Matthew Seedorf on LA's Homeless Crisis

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Speaker 1: And we continue at two oh five in the afternoon on the John Phillips Show, Mister Randy Wiggs in Culver City, John.

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Speaker 2: Residents of the Soma neighborhood in San Francisco are asking for something they call geographic equity. They don't like that all the homeless are concentrated in their neighborhood, and so they want them spread out among all the good neighborhoods.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Hey, it worked with the illegal aliens, didn't it. As soon as the governor of Texas started putting them on the buses. That's when they got the nation's attention.

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Speaker 2: So watch out, sunset, watch out the Golden Gate Park area. Some is going to be sending the homeless to you.

00:00:39
Speaker 1: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number? What eight hundred two two two five two two two. I have the Angel game on in the background because I'm curious to see if there's going to be another brawl today. And I don't know how the Umpires Union ever allowed Major League Baseball to bring AI in to determine whether or not a called ball or strike was the correct call or not, or if you call someone safer out, if that was correct because they get overturned all day long. Imagine if you can do that in any other aspect of life. You bring some contractor over at your house. You want to know how much it's going to cost to remodel your kitchen. They go, it's going to be one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and take four months. And you go, hmm, that doesn't seem right. Let's go to the AI. Oh it's going to take two years and cost triple that, and you're gonna have to see them and not be able to collect.

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Speaker 2: April must be the most exciting time for an Angel fan because you haven't been disappointed yet.

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Speaker 1: Oh, give it time. Remember when mo Vaughn fell down a flight of stairs. That was interesting? All right, It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He is a reporter for Fox eleven. You can follow him on x at Matt Seedorf. Matthew Seedorf, welcome, Hey.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me a episode. Guys, appreciate the time and have me on.

00:02:12
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for coming on. And you do fantastic work over at Fox eleven. And your work has not only gained a lot of attention locally here in the state of California, but it has gone all over the place because you and your camera crews have been canvassing the city of Los Angeles trying to find out just exactly where homeless people are. We know they're in the encampments, we know, you know, if they're under an overpass or whatever the case may be. But you've been finding some very unique places where homeless people are now calling home.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I appreciate viewers reaching out and sending me tips, especially on social media and Instagram. But yeah, just about two weeks ago, we found a woman that was living in a storm drain and the conditions there were so unimaginable. I mean, think of the worst smell you've ever experienced. And I was gritting my teeth the whole time, just trying to keep it together together, and a one going to it hits you in the back of the throat and had to step away. But the fact that someone was living in that condition is just unspeakable. And my photographer that day, his name is He's been in this market for decades and he was so angry that it's gotten to this point where there's people living in the sewer system that he was shaken up, and I've never seen him like that, And and that says a lot because of all the things that we've seen experience, and and since since that day, we've been in contact with that woman's family and she's said, and they say, her sister or your mom, that they've been trying to get help for this woman, and through the courts and everything mental health, she doesn't want it and she's not getting the help. And unfortunately, that's just something that we're seeing, not just from this one instance, but just across the city, these people that are just refusing any sort of help and sort of treatment.

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Speaker 1: When you would go down into the sewer, and you mentioned how foul the smell was. We've all been on airplanes when there's been a foul loader, if someone throws up, or they're eating some food that's disgusting, whatever the case may be. You're in a confined space and there's a really unpleasant odor that you can't escape from. I would imagine that if you were in that environment for any length of time, at a certain point, you'd start to get headaches, you'd start to feel ill yourself. Did you, guys ever get sick?

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Speaker 3: I was very close honestly, like I had to step away, and I remember they declared it a hot zone. So the city sanitation came in that evening and basically we weren't allowed within one hundred yards. This is twenty four hours later, and you're thinking there was someone riving in there, and now it's so bad that we have to be one hundred yards back. But there using these hoses and vacuums and sucking it all up, and there was this cloud of debris in the air, and everyone was wearing a ninety five mask, and I'm just thinking, Wow, it's unbelievable that someone was so desperate or so mentally ill, or you know, on so much substance abuse issues that they are forced in the living in the storm drain and they think that it's okay.

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Speaker 1: And do you think about how that would play in any other aspect of life, where I'm sure you could find any number of people who would say, if you are a smoker and you have your kids in the car and you smoke and the windows are rolled up, that's child abuse because you're subjecting your kids and everyone in the car to cigarette smoke without any ability for the smoke to escape the car. And I would imagine that this is that on steroids.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean it impacts them and everyone around them. So I mean this is not this is just one homeless and Cammon and there were multiple people living in this particular sewer, but the surrounding community there were people living in tents and RVs and boats and uh, you know, residents had felt like this area is bad, and they felt like they'd voiced their concerns to council members in the city three one one, and nothing was being done, and it just felt like they had given up.

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Speaker 1: It seems like that, it seems like when we listen to your reports and we hear you talk to the man on the street, we hear you talk to the people who live in the neighborhood, that there's a defeat. Is sort of attitude where it's like, Okay, we've gone through the chain of command, we've done everything that we're supposed to do. We call three one one, we call our council member, we talk about it with our neighbors, everything that you're supposed to do. If you have some kind of human suffering going on in your neighborhood and it's like they just keep hitting brickwall after brickwall after brickwall, and it's the local news or nothing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so sad because we'll speak with neighbors and they'll be like, well South LA and like that's their excuse for it being bad, or yeah it's MacArthur Park, or yeah it skid row. Why are we accepting this as the normal? I know that it's been going on for some time, and sometimes I'll get messages of like, why is this news? This is something that's been an issue for a long time. Well, why are we accepting it as? You know? This is not okay? So why are we allowing this to just continue?

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Speaker 1: You mentioned that you investigated the story of the woman who lived in the sewer. You talk to people who knew her, you talk to family members. What do we know about her as an individual in terms of how she got there?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Jamimil Robinson is her name. She's a mother with three kids. Her sister kind of said that she got into some relationships with some bad people and then that led to drug abuse and since then, I guess she ended up living on the streets. And they've tried getting her help and resources, and I guess through the courts it's been struck down so far, and they've actually been going out there looking for her, still trying to find her since that last report, and they've been unable to. But I think it speaks to the issue of mental health and something that we see across the city is a lot of homeless people refusing services when they're offered to them. So, you know, if a lot of if the majority of the homeless in la are saying no to help, then how do you get those people help? If the current system is not allowing to just you know, force treatment.

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Speaker 1: Well, it seems like an indictment of the system because you have people in the community who recognize what was going on and they tried to do what they could do to find some degree of help for this person. You have the family members of the individual who went to the courts and did what they were supposed to do, and they had door after doors slammed in their face and they weren't able to help the person. And I guess the courts in the state of California and the city and the county and everyone involved said, well, it's up to the person to reach out for help, or it's up to the person to do something proactive. But the problem is when you're dealing with mental illness, it's not like you go to a doctor and the doctor goes, Okay, you have a broken leg and we need to put you in a cast, and then we can write on un or do whatever, and then you can have the cast take it off after a certain period of time. With mental illness, you're sick and you don't know it. You think you're fine, and you think that the world around you they have the problem. And if there's no mechanism to treat someone who doesn't even know that they have a sickness, then they're just going to end up in the storm drain, or they're going to end up in the RV, or they're going to end up in the encampment. And that is the destiny that the state is giving to them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like there needs to be a better way. Whenever one around you is saying that you have a problem, you have an issue, they're telling doctors and this and that, and you're saying you don't and then you're living in the sewer. I mean, I think most people would argue that that's a clear sign of mental health, is if you're living in a sewer and accepting that. We did another report last week along the La River where we're exposing homeless and camics and issues with drugs and gang activity in that area, and then three days later we're back out there covering someone that died from an overdose. So I think, you know, we keep ignoring these problems, and every day across La six or seven people are dying relating to homelessness.

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Speaker 1: Well, and that's so dangerous in particular to allow homeless people to live in a river, because if there's a storm and you have a lot of water, you have a lot of rain that comes down into those rivers and people are there, they're going to get washed away and that's the end of them. That is extremely dangerous.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know what's interesting is just we cover that every time it rains, right, there's always someone that gets washed away and the city fire departments trying to save them. But when we were out there covering that original story on Monday along the La River, there was one resident that was mad that we were out there and mad that we were talking about the homeless, and when we brought it up, talk away and didn't want to be part of the story. So it just seems like there's this group of people that believe the most humane thing to do is just let the homeless be homeless and let them live in these horrible conditions.

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Speaker 1: Well, and it's also an environmental disaster. I have a cousin who lives not far from the sand and Seal Beach, and the San Gabriel River ends at seal Beach. So if there's homeless people and encampments that are in the river, then the needles and the trash and the drugs, the chemicals, the whatever is there that you don't want on your beaches ends up on the sand, It ends up in the sand, or it ends up in the water on its seal beach, and the residents there have to get out there hazmat suits on the weekends after it rains, and they have to clean up the beach otherwise it's going to look like a disaster zone.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, and the stuff that's spilling into the waterways across southern California anywhere near these encampments, We're talking human waste and drugs and all that stuff. And it makes you realize why you can't swim and why they post all these advisories within forty eight hours, seventy two hours of rainstorms. But it's also I mean it's extending that. So sometimes it's not even around rainstorms, you still can't swim, especially near Santa Monica Pier.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure that once you started putting these reports on the air, your email exploded from different people all over the region saying, well, it's not just the sewer, it's not just the river. They're here, here, here, and here. And of course there's only a certain number of hours in the day. You can't investigate every single tip that you get. But I would imagine that you've got a bunch of.

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Speaker 3: Them, the emails, the dms, they are not stopping, and I appreciate them. I look at all of them and it keeps me going and finding all these things. But yeah, it's overwhelming the amount of people that have reached out with these issues, and it makes you realize how big of a problem this is across the region. I mean, this is something that you know, some say is improving, but a lot of people would say that it doesn't feel like that. So I think the more that we can show people what's going on, the better.

00:13:34
Speaker 1: What are your colleagues. Gigi Gressiett did a story about a man who was living at a bus stop in Los Angeles, and it was a similar sort of story about the person having mental health problems and really creating a problem in the neighborhood. They called the city. They want one of the city or the county to do something about it and provide help and services to this individual, and they showed up and instead of being thankful, their reaction was, well, we're not going to do anything about any of this until you leave, and in lesson, until you leave, there will be no services provided to this person. And her attitude was, well, we're reporting on a story, this is news. We're gonna be here, and they just laughed. And it seems like the attitude among those who have the ability to do something about this is that they're more mad at the news media for talking about it than they are for them allowing this to happen in the first place.

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Speaker 3: There's so much wrong with what happened with that story that makes me so inferiated showing up there and then not willing to help someone that clearly needs it because cameras are recording. I mean, if anything that should make you want to help this person more, but I don't understand how you can ignore this person that clearly needs help posing himself at a bus stop just because camera crews are there. I think I've already reached out and submitted a freedom of information after request into the services that they're providing, see if we can get some numbers. But clearly it seems like there's some sort of issue there, and I'm hopeful that that person did get help, but I think it's infuriating it and I wish that we could have shown that person receiving treatment that day.

00:15:28
Speaker 1: That seems to be their attitude, not just for homeless people living in strange places, but it also seems to be the attitude about crime that if we just didn't report on it, people would think that it wasn't going on around us. I remember we played sound from one MTA meeting where they were going to address all of the crime stories that were being reported on the local news about unsafe, dangerous situations happening on the MTA, and their answer was, well, if we just floed the news with positive stories about the MTA, it'll give it the appearance of safety. And it's like, well, that's not what our job is. Our job isn't to go to the airport and report on the plane that landed on time. Our job is to report on something that happened that shouldn't happen, because that is news. And if the people that live in the community that we service don't understand what's going on around them, then we're not providing the service that we're meant to provide.

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Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, I mean, we're doing our job and we're showing the issues and the problems that are taking place, or exposing it if you want to call it that. But you know, it's unfortunate that it takes that There's people that have been trying to call three one one or report issues with crime and they feel like nothing's being done. So I mean, that's when it's our job as reporters to show it and you know, hopefully get these people assistance and help that they need. But yeah, it's unfortunate that it comes down to us needing to step in for that to happen.

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Speaker 1: And you know what, if the chain of command would produce the results that people were happy with, then residents wouldn't have to go to the news media because they felt they had no other alternative exactly.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we're we are their last dish effort. You've got to imagine a lot of people don't want to go on camera. Even some of the tips that I get. It's people that you know, just give me addresses and show me pictures of what's going on. They don't want to be on the news, but they feel like it's important to get this issue out there. And you think about what they've gone through to this point, they feel like they need to reach out to the media and show this because they feel like no one's answering, no one's listening to their concerns. So this is their only chance to see if they can get it fixed.

00:17:45
Speaker 1: Matthew Seedorf, you're doing excellent work over at kt TV Fox eleven. You can follow him on x at Matt Seedorf. Matthew Seedorf, thanks so much for stopping by.

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Speaker 3: Thank you so much, love the show, appreciate it.

00:17:58
Speaker 1: Thank you. Eight hundred two two two five two two. Let's go to David Whittier.

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Speaker 5: Dave, Hello, yeah, John, remember back around twenty fifteen, Oh, I went and spoke with some of these homeless folks down there at the Santa Anna River bed I'm a homeless outreach person. Back then in twenty fifteen, there was the article that came out that all these the drug addicts there, they were pushing up drugs, needles, drugs so much that dads of them ended up washing up on the entrance of the Santa Ana river bed at Newport Beach. On the beach. This is hideous. I mean, it just goes on and on. But we've got to have a critical mass turnaround. And I've spoken to so many of the homeless. I talked to them about their situation, ask them why they don't have a home, You need a home? Why are you here? And I learned from them The thing is is we've got to raise enough money to plaster these democrats out of office with negative campaignings. There has to be a turnaround. You we got to strategize, we have to raise the money and just we got to get them out. Because it's on and on, and that's to do with social justice. They do not believe in enforcing crime because they don't want illegal aliens arrested. And this is the effect. It's it's massive effect because of that one thing. Mainly and overall, they just don't want to too Bate Brown people. It's it's just ridiculous and we're suffering.

00:19:32
Speaker 1: All right. Thank you for the call, Sir eight hundred two two two five two two two East cellphone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. And Randy. Now that we're about well twenty six minutes away from the show being over, if you want to continue listening to us after we sign off, that's easy to do.

00:20:00
Speaker 2: I means you're twenty five minutes away from loading up that iPhone with a whole bunch of podcasts, and sure you can be listening to all those national shows talking about Iran, or you can ignore all that nonsense and listen to us yacking about local politics. Search for The John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts, whether it be the Apple podcast app, iHeart, Spotify, search for the John Phillips Show, hit subscribe you could download all the episodes.

00:20:28
Speaker 1: Let's go to Travis in Oakland.

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Speaker 6: Travis, Hello, Hi John, you were speaking with your last guest about the media, not reporting on crime. Well, that's what's been going on in Oakland lately. Last year, shortly after Barbara Lee was inaugurated, councilwoman Carol Fife called a special meeting at City Hall where she called the media and different people in Oakland into the meeting. Why I got worried about this meeting and I headed down there, and what she proceeded to do was instruct the media that the way they're going to tackle crime is to have the media stop reporting on it. She literally said this. Then other members of the city council said this. Then she had supposedly expert witnesses or some sort of experts speak about this, how this could stop crime. It doesn't stop crime, It just stops the awareness of crime. You're going to stop crime a lot easier when you're aware of what's going on. Barbara Lee was actually there. She didn't say much. She nodded her head in agreement, but none of the members of the media that were present gave any sort of pushback. They just sort of shook their heads yes and went along with it. Now, there are people in Oakland that do report on crime. There are a couple decent reporters, but crime is still raging in Oakland. It's still a problem. They're just covering it up.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: And I can assure you this, I don't care what politicians at any city hall in the state of California have to say. If crime is a problem in California, we will continue to report on it. Part of the reason that we have the California Crime Blodder, and we do it so often, is because outrageous crimes that should not be occurring happen here on a daily basis, and instead of dealing with it in any sort of rational way, our fearless electeds just throw up their hands and go, well, what are you going to do? Well, if they're not going to stop it, we're going to embarrass them every single day that we're on the air. And if they don't like it, tough cookies. Thanks for the call, sir. Let's go to Ross and Gouatville Ross. Hello, Hey, John, how you doing good?

00:22:51
Speaker 7: Goo?

00:22:51
Speaker 4: Right?

00:22:51
Speaker 7: So I work for the wonderful state of California and our wonderful politicians here, and I'm a carpenter up at the at Thevio Veterans Home and I live here as well, So I work here. I'm on call all the time. You know, it's a great place to work. I love our vets, you know, I want to take care of our guys and our wonderful crooked politicians talk about all these criminals have taken my rent and said, oh, you're you're getting you're only paying fourteen to fifty a months. Well, we're gonna we're going to change that to where you're going to be paying twenty six to fifty a months. But we're gonna we're gonna do it through a fringe benefit and you're going to be taxed on this. So then they went into my W two's and changed my W twos for the past three years, avoiding the least that I have with them.

00:23:45
Speaker 1: Wow, don't know the details of your particular situation, but it sounds like you're getting a raw deal. Thank you for the call. Here all right, Randy, we have an update on the hospice fraud that was uncovered by CBS News.

00:24:00
Speaker 2: CBS News continues to investigate. By the way, this investigation has been going on for years, So this isn't just something that the new heads at CBS we're looking into. They are trying to now track down some of the doctors are on the names of all these documents, because typically a doctor that works with hospice patients maybe sees one hundred in a year. There's one guy who saw three thousand in a year.

00:24:27
Speaker 1: Oh my.

00:24:29
Speaker 2: For more on this, we go to CBS News.

00:24:32
Speaker 4: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced today a widening federal crackdown on fraud, covering multiple areas including healthcare, tax and corporate fraud, and amid an ongoing CBS News investigation into hospice fraud. Blanche called the problem the purest form of stealing from the American people's pockets. Here's what happened when CBS News correspondent Adam Yamaguchi tracked down a doctor who's practice raised multiple red flags.

00:24:59
Speaker 8: The state of California says that if a doctor is involved with any more than like even just a few hospices, it is a sign of potential fraud.

00:25:08
Speaker 2: So then why isn't the state of California shutting it down.

00:25:13
Speaker 1: You would think that the state of California, which is broke, would be all over waste, fraud and abuse so they could have more money to give to the union.

00:25:22
Speaker 2: And you see the weird defenses that are coming out of Gavin's bitchy press office today where hey, they were defauding federal Medicare, not state medical dollars, So go after the Feds like it's still operating illegally in the state of California, and they got a business license from Shirley Weber.

00:25:41
Speaker 1: And this is another case where they were angrier at the news media for reporting on it than than at the people that were stealing the money.

00:25:49
Speaker 8: It is a sign of potential fraud at the heart of the industry. Are doctors trusted to approve care? But one stands out. His name appeared on claims from one hundred and twenty six hospices.

00:26:02
Speaker 1: One hundred and twenty six.

00:26:05
Speaker 2: And yes, the federal government should also be cracking down on this, and they haven't for decades.

00:26:11
Speaker 8: And he had sixty percent more in Medicare reimbursements than the next closest doctor in twenty twenty four, the last full year of available data, doctor Rejiev Bouva. We wanted to ask doctor Buva how we managed to work for so many different providers.

00:26:25
Speaker 1: So he's just that good of a doctor. Oh yeah, he can be at all places at all times.

00:26:30
Speaker 2: In fact, he's such a good hospice doctor that most of his patients never died.

00:26:39
Speaker 8: So we followed a trail of hospice offices across the LA base and linked to his name seventy one million dollars in Medicare claims in twenty twenty four.

00:26:48
Speaker 2: We inderstand all attached to this one doctor.

00:26:53
Speaker 1: And you know what's funny. At a certain point, when this guy decided, Okay, the money's there for the taking, no one's minding the store. Why did I just stick my hand into the till instead of saying, how about a few shekels here or a few shekels there, No, let's just go for the gold. Let's go for seventy one million dollars.

00:27:15
Speaker 2: Well, I got to imagine that this guy, or the people that are pretending to be this guy, have been doing this for a very very, very long time, and California is not mining the store, and up until just now, the federal government wasn't mining the store. We should all be on the same page, though, about wanting to root this out, and Gavin blaming the federal government for this isn't a very good look.

00:27:37
Speaker 1: No, it's an awful look because he allowed this to go on for years and years and years while he was governor.

00:27:45
Speaker 8: We understand that doctor Rajiv Bouva is a medical director here. We're just trying to get some information about it. He's not was he at some point?

00:27:54
Speaker 7: Yes?

00:27:54
Speaker 8: But you're telling me he no longer is associated with you. Guys, No, was he?

00:27:59
Speaker 2: Do you hear that the person he's at this hospice office asking to see this doctor. Oh, that doctor doesn't work here. And then somebody inside says, close the door, close the door, close the door.

00:28:16
Speaker 1: They know the jig is up.

00:28:17
Speaker 8: But you're telling me he no longer is associated with you. Guys, was here at some point?

00:28:26
Speaker 1: I love the totally disingenuous thank you. We It almost sounds like Barbara Ferrara.

00:28:33
Speaker 2: Well, let's do a little comparison here, speaking of fake doctors.

00:28:37
Speaker 8: Thank you, was here at some point?

00:28:42
Speaker 1: Thank you.

00:28:46
Speaker 8: In California, a hospice doctor cares for an average of one hundred and forty patients in a year. In twenty twenty four, claims with Boova's name were submitted for nearly twenty eight hundred terminally ill patients fraud.

00:29:01
Speaker 1: How does that not trip an algorithm in a computer system?

00:29:05
Speaker 2: Nobody's paying attention.

00:29:08
Speaker 1: There's no reason to think that that's legit.

00:29:10
Speaker 2: Even the Attorney General's office that's supposed to be cracking down on something like this, they're not paying attention.

00:29:18
Speaker 9: There's no reason to think that that's legitimate.

00:29:20
Speaker 8: Doctor Christina Newport, a hospice physician of eighteen years, says, there are several reasons why one doctor could be linked to so many patients. One of those reasons identity theft.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: They you know, would have us.

00:29:32
Speaker 2: So you have a whole bunch of other criminal organizations using the name and social security number of this one doctor to bill on his behalf, but the money goes to them. That's also very possible, that is true. I mean, heck, we know during the COVID lockdowns that people were using Scott Peterson's social Security number to get edd checks mailed out to him at their address among other prisoners.

00:29:58
Speaker 8: They, you know, would have a super human schedule to do that in a meaningful way. We reached out a number of times to doctor Buva but couldn't connect, so we headed to his home. He talked with us off camera, but wanted to see our data. Hi, doctor Buva, this is Adam Yamagucci with CBS News. We were able to hear you through the door.

00:30:18
Speaker 1: Close the door, closed the door.

00:30:21
Speaker 8: We brought that information to doctor Buva, but he refused to answer the door. We're still waiting to talk to him. Adam i Amacucci, CBS News, Los Angeles.

00:30:30
Speaker 2: So there is the latest on CBS News's continuing investigation into the rampant hospice fraud mostly taking place in Los Angeles County, specifically out of that one building in Van Eyes with like eighty seven of these things. But now there's nothing to see here. This is all on the FEDS, according to Gavin.

00:30:50
Speaker 1: Well, of course, that doctor doesn't have time to talk to the news media. He's got nine million hospice patients to take care of. Eight hundred two five two two two e is telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. All right. Recently, California Governor Gavin Newsom's parole boards have been letting a lot of really old, really perverted people out of prison early because they're old or they're actually fifty, which the state of California regards as old, and.

00:31:35
Speaker 2: Enough exposure to this story has happened that there's some pushback, and we have a Democratic member of the legislature putting forth a bill that would put a lot of new restrictions on who qualifies for elder parole. That bill just passed a key committee in the legislature. For more on this, we got a Fox forty in Sacramento.

00:31:59
Speaker 9: Emotional moments at the state Capitol as this woman who goes by Tarina recounted the horrors she says she endured three decades ago when she was just seven years old. That's when she says convicted child rapist David Allen Funston molested.

00:32:13
Speaker 10: Her, approaching me, handy, touching me, lure me into a laundry room where he asks to see my bottom, and attempted to pull down my pants at nineteen.

00:32:25
Speaker 2: And the Pearl Board said, yep, that guy should go free.

00:32:28
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. I understand the concept behind letting people out of prison early for a couple of different reasons. One is, the recidivism rate is probably not going to be the same for some crimes, and you can take their healthcare costs which are quite expensive, and shift it from the state of California to the federal government, which saves the state money. However, not all crimes are equal. If you are elderly, and let's just for the purposes of this discussion, talk about an actual elderly Let's say you're seventy five years of age and you were convicted of shooting up a seven to eleven during a robbery. Well, a seventy five year old is probably not going to do that for a variety of reasons. Your hip will go out. I don't know. However, when you're talking about child molustation, that's something that's in their brain. They're attracted to minors, and frequently they're victims. Are people who are defenseless. When I sat on jury duty for that month and I sat on a case that was dealing with child molestation, the defendant was eighty nine years of age. You would look at that. You would say, Okay, someone who's eighty nine is not capable of doing anything harmful. They're not capable of doing anything violent. But when it comes to sex crimes, that's somebody's grandpa, that's somebody's neighbor, that's somebody's friend and they have access to children, because you don't think that they're capable of doing something like that, what in fact some of them are. And if you know that someone has those prod elections and they're in prison for doing so, and for being caught and tried and convicted, why in the world you would let that person out early simply as a function of age. Is beyond my ability to comprehend.

00:34:21
Speaker 9: In nineteen ninety nine, Funsen was sentenced to three consecutive life terms for kidnapping and sexually assaulting seven children.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: But this year, you know, unless you're over fifty, right, But this.

00:34:33
Speaker 9: Year his case returned to the spotlight after the State Board of Parole Hearings granted his release.

00:34:39
Speaker 2: And sure Gavin wants to say, oh, I didn't approve of that. Gavin appoints these people.

00:34:47
Speaker 9: After the State Board of Parole Hearings granted his release under California's Elderly Parole Program. As a stands today, the program allows prisoners fifty years or older who've served at least twenty years their sentence to apply for early release from state prison in the function in case. Despite Governor Gavin Newsom's opposition, to his release. The Parole Board moved forward with it, saying.

00:35:10
Speaker 2: His appointees it doesn't matter. Gavin can try to say it's not my fault, but he put these people in charge of who gets out of prison.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: And the only reason that he's opposed to this is because it's making news. If it didn't make news, he would be totally fine with the parole board voting to let this individual out.

00:35:30
Speaker 9: Forward with it saying Fundction no longer posed a quote unreasonable risk to public safety upon his scheduled release, though, the sixty four year old Fundston was transferred to Plaster County to face unrelated new child sexual assault charges.

00:35:45
Speaker 2: And so the story with that one why Plaster County was able to arrest this guy immediately after getting out was because they had other charges of other victims that they decided not to file because they were convinced that, oh, he's going away life.

00:36:02
Speaker 1: But you can't always rely on some Republican prosecutor in a small county to step in and save the day. A lot of these people are going to be let out.

00:36:12
Speaker 9: Otherwise he'd be out today.

00:36:14
Speaker 10: My real life bucking man is able to get really early.

00:36:19
Speaker 1: Please fix this terrible.

00:36:21
Speaker 9: Law affect she believes is possible to a Democratic Assembly member, Stephanie wins Bill AB twenty seven to twenty seven, a bill the Assembly Public Safety Committee took up Tuesday.

00:36:32
Speaker 2: Abe twenty seven, twenty seven.

00:36:33
Speaker 9: If passed and signed, the proposal will raise the elderly parole eligibility from fifty to sixty five and increase the time served threshold to twenty five years.

00:36:43
Speaker 2: So pretty much undoing a lot of what Gavin signed to make this even more lenient in twenty twenty one.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: I would love Gavin to do a sit down interview where he explained why he thought this was a good idea.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: Oh, he won't do that. This is why he'd doesn't talk to anybody that knows anything about California issues.

00:37:03
Speaker 9: Of course, it will also require a state hospital screening and bar those convicted of the most serious sex crimes against young children from qualifying.

00:37:12
Speaker 2: That seems pretty common sense. I'd love to see outside of Scott Wiener, who votes against this one good question.

00:37:19
Speaker 3: Anything that we can do to protect victims, anything that we can do to protect those that went through these decades ago, would be helpful.

00:37:27
Speaker 9: The committee advanced the bill with bipartisan support. It's very complement The bill, though does face some opposition.

00:37:33
Speaker 10: We need to stop unnecessarily incarcerating elders who have aged out of crime and reinvest those dollars.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: What idiot is that.

00:37:45
Speaker 2: Probably works with a nonprofit, probably.

00:37:48
Speaker 10: So survivors have more services.

00:37:50
Speaker 9: But Governor Gavin knew Some last month signaled he'll support.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: Yes, there are victim advocate services that want to make sure that people continue to be victimized so they can get much money from state budgets yep.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: And our taxpayers are going to pay for these people's salaries.

00:38:05
Speaker 9: But Governor Gavin knew Them last month signaled he'll support the legislation.

00:38:09
Speaker 8: We're working with the legislature and I think there's real opportunities to advance some of those.

00:38:15
Speaker 2: Reforms, including undoing the reforms I signed into law five years ago.

00:38:20
Speaker 1: Oh, he won't mention that.

00:38:22
Speaker 9: And the bill next heads to the Assembly Appropriations Committee at the state Capitol. Covering local news that matter, Saton Wallace, Fox forty News.

00:38:30
Speaker 2: There you go. We actually might have some movement changing the insane elder parole law.