Sacramento sheriff's office calls out lawmakers for being soft on crime
SACRAMENTO — A wild freeway pursuit with suspects filming the whole thing on Instagram live has the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office calling out soft-on-crime laws for letting the teens loose after another recent arrest.
Dispatch audio describes the chase that reached speeds of 100 miles an hour Tuesday.
Dispatch audio: "…they have phones out the window recording the pursuit…"
Dispatch audio: "…your suspects are live on instagram, with a gun in the car…"
"They were live on Instagram while they were in this pursuit," sheriff spokesperson Sgt. Amar Gandhi said. "So this is how not serious they took this. This was just a real-life video game to them."
Gandhi said the two suspects arrested in this case are 16-year-old validated gang members, and three guns were also found in the vehicle. He added that one of the teens had been arrested following a pursuit just months ago.
"So if you've got legislators that are working for you right now, that are not taking this seriously, that really don't care about putting these guys in jail, call them, talk to them," Gandhi said. "You would be amazed what's going on in that building right now. We keep talking about criminal justice reform, maybe trying to shift that conversation to public safety reform."
"I would say, right now, the pendulum is a little to the left," said Sacramento-based attorney Kevin Adamson. "I've definitely seen it swing."
Adamson has been handling juvenile court cases for 25 years and said that while he is seeing more leniency in the court system for juveniles now, teens found with guns are not released from custody quickly.
"So the idea that a kid goes on a high-speed chase, there's guns in the car, he is getting out a couple of days later, it's not something—I've done this for a long time, I've got a ton of experience at this—that's just not happening," Adamson said.
Adamson said that in California, there is a mandatory detention of any juvenile found in possession of a gun.
In Sacramento County, youth detention trends have changed dramatically in the past two decades, according to the California Attorney General's Office.
In 2002, the average daily population of youth in juvenile facilities was 500. That dropped to 93 in 2020. It rose to 176 in 2023.
Anderson attributed the swing to less crime overall and an effort to rehabilitate juveniles instead of punishing them.
"It's much more difficult to get a kid into an adult court now than even two or three years ago," Adamson said.
"They don't care. They're having fun. They're doing what they're doing. They're not worried about getting caught," Gandhi said.
Those teens also crashed into several vehicles on the freeway before their own wreck. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
Like adults, it will be up to the district attorney's office to determine what crimes to charge them with.
