Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper is not whispering his frustrations behind closed doors. He is broadcasting them, naming names, and daring California's political leadership to explain why violent criminals keep walking free under laws the governor championed and voters tried to fix.
Cooper, the top law enforcement officer in the county that houses the state capitol, has launched a sustained public offensive against Governor Gavin Newsom and the California legislature. His targets: a mental health diversion statute he says hardened criminals are gaming with ease, and the governor's refusal to fund a voter-approved anti-crime ballot measure that passed by a landslide.
The clash puts a sitting sheriff in direct, open conflict with the governor in Newsom's own political backyard. And Cooper is bringing receipts.
At the center of Cooper's broadside is California's mental health diversion law, rooted in AB 1810 and SB 215. The law allows defendants charged with nearly any crime to petition for diversion into mental health treatment instead of prison. The eligible offense list is vast. Only murder, rape, and voluntary manslaughter are excluded. That means child abuse, armed robbery, gang violence, and a long catalog of serious felonies can qualify.
Cooper told Fox News that the system is not just flawed in theory. It is being deliberately exploited by criminals who understand exactly how to use it.
"These bad guys know there is zero accountability... They talk about it in our jails. We've got them on record talking about mental health diversion, how to exploit it and get out of their cases."
That claim is not speculation. Cooper says his department has recorded jail conversations in which inmates discuss strategies for leveraging mental health diversion to escape prosecution. The recordings, he says, prove the abuse is systematic and calculated.
One case Cooper has highlighted involves Darren Campoy, a repeat bank robber. Campoy was granted mental health diversion after a 2021 robbery. Under the program, his record was wiped clean. Then, in 2025, he robbed another bank. The diversion did not rehabilitate him. It reset the clock and put him back on the street with a clean slate.
Cooper has also pointed to cases involving child abuse deaths and gang violence where suspects received diversion instead of incarceration. The pattern, as he describes it, is consistent: serious offenders cycle through a treatment framework designed for people with genuine mental health crises, then return to the same behavior with no criminal record trailing them.
Cooper is not the first California law enforcement official to clash publicly with Newsom on criminal justice. A San Luis Obispo County district attorney recently blasted the governor after a convicted rapist and killer was freed on parole. But Cooper's position carries a particular sting. Sacramento County is the seat of state government. The sheriff's jurisdiction literally surrounds the capitol building where these laws were written and signed.
Cooper's critique goes beyond any single statute. He frames the problem as a collapse of accountability across the state's criminal justice system.
"Terrible laws have replaced accountability with excuses."
That line, delivered without hedging or diplomatic softening, captures the tone of a law enforcement leader who has stopped trying to work within the system quietly and started fighting it publicly. As the New York Post reported, Cooper has effectively gone scorched earth on the governor's criminal justice legacy.
The mental health diversion fight is only half of Cooper's offensive. The other half centers on Proposition 36, the anti-crime ballot measure California voters approved with 68.4 percent support. Every single one of the state's 58 counties backed it.
Proposition 36 toughened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenses, a direct response to years of frustration with policies that critics said decriminalized property crime and enabled open-air drug markets. But the measure lacked a built-in funding mechanism. Full implementation requires the governor and legislature to allocate money for enforcement, courts, and treatment programs.
Newsom has not done that. His budget left out dedicated Proposition 36 funding, a move that effectively stalls a law nearly seven in ten voters demanded. Cooper publicly called on Newsom and the legislature to "step up and fund" the measure, framing the governor's inaction as defiance of a clear democratic mandate.
The governor is not facing this pressure only from sheriffs. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a fellow Democrat, broke with Newsom on the issue. Bonta told the Washington Examiner that delivering on the voter-approved law is not optional.
"The people of the state have spoken loud and clear. I think getting funding for full implementation is critical."
When your own attorney general is publicly telling you to fund a law you are slow-walking, the political isolation is hard to disguise.
Cooper has tied his two complaints into a single indictment of state leadership. On mental health diversion, he wants the legislature to narrow eligibility so violent and repeat offenders cannot exploit the system. On Proposition 36, he wants the money voters were promised.
His framing on the treatment side is pointed but not absolutist. Cooper has acknowledged that genuine addiction and mental health crises deserve a treatment response.
"If someone is addicted and needs treatment, we've got to make sure they get treatment, but the funding has to be there."
That distinction matters. Cooper is not arguing against mental health treatment as a concept. He is arguing that the current system has been stretched so far beyond its intended purpose that it now functions as an escape hatch for people who belong in prison, not in treatment programs.
Newsom, meanwhile, faces mounting friction from multiple directions. A federal investigation that saw the FBI wire a Newsom insider has added to his political headaches, and the Trump DOJ's federal lawsuit against California over its Glock ban has opened yet another front. The governor who once positioned himself as a national progressive leader now finds himself besieged from within his own state and from Washington simultaneously.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether the legislature plans to take up mental health diversion reform this session. No timeline has been announced for Proposition 36 funding negotiations. Cooper has not indicated whether he plans to escalate beyond public statements, though his willingness to go on the record with recorded jail evidence suggests he is building a case for legislative action, not just airing grievances.
The political dynamics are unusually sharp. A governor who has staked his legacy on progressive criminal justice reform is being challenged not by a rural sheriff in a deep-red county, but by the top cop in his own capitol city. And the challenge is bipartisan: when the state's Democratic attorney general is publicly siding with the sheriff's demand for funding, the governor's position looks less like principled leadership and more like political stubbornness.
California's crime landscape has also grown harder to dismiss. Cases like the stabbing deaths of an infant, mother, and grandmother in Modesto have kept public safety at the front of voters' minds. Cooper's argument gains force every time a violent offender walks through the diversion door and comes back worse.
Voters gave Sacramento a mandate with Proposition 36. Sheriff Cooper is making sure no one forgets it. The question now is whether Newsom keeps ignoring the people who put him in office, or whether the pressure from his own backyard finally forces his hand.
When your own sheriff, your own attorney general, and 68 percent of your own voters are all telling you the same thing, the problem is not messaging. The problem is the policy.
