Gov. Gavin Newsom used his final State of the State address to highlight California’s shocking crime statistics — statistics he said contradicted the president’s claims about homicides and rampages.
To put into perspective some of the numbers the governor said on Thursday:
The last time the killings were this low in Oakland, Pastor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. he had visited Joan Baez in the Santa Rita prison to commend her for her recent arrest for opposing the Vietnam draft.
Murders have been rare in San Francisco since baseball star Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio at City Hall.
And violent deaths in downtown Los Angeles have dropped to rates not seen since the Beatles played Dodgers Stadium, their biggest public show.
“We’ve seen crime go down by double digits across the state of California,” Newsom said. “We have a lot of work to do, but for those with California derangement syndrome, I’ll say it again—it’s time to review your talking points.”
The governor’s comments follow a report by The Times newspaper that shows that the murder rate in LA is close to the lowest level, mirroring that of other cities across the country.
With statistics based on data from the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, President Trump’s insistence that crime in California is out of control appears to have intensified. Recently, the president changed his message to warn of the resurgence of crime.
“We’re going to come back, maybe in a very different and stronger way, when crime starts to rise again,” Trump told Truth Social in a post announcing the end of his legal battle to keep National Guard troops in LA, Portland and Chicago. “It’s only a question of time!”
In his speech Thursday, Newsom attributed the significant drop in violence to the generous crime-fighting funding passed by the California Legislature.
“No one has walked away from public safety,” Newsom said. “We did not ignore this, we invested in it.
But experts say the truth is more complicated. Those who study the causes of crime say it may take years, if not decades, to disentangle the causes of the epidemic-era surge in violence and the sharp decline that has followed.
Trump trampled lawlessness on the streets of California during the 2024 presidential campaign and his first year back in the White House. He rarely mentions Newsom without invoking crime and chaos, and constantly threatens to put armed soldiers on the streets.
At the same time, the Trump administration has cut hundreds of millions in federal funding from school safety grants, youth guidance programs and gang intervention networks that experts say contribute to improving public safety.
Supporters worry that those cuts could threaten LA’s effectiveness in other disaster response programs aimed at reducing the city’s reliance on law enforcement. In recent years, a number of groups have sprung up to help people dealing with homelessness, drug addiction and symptoms of untreated mental disorders – all of which can increase the perception of crime, even if the actual rates decrease.
The coming cuts in government spending could derail efforts to expand these programs, some warned.
“I just don’t know how we can continue to move in the right direction without continuing to invest in things that work,” said Thurman Barnes, assistant director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.
According to data published by the Major Cities Chiefs Assn., homicides decreased in San Francisco, San José, Sacramento and Oakland. Other violent crimes, including rape, aggravated assault and robbery, also declined, except for a few exceptions.
Property crime is also down, the governor said Thursday.
Traffic congestion and perceptions of widespread lawlessness helped topple progressive administrations across California in 2024 and earned Trump an unexpected windfall in some of the state’s greenest cities.
That concern is “at the core” of California voters’ frustration, Newsom acknowledged Thursday.
“We are seeing results, making the roads safer for everyone,” the governor said.
Jeff Asher, a leading expert in the field of crime, said it’s hard to say whether the perception gap is closing “because we’re not tracking it very well.”
But he pointed to a Gallup poll late last year that showed less than half of Americans believe crime has increased — the first time in two decades that number has fallen below 50%.
“This epidemic has broken us in many ways, and we are starting to feel sad,” she said.
Newsom also pointed to a significant decrease in the number of people living on the streets.
Unsheltered homelessness is down 9% in California and more than 10% in Los Angeles, the governor announced — data he wanted to contrast with an 18% increase in homelessness nationwide.
Seeing camps and people suffering from mental illness on the streets drives perceptions of lawlessness and danger, research shows. Taking them down calms that fear.
But California’s overall homeless population remains stubbornly high, with only modest declines. Government funding cuts could hamper efforts to reduce those numbers, experts warn.
Instead of digging into the seriousness of crime, Newsom sought to portray the president himself as a driver of lawlessness, calling the first year of his second term “a festival of chaos.”
“We are facing an attack on our values unlike anything I have ever seen in my life,” said the governor. “Undercover police. Businesses attacked. Windows smashed, citizens arrested, citizens shot. Masked men abducting people in broad daylight, people disappearing. Using American cities as training grounds for the United States military.”
“It’s time for the president of the United States to do his job, not turn his back on the American people who live in the great state of California,” Newsom said.
