The crime spiral starts small, California attorney general candidate Nathan Hochman said. A criminal goes into a store, steals just shy of $950 in goods from a small business and walks, not runs out, because the lawbreaker knows he won't be prosecuted.
That leads to three people hitting a CVS, or 10 busting into Walgreens. Then 80 go into Nordstrom, or 100 strike in a flash mob in a Los Angeles 7-Eleven. The criminals, Hochman said in Bakersfield Saturday morning during the first stop of his statewide bus tour, know they won't pay the price.
Campaigning on the slogan "Experience matters. Stop the spiral of lawlessness," Hochman, a Republican who said people should vote for him as a person dedicated to public safety, appeared in a southwest Bakersfield parking lot alongside Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield.
Hochman said he'll bring back lawfulness in three ways: partnering with police, not vilifying them or making them an enemy; funding the police; and ensuring crimes have proportionate consequences.
Hochman listed his qualifications, including serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California and as a U.S. assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice, among other roles in 30 years of experience. He sought to contrast himself with incumbent California Attorney General Rob Bonta, appointed to his role by the governor, who seeks to maintain his office.
"He's not a champion of law enforcement," Hochman said of Bonta. "He is a champion of the criminals."
But Bonta's campaign website describes him as the “attorney for the people” who "holds those who break the law — especially those in positions of power — accountable and wins justice for California families. He knows that enforcing the law and public service is about helping people, making people’s lives better, and improving the human condition."
Bonta's priorities, his campaign website says, include stopping gun violence, fighting hate and protecting civil rights, stopping transnational criminal groups, helping victims of crime, and protecting health care and reproductive freedom, among others.
Asked Saturday how he would help attract deputies and officers to Kern County — where law enforcement agencies report many unfilled positions — Hochman said with a $97 billion state budget surplus, more of that money needs to go to public safety, and the attorney general needs to be the advocate to get state resources directed there.
The candidate also addressed law changes, saying while Proposition 47 was sold to voters as the misleading Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, it should have actually been called what it is — turning felonies into misdemeanors for property and drug crimes, and therefore nobody's arrested.
There needs to either be a new proposition that makes $400 or above in theft a felony, or a serial property theft crime law — if you commit a second or third property crime that comes in just under $950 in loss, that serial property theft could be charged as a felony. Hochman said criminals steal up to where the line is drawn.
He and Fong also addressed the fentanyl crisis, with Hochman noting 2 milligrams of fentanyl will kill a person in two minutes. He said such drug dealers are actually murderers, as fentanyl claims the lives of an average of 17 Californians a day.
He said he would "scream from the rafters" in support of a bill to charge fentanyl dealers as murderers.
"We need someone that will hold criminals accountable, that will bring policy changes, that will enforce the laws that we have on the books, to bring consequences back to California," Fong said in support of Hochman. "We need to make crime illegal again."
