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Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer just sounded an alarm that should wake every elected official in Sacramento and every concerned citizen across the state: a shortage of licensed mental-health beds means a dozen criminal defendants judged too mentally ill to stand trial could be released back into our communities. These aren’t minor cases — Spitzer says the list includes a murder suspect and other violent defendants — yet state rules and capacity limits are conspiring to empty cages and jeopardize public safety.
Details are chilling. Among those named are Ivan Dimov, accused of hacking a stranger to death with a hatchet, and men accused of stalking and violent assaults who were ordered to state hospitals for competency restoration; the law allows two years for treatment, and if a county can’t secure a locked facility afterward, the defendant must be released. This is not theoretical — some releases were imminent and a two-week continuance was only grudgingly won, exposing how brittle the system has become when it comes to protecting victims and neighborhoods.
The finger-pointing has already begun, with Spitzer blaming Governor Gavin Newsom and state policy while Sacramento’s office hits back saying counties were given hundreds of millions in mental-health funding and should look in the mirror. Meanwhile the Orange County Health Care Agency admits there are statewide caps on state hospital beds and long waiting lists, which is the bureaucratic gutting of any sensible commitment to public safety. Neither spin nor funding announcements matter if there aren’t actual locked beds where violent, untreated offenders can be supervised and treated.
This crisis is the predictable result of California’s progressive politics: laws and budget gimmicks that sound compassionate on paper but leave victims and taxpayers holding the bill for chaos. When the system prioritizes slogans and short-term fixes over secure treatment capacity and accountability, the result is dangerous and immoral — it abandons both the mentally ill who need proper care and the public those patients might harm if released unsupervised. The state must stop pretending that sending money with no structural requirements equals a plan.
Local leaders in Orange County and lawmakers in Sacramento must act now — not with press releases or blame games, but with concrete steps: build locked, secure treatment capacity, remove perverse caps that handcuff counties, and restore a legal framework that keeps violent patients in treatment until they are safe to rejoin the community. Voters deserve officials who protect victims and restore order, not politicians who excuse failure with talking points while dangerous people walk free.
Make no mistake: this is about common-sense governance and the basic duty of any civilized society to keep its citizens safe. California can and must do better — and if politicians refuse to fix what they broke, the public will remember where the responsibility lies when the next preventable tragedy occurs. The time for excuses is over; the time for action is now.
