California’s ‘Three Strikes’ Law Dangerous For Police, Officers Say Violent, Hardened Criminals More Likely To Resist Arrest

Two-time loser Joseph Calloway wasn’t about to make it three times.

The parolee was recognized recently by San Francisco police, allegedly behind the wheel of a stolen car. Rather than pull over, Calloway roared through a quiet neighborhood, squad cars in pursuit. Calloway crashed the car, shot at police and fled over fences and rooftops.

Calloway escaped, so no one can say if the dangerous chase was prompted by the state’s Three Strikes law, which mandates a sentence of 25 years to life for a third felony conviction. He already has more than three strikes, with six past convictions for robberies, one for burglary and one for attempted burglary.

But law officers say such street confrontations are increasingly common, and they fear that a law intended to make California safer has actually made life more dangerous for police and jailers.

“There’s a higher escape risk and a higher propensity to resist arrest or assault an officer, because they have less to lose, and everything to gain,” Merced County Sheriff Tom Sawyer said.

“They will take their chances on the street rather than give up if they know they are going for the third strike,” said Sawyer, head of a law enforcement panel studying the new sentencing law.

Not every officer is convinced. Police Chief Richard Gregson in Manteca, some 50 miles east of San Francisco, said even if the Three Strikes law provokes more suspects to resist arrest, it still makes California safer by taking criminals off the streets.

“With or without Three Strikes, we’ve always had people who don’t want to be taken in by our officers,” Gregson said. “That’s always a part of the business.”

Sawyer, however, insists there’s a difference. Now, he says, even suspects arrested for nonviolent crimes must be handled like the most dangerous criminals - just in case. State law holds that something minor like petty theft will be considered a third strike if the thief has two prior felony convictions.

“You get a guy who just stole a pizza,” Sawyer said. “You treat him like a petty thief, but he knows he’s a three-striker. He’s got a different mindset.”

Because the law has been in effect only 19 months, statistics are far from conclusive.

Justifiable homicides by officers, considered an indirect measurement of how many suspects opt to shoot it out with police, have declined 9 percent since March 1994, when Three Strikes became law.

Assaults on street cops are up in some areas, down in others. Statewide, assaults on police officers declined by 3.3 percent since enactment of Three Strikes, for an overall decline of 18.6 percent since 1990.

For jailers, however, the picture is grimmer. One study of 18 county jails found that assaults by inmates against jail staff jumped 26.7 percent - from 333 to 422 - in the first nine months after Gov. Pete Wilson signed the law, compared with the same period in 1993.

“There is a feeling that with people facing much longer terms, it is changing behavior in a number of situations,” said Thom McConnell, executive officer of the state Board of Corrections.

Sawyer said law officers often have no way to know if they are dealing with a Three Strikes candidate.

“We don’t know his record unless the guy is a local and we have local records,” Sawyer said. “I probably have a few people who are in my jail right now who are three-strikers, and only they know it.”

Fresno police have seen a 48 percent increase in assaults on officers in the last year - from 151 to 224 - including three shootouts with suspects on a single August weekend, Lt. Tom Frost said.

“More people are trying to get away from us because they know the potential penalties will be quite severe,” Frost said. “They figure they have nothing to lose, so why not take the cop out?”

Attorney General Dan Lungren, a strong advocate of the Three Strikes law, contends it is too early to identify any significant trends in crime statistics.

“We certainly don’t hear that violence is up or that people are trying more to resist officers,” Lungren spokesman Matt Ross said. “We hear career criminals are talking about leaving the state. They’re afraid of 25 years to life.”