When riots broke out in Los Angeles in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, the police response was hamstrung by politics, according to one California sheriff.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco says the violence and destruction that erupted in Los Angeles over the weekend would never have happened in his county.
“We know how to stop these,” Bianco said in an interview with The Daily Wire.
“I’m not going to criticize other law enforcement leaders, but it was not handled correctly,” he said. “I do not believe that the leaders of law enforcement were not impacted by politics because I know they know how to end this. I know they know how to make it go away, and it was not done.”
Violent protesters have spent the past five days causing chaos in Los Angeles, assaulting law enforcement, destroying property, and setting cars on fire as they attempt to prevent ICE agents from doing their jobs and arresting criminal illegal aliens.
“I will tell you this, that would never happen in Riverside County because there would never be a mayor standing in front of a news camera blaming law enforcement for anything or encouraging people to come down and protest while riots were happening while the police chief is standing right next to her. That would never, ever happen here,” Bianco said. “This is happening in Los Angeles County and possibly other places because it’s political. It’s because of the people making the decisions.”
In 2020, Bianco was able to get Black Lives Matter riots under control quickly in Riverside, he said.
“They should have done the exact same thing this time, but instead they fell back into the same political black hole that Los Angeles always falls into, and they don’t prosecute, they don’t arrest, and they just allow this to happen,” he said.
Bianco is running as a Republican in California’s gubernatorial election next year, aiming to oust liberal Governor Gavin Newsom. He blamed Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for the riots, saying they should not go on television and “spew political rhetoric.”
During a Wednesday press conference, Bass said the riots were “provoked by the White House” and suggested Los Angeles is “part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go.”
“You know what they should be doing? Both of them should be sitting on their couch watching their TV from the safety of their own home,” Bianco said. “All they are doing is making it worse, and they’re purposely doing it.”
“They do not like law enforcement,” Bianco said. “They enjoy criminal behavior because it creates an environment they can politically take control of and act like they’re the heroes for saving us, when the reality is they created it.”
“They prevented law enforcement from doing anything, it gets completely out of hand, and then they jump up and down and say, oh, now we’re going to arrest all these bad actors and this needs to stop,” he said. “They should have done that four days ago, five days ago, and neither one of them did because they make this 100% political. They use it for a political tool, and it’s an absolute disgrace.”
“Get out of the way of their chiefs of police and their sheriff’s offices and let them maintain peace. That is what we do. We are the experts doing it,” the sheriff said.
Bianco emphasized that when rioters are allowed to film themselves destroying property and post it on social media for “likes and clicks” with no consequences, it encourages more bad actors to go to that area.
“If you are going to enable criminal activity, it’s just going to grow and grow and grow, and we watched that happen for the first three days, four days of these riots and nothing was happening. There was no arrests,” he said. “There was no consequence for any of these people.”
Often, the sheriff said, he has to send his own officers to Los Angeles when riots there go south. Bianco is already responsible for the safety of 2.4 million people in Riverside County, the 10th largest county in the country, which sits just east of Los Angeles.
“I’m not happy. I mean, I will always do it. I have to protect law enforcement. I have to help protect Los Angeles County, but we should have done this five days ago, not yesterday,” Bianco said.
Bianco also told The Daily Wire he’s heard cops on the line express frustration that their hands are tied during riots.
“The vast majority of the cops that are on the line want to end the rioting,” Bianco said. “They want to arrest the people that are throwing things at them. They want to arrest the people that are trying to hurt them, vandalize property, start fires, and do all those things.”
However, until officers get the word from leadership, they “just have to sit there and be the victims of assaults with a deadly weapon,” the sheriff said.
The solution, Bianco said, is an “overwhelming show of force from law enforcement and a zero tolerance for criminal activity, and then you can truly have a legitimate protest instead of what we have currently, which is just riots.”
“When the leaders prevent it strictly for politics, which that’s all this is, then it creates a bad environment with very, very low morale when leaders don’t stick up for their troops,” the sheriff said.
Bianco also noted that while police chiefs can be “fired at any moment if they don’t do what the politicians say,” California sheriffs are elected.
“There is not one politician that could affect how I handled my riots,” he said.
President Donald Trump deployed 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to help local law enforcement get the situation under control. The troops are being used to secure streets and perimeters in areas where ICE is carrying out enforcement actions, according to U.S. officials.
Democrats were apoplectic at the announcement that approximately 700 Marines were headed to Los Angeles, and Newsom filed an emergency motion to block what he called an “unlawful militarization” of the city.
“They know that the National Guard and the Marines will never be used against citizens. It is against the law,” Bianco said. “All of these ignorant politicians and disingenuous politicians that are trying to make the general public think that the military is being used against citizens is disgusting because it is an absolute, flat-out lie.”
“They blamed everything on the president who tried to come in and save everybody after,” he said. “They want us to forget the timeline.”
