"It's troubling": Sacramento County Sheriff talks homeless outreach stats
SACRAMENTO COUNTY -- The Sacramento County Sheriff calls revelations from a six-month outreach and enforcement operation on homelessness, "troubling."
Statistics, released by Sheriff Jim Cooper on Thursday, were gathered by the office's Homeless Outreach Team. The findings, as outlined by Cooper, show disparities in the number of incidents and the number of incidents that are reported to law enforcement.
The number of sexual assaults, from January to July 2023, was 402. Of those, 162 were reported and 240 were not reported.
Statistics that detail the number of domestic violence incidents show a similar trend: in 422 incidents, only 53 were reported to law enforcement.
From January 1-July 31 of 2023, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office has taken the approach to actively enforce the law in our homeless community against serious and violent criminal activity. We have found that the unhoused community is vulnerable to violent crime especially… pic.twitter.com/eCSbtsiLSz
— Sacramento Sheriff (@sacsheriff) August 10, 2023
"It's troubling, and you have women out there with children, and I'm sure they're being preyed upon, that's a big issue," said Cooper.
CBS13 asked if SCSO kept statistics on how many children lived unhoused in the county; those numbers were not available on Thursday.
In six months, Cooper also pointed to the 602 citations and 221 misdemeanor arrests now tracked. These numbers, from nearly 1,000 people who live unhoused contacted by SCSO.