In a stinging commentary by Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims attacked two main policies. The first policy is the lock down orders and the second is the freeing of inmates in the prisons. Mims said her sheriff;s department cannot enforce the lock down orders because her officers are too busy arresting the freed inmates again. There were 711 inmates freed from prisons. Out of those, 87 inmates have been arrested again.
That is a 12.5% recidivism rate. And remember, that only includes those who have been arrested who were caught committing crimes. Others may have broken the law never got caught. It also does not include those freed prisoners who were arrested in other counties.
Mims is just facing what other sheriff departments are experiencing but with different goals and different priorities. Do they uphold the mandates from the governor or do they defend the constitution? It creates conflicting priorities. The bottom line is that the constitution does not have a pandemic clause that would set aside the rights included within the constitution.
Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims has said that she is not enforcing the state’s stay-at-home order —because they are too busy trying to re-arrest the criminals who were freed with the zero dollar bail order.
Sheriff Mims asserted her position during a Tuesday interview on the Trevor Carey radio show.
“I’ve heard multiple sheriffs around the nation state they will not enforce their governors’ shelter-in-place orders. Is that your position?” Carey asked.
Sheriff Mims replied, “That is my position. We do not stop the public to find out what they’re doing when they’re not sheltering in place. We don’t ask those questions, we don’t ask if they’re ‘essential.’”
On April 6, California implemented a policy setting $0 bail for suspects arrested on misdemeanor and non-violent charges to keep people out of jail during the pandemic.
“Sheriff’s Department spokesman Tony Botti said Thursday that 711 suspects in Fresno County have been released on zero-dollar bail since the policy went into effect. There have been 87 re-bookings of previously released suspects since then, he said, resulting in a recidivism rate of 12.5%,” GV Wire reports.