In a further blow to the prestige of both the City of San Bernardino and San Bernardino County, California Governor Gavin Newsom has arranged to have the California Highway Patrol step in to assist the City of San Bernardino with its burgeoning homicide rate, which is over three times the statewide average, and general level of crime that is raging beyond the control of the police department at nearly double the statewide average.
San Bernardino, which filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2012 and then stiffed its vendors and creditors to the tune of more than $200 million while it lingered in an insolvent state for five years thereafter, has appalling levels of poverty among its 224,000 population and a violent crime level that is twice that of the state average, along with sharply elevated incidences of theft and other property crime.
Governor Newsom on Monday, October 28 declared San Bernardino to be the most recent “hot spot” upon which state officials will concentrate resources in an effort to combat crime and enhance public safety.
“We are sending additional CHP support to help local law enforcement aggressively suppress criminal activity and provide this community with a new level of safety and accountability,” Newsom said.
The California Highway Patrol’s operation will add special law enforcement units on the ground and in the air — targeting sideshow activities and stolen vehicles, according to the governor’s office. The Highway Patrol is also providing San Bernardino Police Department with additional investigative support to disrupt organized criminal activity and violent street gangs, get illegal guns off the street and help prevent gun violence.
“Our partnership with the city of San Bernardino strengthens our efforts to enhance public safety,” said California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee. “This collaboration allows us to share resources, intelligence, and expertise, enhancing our ability to reduce crime and create a safer environment for all members of the community.”

Car theft in San Bernardino continues as a nearly unprecedented pace. In addition, San Bernardino has been plagued with street takeovers and sideshows.
Sideshows and/or street takeovers involve impromptu illegal gatherings of motorists, in most cases teenagers and ones in their twenties, who engage in automotive stunts such as skidding, doing donuts and ghostriding, often in vacant lots, parking lots and street intersections. Donuts consist of a maneuver which involves rotating the rear or front of the vehicle around the opposite set of wheels in a continuous motion to effectuate a circular skid-mark pattern. Ghostriding takes place when a driver opens the passenger side door, climbs out, sometimes onto the hood or onto the frame of the open door, while the car continues in motion. Sideshows often devolve into fights among the participants, and occasionally devolve into shootings.
The most recently available crime statistics extrapolated from figures provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and the San Bernardino Police Department, within the 62.45-square mile confines of San Bernardino, there were 1,059 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2023, almost double the California state average of 511 crimes per 100,000 residents. Over the same 12-month period in 2023, residents ran one of the highest risks among all of California’s residents of being murdered. For the year, there were 16.2 homicides per 100,000 residents. Overall in California, the risk of being killed by another person wa less than a third of that, at 4.8 homicides per 100,000 residents.
And although those numbers are dire, they mark a notable improvement from 2022.
If there is a silver lining to those statistics, it is that last year they were not as bad as they had been the year before that, 2022.
While there were 36 murders in 2023, there were twice that, 72, in 2022. There were 675 robberies in 2022 and 667 in 2023; 1781aggravated assaults in 2022 and 667 in 2023; 678 assaults with a firearm in in 2022 and 491 in 2023; and 2,640 vilent crimes overall in San Bernardino compared to 2,352 in 2023. The only area in which violent crime was up in 2023 over 2022 was the slight rise in rapes from 112 in 2022 to 116 in 2023.
Despite that improvement, if it can be cataloged as such, San Bernardino remains a dangerous place.
San Bernardino has also had a serious problem with ghost guns, illegal firearms from which the serial numbers have been removed. In 2023, a record 4,700 ghost guns were seized by authorities in San Bernardino County, more than any other county in California per capita.
Though officials talked about a “surge” in the number of Highway Patrol officers that will be deployed to San Bernardino, they were not willing to give precise numbers or say into which zones they weill be inserted.
San Bernardino has struggled with crime for quite some time. In 2022, it lured then-Upland Police Chief Darren Goodman to take on the police chief position.
It did so by offering him the position and then getting in a bidding war with Upland for his services. Upland had been paying him a salary of $231,771.97 in addition to to $159,332.90 in perks and benefits for a total annual compensation of $391,104.87. San Bernardino is now paying him $337,513.49 in salary and $192,085.52 in perks and benefits for a total annual compensation of $529,599.01.
The department under Goodman aggressified its enforcement, almost immediately upon Goodman taking the helm. That approach was less than fully successful and has entailed expense and difficulty for the city. On July 16, 2022, 31 days after Goodman officially began as police chief, during a confrontation with two of the department’s officers, Rob Marquise Adams, who was apparently on the prowl in the back parking lot shared by several commercial establishments, including an illegal online gambling business located in the 400 block of West Highland Street where illegal activity proliferates, was shot and killed. A lawsuit ensued, which the city settled for $4 million less than two years later.
San Bernardino is the seat of San Bernardino County, which has undergone substantial embarrassment in recent months and weeks over is dysfunctionality and inability to fend for itself. In 2022, one of the county’s leading citizens and a primary financial baker of the county’s politicians, prompted public officials to sponsor a voter initiative to have San Bernardino County secede from California, largely on Burum’s assertion that Democratic politicians in Sacramento were withholding funding from the county government and the county’s cities because San Bernardino County is one of the last bastions of Republicanism in the state. That initiative proved successful, and the county’s voters authorized the county’s political leadership to initiate the county’s withdrawal from California.
Before doing so, however, county officials, at a cost of $192,000 hired a consulting firm to analyze the political prospect and actual financial considerations relating to San Bernardino County becoming the 51st state of the union. That study revealed that San Bernardino County and its residents and businesses, rather than pulling more than their own weight financially within the context of California’s taxation regime, actually contributes less toward the funding of state, county and local governance than to the remainder of the state’s counties, cities and citizens as a whole and on average. According to those analysts, San Bernardino County is not fiscally independent and is actually freeloading on a handful of far more financially successful counties and areas throughout California.
The City of San Bernardino is, within the context of San Bernardino County, one of the, or actually the, most dysfunctional jurisdiction within it.
San Bernardino Mayor Helen Chan tried to make the best of being singled out by the governor for special assistance with redressing its intractable problems with its criminal element.
San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran said she was grateful for the support of the CHP to help the city continue decreasing crime rates and apprehending criminal enterprises targeting neighborhoods and businesses. She sought to put the best face she could on the consideration that the government she heads is not strong enough to stand on its own and deal with the issues that face it.
“We are grateful to Governor Newsom for providing additional support from the California Highway Patrol to the City of San Bernardino,” Tran said. “This year, our City Police Department’s efforts have led to a 13% reduction in violent crime, and the extra support will strengthen public safety in our community. With this new state and local collaboration in San Bernardino, we can continue to impact criminal enterprises targeting our neighborhoods and businesses.”