A scathing report released this week revealed that the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department cleared only 9.2% of its violent crimes and property offenses during Sheriff Chad Bianco’s first six years in office, ranking the agency’s clearance rate last among California’s 57 counties.
In the same six-year period from 2019 through 2024, all other sheriff’s departments statewide had clearance rates in the double digits.
In Southern California, for example, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department had a 26.1% clearance rate for Part 1 crimes, while Orange County had a 19.5% rate and Los Angeles County a 21.6% rate, according to the report released Thursday, Aug. 21, by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a leftist San Francisco-based nonprofit, founded in 1985, that does policy research and advocates for criminal justice reforms to reduce incarceration.
Under the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Part 1 crimes are violent crimes and property offenses, including murder, robbery, rape, assault, burglary, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft.
The report, which drew its hard data mainly from the California Department of Justice, the State Controller’s Office, and the Department of Finance, took sharp aim at Bianco’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, claiming it belied the crime picture in his own agency’s jurisdiction, especially in the county’s rural areas.
Tough-on-crime rhetoric
When Bianco announced in February that he would be running for governor in 2026, he blamed Democratic leaders for the state’s decline, citing rampant crime, increasing homelessness, fentanyl deaths and catastrophic fires, among other things. He vowed to clean up California’s streets and restore public safety.
Yet Bianco has been unable to achieve the same results in his own county, at least in clearing Part 1 crimes, according to the report.
“Given Bianco’s abysmal, worst-in-the-state record at protecting Riverside residents from crime, why would voters trust him with the governorship?” the report stated.
‘Political hit piece’
Bianco on Friday called the report a “political hit piece from a disingenuous source and contributors.”
“The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office is one of the most efficient, and successful agencies in the country at protecting our communities, and Riverside County residents know it,” Bianco said.
Bianco called the report’s data “fatally flawed,” and claimed that department tried pointing that out to the state DOJ, but it fell on deaf ears.
“The way they specifically asked questions did not allow us to report stats correctly or completely,” Bianco said. “They were intentionally trying to obtain data in a way that would paint a negative picture.”
A key flaw in the data, Bianco said, was that many suspects are arrested for and charged with crimes that may not reflect the true nature of the crime, which can skew the crime clearance data. For example, if a person reports their vehicle stolen, and the perpetrator is later arrested driving the vehicle but denies stealing it, they can be charged with and convicted of possession of stolen property. That crime would be reported as cleared, but the initial auto theft report would remain uncleared because it couldn’t be proved who stole it.
Bianco said when his department tried pointing out these discrepancies and provide the complete picture and evidence, the DOJ refused to accept it.
“The DOJ did not care about reporting factual data. They cherry-picked data they wanted,” Bianco said.
Budget resources
Bianco, according to the report, cannot plead a lack of resources for its low clearance rate. The study revealed his department’s budget per county resident was 24% above the average of the state’s 56 other sheriffs departments.
“Yet the Riverside Sheriff’s Department ranks sixth worst among 57 sheriffs in solving violent crime, fifth worst in solving property crimes, and last in solving all major Part 1 offenses,” according to the report. “In contrast, the San Bernardino Sheriff next door cleared nearly three times the proportion of Part 1 offenses in 2019 — 24, including 58.6% of violent (crimes) and 10.1% of property crimes.”
Riverside County’s clearance rate was less than half the average of the state’s 56 other sheriff’s departments, according to the report.
Additionally, the report noted that violent crime increased 18% in the county’s rural pockets patrolled by sheriff’s deputies during Bianco’s first six years in office — much faster than the 2% rise in the rest of the county.
Jail deaths
Bianco, a Republican, has taken a beating from civil rights groups, political opponents, civil rights lawyers and local residents in recent years amid controversy surrounding a spike in inmate deaths in Riverside County jails in 2022 and his outspokenness against Democrats, many whom he considers anti-law enforcement. His department has been slapped with more than a dozen wrongful death lawsuits since 2022.
Bianco attributed the spike in inmate deaths in 2022 to a proliferation of fatal fentanyl overdoses that mirrored national trends in and an increase of mentally ill inmates flooding the jails, which contributed to a higher number of suicides and accidental deaths. He said jail deaths in Riverside County have significantly declined in the past three years.
“The decrease from then until now is 300% So why are we still talking about only the 2022 numbers?” Bianco said.
Yet despite Bianco’s critics, he is supported by elected officials locally and statewide, and enjoys even stronger support from other sheriffs. He has received endorsements from 41 of the state’s 58 sheriff’s — more than 85% — including San Francisco’s Democratic sheriff, Paul Miyamoto.
Not a partisan attack
Mike Males, senior research fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice and the author of the report, said in a telephone interview that the study was not intended to be a partisan attack on Bianco. He said his organization also has been critical of some of the state’s Democratic governors over the past 20 years, particularly pertaining to violence, abuse and neglect in the state’s youth correctional system and how California prioritizes prison spending while cutting funding for education.
He said his organization’s focus is more about holding a mirror up to conservative “hardliners” like Bianco, holding them accountable for serious crime problems in their jurisdictions the same way liberal officials are criticized.
“Too often, we think tough talk and implementing harsher policies will reduce crime, and that’s just not the case,” Males said. “Hardline crime policies often accompany worse crime rates and less efficient policing than moderate and liberal policies. It’s the results that matter.”
Bianco said he was anticipating the political hit, and expects more to come in the next year during his gubernatorial campaign. But he has faith that more Californians are seeing the real problems.
“Especially in an election year with public safety a priority, Californians are sick of being lied to by activist groups and government organizations,” Bianco said. “This obviously biased (report) is a joke, and the organization another example of the abuse of our justice systems by an anti-public safety liberal agenda.”
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