🔥 System Failure: The Sheriff With California’s Worst Crime-Solving Record Is Running for Governor

Chad Bianco, former contributor to the far-right Oath Keepers and now Riverside County Sheriff, declared in the announcement of his 2026 candidacy for governor: ​“Californians want our streets cleaned up, tent encampments gone and public safety restored…We need a revolution of competence in government” (Horseman, 2025). Criminal justice reform, particularly Proposition 47, he says, ​“was everything that is bad about public safety right now, directly contributing to the increase in homelessness, mental health and drug addiction” (Fox News, 2024). Bianco has repeatedly vowed that as governor, he will ​“make crime illegal again” and ​“keep these criminals off of our streets and out of our neighborhoods” (Javid, 2025). Yet Bianco’s record shows a picture very different from his tough talk.

Riverside Sheriff fails to solve crimes and oversees high jail death rate.

During Bianco’s first six years in office (2019 – 2024), Riverside sheriff’s deputies cleared an average of just 9.2% of reported crimes — less than half the state average and last among the 57 sheriffs with arrest authority (Figure 1). Meanwhile, the county saw rising violent crime in areas patrolled by Bianco’s department and experienced 17% of California’s jail homicides despite housing only 6% of the state’s jailed population (CADOJ, 2025). In 2022 alone, 18 people died in Riverside custody — the highest number in 15 years — with at least five deaths attributed to fentanyl overdoses and others linked to inadequate emergency response (BSCC, 2023). That same year, a deputy was arrested on suspicion of smuggling narcotics into a county jail, underscoring the department’s failure to control contraband (CADOJ, 2025).

Figure 1. Percent of Part I violent and property offenses reported to California sheriff’s departments that are cleared (solved) by an arrest, 2019 – 2024