto decisions by the parole board. In prison, Krenwinkel has a clean disciplinary record, earned a college degree and has taken part in community-service programs, working to support other inmates with mental illnesses. At her 2022 parole hearing, she said that after dropping out of school and becoming an infatuated member of Manson's so-called family at age 19, 'I allowed myself to just start absolutely becoming devoid of any form of morality or real ethics.' In a statement released by Krenwinkel's lawyers, Jane Dorotik, a former inmate and now part of the support group California Coalition for Women Prisoners, said, 'Those of us who served time with her came to know her as a thoughtful, gentle, and kind person – someone deeply dedicated to creating a safe, caring environment.' Relatives of the murder victims have not been persuaded. 'I beg the board to consider parole for Patricia Krenwinkel only when her victims are paroled from their graves,' Anthony Demaria, a nephew of victim Jay Sebring, testified at one of her hearings. And Patrick Sequeira, a prosecutor in the murder cases, told the board that if Krenwinkel 'truly understood her crimes and the horrific nature of it, she wouldn't be here at a parole hearing. She would just accept a punishment.' Not so, said her lead attorney, Keith Wattley, executive director of UnCommon Law, an Oakland-based firm that represents inmates seeking parole. 'Pat has fully accepted responsibility for everything she did, everything she contributed to, every twisted philosophy she embraced and endorsed and, most importantly, every life she destroyed by her actions in 1969,' Wattley said in a statement after the board's latest decision. 'Now it's the Governor's turn to show that he believes in law and order when the law requires a person's release despite public outcry.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Serial shoplifter robbed same store 16 straight times: SFPD
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A serial shoplifter accused of robbing the same store 16 times between October of last year to May 2025 was nabbed by detectives, the San Francisco Police Department announced on Tuesday. Arrest in 'unprovoked' back-to-back assaults at SF Fort Mason Park SFPD said Neil Peck (aka Kevin Peck), 51, was arrested on May 25 for burglary and attempted grand theft at a retail store on the 700 block of Mission Street. Police said an 'astute' officer figured out that Peck was involved in dozens of other thefts at that same location and quickly alerted investigators. Police did not disclose the exact retail store. 'SFPD DART (Defend Against Retail Theft) investigators began investigating Peck for the prior theft incidents and determined that he was the suspect in 16 additional chargeable cases from October 7, 2024, to May 22, 2025,' said police. 'The total loss for the incidents totaled nearly $8,000.' Peck faces several felony and misdemeanor charges, including petty theft, commercial burglary, grand theft and shoplifting, said San Francisco police. Due to voters passing Proposition 36 in December 2024, Peck's petty theft crimes can be charged as misdemeanors or felony since he has several prior theft convictions, SFPD confirmed. Wine theft led to felony charge under Prop 36 Despite an arrest in the case, this remains an active investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact the SFPD at (415) 575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411, starting the message with 'SFPD.' SFPD said its Organized Retail Crime (ORC) Task Force also assisted in the probe. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Newsom insults California voters by not funding Proposition 36
SACRAMENTO — This just seems wrong: Californians overwhelmingly approved an anti-crime ballot measure in November. But our governor strongly opposed the proposition. So he's not funding it. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders, however, are now under pressure to fund the measure in a new state budget that's being negotiated and must pass the Legislature by June 15. A core principle of democracy is the rule of law. A governor may dislike a law, but normally is duty- bound to help implement and enforce it. Heaven save us if governors start traipsing the twisted path of President Trump. But this isn't the first time for Newsom. Voters twice — in 2012 and 2016 — rejected ballot measures to eliminate the death penalty. Moreover, in 2016 they voted to expedite executions. But shortly after becoming governor in 2019, Newsom ignored the voters and declared a moratorium on capital punishment. Nothing on California's ballot last year got more votes than Proposition 36, which increases punishment for repeated theft and hard drug offenses and requires treatment for repetitive criminal addicts. It passed with 68.4% of the vote, carrying all 58 counties — 55 of them by landslide margins, including all counties in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. 'To call it a mandate is an understatement,' says Greg Totten, chief executive officer of the California District Attorneys Assn., which sponsored the initiative. Big retailers bankrolled it. 'It isn't a red or blue issue,' adds Totten, referring to providing enough money to fund the promised drug and mental health treatment. 'It's what's compassionate and what's right and what the public expects us to do.' Proposition 36 partly rolled back the sentence-softening Proposition 47 that voters passed 10 years earlier and was loudly promoted by then-Lt. Gov. Newsom. Proposition 47 reduced certain property and hard drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and arrests plummeted, the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found. Proposition 36 was inspired by escalating retail theft, including smash-and-grab burglaries, that were virtually unpunished. Increased peddling of deadly fentanyl also stirred the public. The ballot measure imposed tougher penalties for dealing and possessing fentanyl, treating it like other hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. But the proposition offered a carrot to addicted serial criminals: Many could be offered treatment rather than jail time. Newsom adamantly opposed Proposition 36. 'We don't need to go back to the broken policies of the last century,' the governor declared. 'Mass incarceration has been proven ineffective and is not the answer.' Newsom tried to sabotage Proposition 36 by crafting an alternative ballot measure. Top legislative leaders went along. But rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers rebelled and Newsom abandoned the effort. The Legislature ultimately passed 13 anti-theft bills that Newsom and Democrats hoped would satisfy voters, but didn't come close. Totten called the legislative product 'half measures.' Proposition 36 was flawed in one regard: It lacked a funding mechanism. That was part of the backers' political strategy. To specify a revenue source — a tax increase, the raid of an existing program — would have created a fat target for opponents. Let the governor and the Legislature decide how to fund it, sponsors decided. 'We didn't want to tie the hands of the Legislature,' Totten says. 'The Legislature doesn't like that.' Without funding from Sacramento, Proposition 36 won't work, says Graham Knaus, chief executive officer of the California State Assn. of Counties. 'We believe strongly that if it's not properly funded, it's going to fail,' Knaus says. 'Proposition 36 requires increased capacity for mental health and substance abuse treatment. And until that's in place, there's not really a way to make the sentencing work.' There's a fear among Proposition 36 supporters that if treatment isn't offered to qualifying addicts, courts won't allow jail sentencing. 'That will probably get litigated,' Totten says. 'Counties can't implement 36 for free,' Knaus says. 'Voters declared this to be a top-level priority. It's on the state to determine how to fund it. Counties have a very limited ability to raise revenue.' The district attorney and county organizations peg the annual cost of implementing the measure at $250 million. State Senate Republicans are shooting for the moon: $400 million. The nonpartisan legislative analyst originally figured that the cost ranged 'from several tens of millions of dollars to the low hundreds of millions of dollars each year.' Newson recently sent the Legislature a revised $322-billion state budget proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1. There wasn't a dime specifically for Proposition 36. The governor, in fact, got a bit surly when asked about it by a reporter. 'There were a lot of supervisors in the counties that promoted it,' the governor asserted. 'So this is their opportunity to step up. Fund it.' One supervisor I spoke with — a Democrat — opposed Proposition 36, but is irked that Newsom isn't helping to implement it. 'It's disappointing and immensely frustrating,' says Bruce Gibson, a longtime San Luis Obispo County supervisor. 'Voters have spoken and we need to work together with the state in partnership.' In fairness, the governor and the Legislature are faced with the daunting task of patching a projected $12-billion hole in the budget, plus preparing for the unpredictable fiscal whims of a president who keeps threatening to withhold federal funds from California because he doesn't like our policies. 'I am quite concerned about adequately providing the necessary funding to implement Proposition 36,' says state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, a strong Democratic supporter of the measure. He's fearful that the Legislature will approve only a token amount of funding — and the governor will veto even that. Under California's progressive system of direct democracy, voters are allowed to bypass Sacramento and enact a state law themselves. Assuming the statue is constitutional, the state then has a duty to implement it. To ignore the voters is a slap in the face of democracy. The must-read: Villaraigosa, despite climate credentials, pivots toward oil industry in run for governor The what happened: Trump threatens to strip federal funds to California over transgender youth athletes The L.A. Times Special: Killing wolves remains a crime in California. But a rebellion is brewing Until next week,George Skelton —Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Even tough-on-crime district attorneys know prison reform is smart
On a recent morning inside San Quentin prison, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and more than a dozen other prosecutors crowded into a high-ceilinged meeting hall surrounded by killers, rapists and other serious offenders. Name the crime, one of these guys has probably done it. 'It's not every day that you're in a room of 100 people, most of whom have committed murder, extremely violent crimes, and been convicted of it,' Hochman later said. Many of these men, in their casual blue uniforms, were serving long sentences with little chance of getting out, like Marlon Arturo Melendez, an L.A. native who is now in for murder. Melendez sat in a 'sharing circle,' close enough to Hochman that their knees could touch, no bars between them. They chatted about the decrease in gang violence in the decades since Melendez was first incarcerated more than 20 years ago, and Melendez said he found Hochman 'interesting.' Inside San Quentin, this kind of interaction between inmates and guests isn't unusual. For decades, the prison by the Bay has been doing incarceration differently, cobbling together a system that focuses on accountability and rehabilitation. Like the other men in the room, Melendez takes responsibility for the harm he caused, and every day works to be a better man. When he introduces himself, he names his victims — an acknowledgment that what he did can't be undone but also an acknowledgment that he doesn't have to remain the same man who pulled the trigger. Whether or not Melendez or any of these men ever walk free, what was once California's most notorious lockup is now a place that offers them the chance to change and provides the most elusive of emotions for prisoners — hope. Creating that culture is a theory and practice of imprisonment that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make the standard across the state. He's dubbed it the California Model, but as I've written about before, it's common practice in other countries (and even in a few places in the United States). It's based on a simple truth about incarceration: Most people who go into prison come out again. Public safety demands that they behave differently when they do. 'We are either paying to keep them here or we are paying if they come back out and harm somebody,' said Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney of San Francisco, who has visited San Quentin regularly for years. Jenkins was the organizer of this unusual day that brought district attorneys from around the state inside of San Quentin to gain a better understanding of how the California Model works, and why even tough-on-crime district attorneys should support transforming our prisons. As California does an about-face away from a decade of progressive criminal justice advances with new crackdowns such as those promised by the recently passed Proposition 36 (which is expected to increase the state inmate population), it is also continuing to move ahead with the controversial plan to remake prison culture, both for inmates and guards, by centering on rehabilitation over punishment. Despite a tough economic year that is requiring the state to slash spending, Newsom has kept intact more than $200 million from the prior budget to revamp San Quentin so that its outdated facilities can support more than just locking up folks in cells. Some of that construction, already happening on the grounds, is expected to be completed next year. It will make San Quentin the most visible example of the California Model. But changes in how inmates and guards interact and what rehabilitation opportunities are available are already underway at prisons across the state. It is an overdue and profound transformation that has the potential to not only improve public safety and save money in the long run, but to fundamentally reshape what incarceration means across the country. Jenkins' push to help more prosecutors understand and value this metamorphosis might be crucial to helping the public support it as well — especially for those D.A.s whose constituents are just fine with a system that locks up men to suffer for their (often atrocious) crimes. Or even those Californians, such as many in San Francisco and Los Angeles, who are just fed up with the perception that California is soft on criminals. 'It's not about moderate or progressive, but I think all of us that are moderates have to admit that there are reforms that still need to happen,' Jenkins told me as we walked through the prison yard. She took office after the successful recall of her progressive predecessor, Chesa Boudin, and a rightward shift in San Francisco on crime policy. Still, she is vocal about the need for second chances. For her, prison reform is about more than the California Model, but a broader lens that includes the perspectives of incarcerated people, and their insights on what they need to make rehabilitation work. 'It really grounds you in your obligation to make sure that the culture in the [district attorney's] office is fair,' she said. For Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer who resoundingly ousted progressive George Gascón last year, rehabilitation makes sense. He likes to paraphrase a Fyodor Dostoevsky quote, 'The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.' 'In my perfect world, the education system, the family system, the community, would have done all this work on the front end such that these people wouldn't have been in position to commit crimes in the first place,' he said. But when that fails, it's up to the criminal justice system to help people fix themselves. Despite being perceived as a tough-on-crime D.A. (he prefers 'fair on crime') he's so committed to that goal of rehabilitation that he is determined to push for a new Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles County — an expensive (billions) and unpopular idea that he says is long overdue but critical to public safety. 'Los Angeles County is absolutely failing because our prisons and jails are woefully inadequate,' he said. He's quick to add that rehabilitation isn't for everyone. Some just aren't ready for it. Some don't care. The inmates of San Quentin agree with him. They are often fiercely vocal about who gets transferred to the prison, knowing that its success relies on having incarcerated people who want to change — one rogue inmate at San Quentin could ruin it for all of them. 'It has to be a choice. You have to understand that for yourself,' Oscar Acosta told me. Now 32, he's a 'CDC baby,' as he puts it — referring to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — and has been behind bars since he was 18. He credits San Quentin with helping him accept responsibility for his crimes and see a path forward. When the California Model works, as the district attorneys saw, it's obvious what its value is. Men who once were nothing but dangerous have the option to live different lives, with different values. Even if they remain incarcerated. 'After having been considered the worst of the worst, today I am a new man,' Melendez told me. 'I hope (the district attorneys) were able to see real change in those who sat with them and be persuaded that rehabilitation over punishment is more fruitful and that justice seasoned with restoration is better for all.' Melendez and the other incarcerated men at San Quentin aspire for us to see them as more than their worst actions. And they take heart that even prosecutors like Jenkins and Hochman, who put them behind bars, sometimes with triple-digit sentences, do see that the past does not always determine the future, and that investing in their change is an investment in safer communities.
