Humboldt County saw violent crime, drug use spike in 2021 – Times-Standard

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office posted its annual report for 2021 on Thursday, which detailed increases in violent crime and drug use in the county.

The report shows that in 2021, homicides increased by 43%, rapes by 52%, robbery by 9% and assaults by 20%. The sheriff’s office also seized and destroyed 100,800 pounds of illegal drugs, more than double the amount of 2020’s seizures, which amounted to 49,432 pounds that year. The only type of crime listed in the report that went down was larceny, the county’s most popular crime in the report, which decreased by 2%.

Domestic violence and arson increased by 15%, while assaults on deputies increased by 22%.

Samantha Karges, the sheriff’s office spokesperson, attributed the rise in almost every crime to lax state laws and said many of the crimes in the report include violations of parole.

“People aren’t going to prison like they used to for violation of probation or violation of parole, and so oftentimes, people who should be in prison, are getting off on post-release community supervision, which means they’re released, basically, into our community with being overseen by probation,” Karges said.

However, Karges’ opinion on what rising crime can be attributed to was not echoed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

“Sheriff (William) Honsal is recycling the same defective policies that break up families and devastate communities of color. We know that decades of pouring money into police and prisons created a crisis of mass incarceration without reducing crime. Study after study has shown that crime will only go down in the long-term if we put our resources into programs that heal and care for those in need. That means investing in housing, health care, education, mental health programs, and jobs, among other solutions,” Yoel Haile, criminal justice director at the ACLU of Northern California, said in a statement.

Karges noted that part of the dramatic rise in drugs was because of increased sales of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s equally addictive and deadly. In 2020, there were nine fentanyl-related deaths, which swelled to 34 in 2021, 10% of all deaths recorded by the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office. The report listed 19 deaths resulting from overdosing on other substances.

In 2021, the Humboldt County Drug Task Force seized over 13 pounds of fentanyl. In 2020, the agency seized 3 grams.

Both police and county residents can use Narcan, a lifesaving opioid overdose reversal nasal spray. Narcan can be purchased without a prescription from pharmacists, and is available for free from the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction and the Redwood Rural Health Center.

“We’ve had several occasions in which our deputies have had to administer Narcan and have saved numerous lives through doing that. The biggest thing that we’re doing is we’re aggressively investigating the sale and distribution of fentanyl because those who sell fentanyl can be charged with murder if we can prove their sale to someone who has overdosed and died,” Karges said.

There is currently one case going through Humboldt County’s criminal justice system regarding a Hoopa man facing manslaughter charges after a woman overdosed and died on fentanyl he allegedly sold her.

Arrests increased by roughly 800, going from 1,017 in 2020 to 1,885 in 2021, which Karges attributed to the diminishing effects of the pandemic, noting that many people were unable to be booked into the Humboldt County jail in 2020 due to coronavirus concerns, causing officers to instead issue notices to appear in court rather than booking suspects in jail.

While property crimes increased at a smaller rate than violent crimes, Karges noted the increase can be attributed to a mix of factors such as economic strain and addiction

“We have people hurting because of COVID, and so that’s when you see a lot of those property crime rates rise,” Karges said.

Also featured in the report was a section on the office’s new cold case unit, which consists of two retired deputy sheriffs who dig up old cases to identify new potential leads and apply new technology to attempt to solve them.

The full report may be found at https://humboldtgov.org/2637/Annual-Report.

Jackson Guilfoil can be reached at 707-441-0506.