Retired California cops are leaving the state in increasing numbers. I know this firsthand, because I am one of them. After retiring, my wife and I sold our home, packed up our belongings, and moved to Texas. Our daughter and her family had already relocated, which influenced our decision, but the ongoing political climate in California made the choice even easier. I personally know many others who have made similar moves.
My retired law enforcement colleagues have primarily relocated to states like Texas, Idaho, Montana, and Arizona. The primary reasons for leaving California remain the declining quality of life and the excessive tax burden. New Yorkers, does this sound familiar? I’ve heard similar sentiments from your region of the country.
The quality of life issues are particularly acute for police officers. Dealing with rampant drug use, unabated crime, and the spread of diseases due to mass homelessness is disheartening. Furthermore, local and state policies that reduce or eliminate consequences for criminal behavior have created a system that seems to reward criminal activity and encourage dependency on public assistance.
Sadly, we left behind two sons who have since married and are building their lives in California. Consequently, we visit frequently. While I miss lifelong friends and family, and the consistently pleasant weather, I don’t miss the problems created by failed policies and deceptive laws that favor the criminal element.
Recently, I met a retired California law enforcement officer for lunch at a popular spot near my home in Texas. She and her retired DEA husband had recently moved from the Bay Area. I asked if she had trouble finding parking, given the crowded location. She replied, “Are you kidding? The free parking structure was clean. I didn’t have to step over a homeless person or be bothered by an aggressive panhandler. And the elevator didn’t smell like urine. It was the easiest public parking I’ve seen in years.”
Since moving to Texas, I’ve heard countless stories from California cops struggling against a state system that seems inexplicably lenient toward egregious behavior, to the point where middle-class Californians are fed up and seeking a better quality of life elsewhere. Our first three years in Texas were spent in a rural area of Collin County, about an hour north of Dallas.
During a phone conversation, my youngest son asked, “What do you like about it, Dad?” I held my phone up to the sky and asked, “Can you hear that?” He replied, “Hear what?” I said, “Exactly, you don’t hear a siren, do you? I haven’t heard a siren in two years while living on this property. Moreover, I haven’t been aggressively approached by a vagrant, and we don’t have graffiti.”
Admittedly, that’s typical of rural life anywhere in America. But serenity is highly valued after a career in law enforcement.
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, wrote an article that captures the problems in California. I’ve included some excerpts from his work to provide a more detailed explanation of the situation in California:
Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals. Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair. Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project. Residents shrug that the state’s public schools are among weakest in the nation, often ranking in the bottom quadrant in standardized test scores. Elites publicly oppose charter schools but often put their own kids in private academies. Californians know that to venture into a typical municipal emergency room is to descend into a modern Dante’s Inferno. Medical facilities are overcrowded. They can be as unpleasant as they are bankrupting to the vanishing middle class that must face exorbitant charges to bring in an injured or sick child. No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high-school education. Stores are occasionally hit by swarming looters. Such Wild West criminals know how to keep their thefts under $950, ensuring that such “misdemeanors” do not warrant police attention. California’s permissive laws have decriminalized thefts and break-ins. The result is that San Francisco now has the highest property crime rate per capita in the nation. Has California become premodern? Millions of fed-up middle-class taxpayers have fled the state. Their presence as a stabilizing influence is sorely missed. About one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California. Millions of poor newcomers require enormously expensive state health, housing, education, legal and law-enforcement services. California is now a one-party state. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. Only seven of the state’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority. Huge global wealth in high-tech, finance, trade and academia poured into the coastal corridor, creating a new nobility with unprecedented riches. Unfortunately, the new aristocracy adopted mindsets antithetical to the general welfare of Californians living outside their coastal enclaves. The nobodies have struggled to buy high-priced gas, pay exorbitant power bills and deal with shoddy infrastructure — all of which resulted from the policies of the distant somebodies. California’s three most powerful politicians — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom — are all multimillionaires. Their lives, homes and privileges bear no resemblance to those of other Californians living with the consequences of their misguided policies and agendas. The state’s elite took revolving-door entries and exits for granted. They assumed that California was so naturally rich, beautiful and well-endowed that there would always be thousands of newcomers who would queue up for the weather, the shore, the mountains and the hip culture. Yet California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics. Residents carefully plan long highway trips as if they were ancient explorers charting dangerous routes. Tourists warily enter downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco as if visiting a politically unstable nation. Insatiable state tax collectors and agencies are viewed by the public as if they were corrupt officials of Third World countries seeking bribes. Californians flip their switches unsure of whether the lights will go on. Many are careful about what they say, terrified of progressive thought police who seem more worried about critics than criminals. Our resolute ancestors took a century to turn a wilderness into California. Our irresolute generation in just a decade or two has been turning California into a wilderness.
Will California reverse course? Not if the politically progressive elites like Gov. Newsom, Speaker Pelosi, and Sen. Kamala Harris continue to gain power and become enriched while the middle-class flee to safer environments. I worry about those who choose to stay, like many in my family.
However, there is always room in Texas (along with Idaho, Montana, Arizona, or your preferred destination) for people seeking a better quality of life. But it’s very hot in Texas in the summer, so bring your hat and sunscreen.
– Jim McNeff
(Feature image: Michael Dorausch)