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“CAN’T WE GO TO L.A. COUNTY?” Viral Video Shows Suspects’ Reactions to OC Law Enforcement


“You guys decided to do the crime in Orange County. We prosecute,” an officer tells a suspect in new viral video.


“Welcome to Orange County.” 


Evidently, those four words are not what criminal suspects want to hear after they’ve been caught in the act.


A video montage produced by TikTok account CopsofSealBeach is making the rounds on social media after appearing in a Fox News article. Each of the clips depicts something cathartic for Orange County residents: a host of criminal suspects realizing they’re not in Los Angeles County—and that they’ll actually be punished for their wrongdoing.


In one of the clips, a detained suspect asks: “Aren’t we getting a ticket? It’s just a petty theft.” 


“Orange County’s different. When you go to Orange County, you go to county jail,” responds the officer. “That’s how it works in Orange County and Seal Beach.” Later, he adds “Orange County prosecutes for theft.”


In another clip, a female suspect asks “so why wouldn’t it just be a cite and release?”


“Because this is Orange County. This is not L.A. County. We don’t cite and release,” the officer replies. Later, as the suspect is being brought into the back of the police car, she again asks if there’s “any way” the officer can “just cite and release [her],” to which the officer responds “we don’t do that.”


“Can’t we go to L.A. County?” asks another male suspect in an Orange County jail. 


“You’re in Orange County. You’re not in L.A. County,” an officer replies offscreen. “You guys decided to do the crime in Orange County; we prosecute. Wrong county to be in.”

“Oh, sh*t,” responds the suspect.


It should come as no surprise given Orange County’s reputation as a tough-on-crime community under the leadership of District Attorney Todd Spitzer. Last year, Spitzer’s office made national headlines when it launched a campaign to erect billboards which read “Crime Doesn’t Pay in Orange County: If You Steal, We Prosecute.” 


Spitzer was recently interviewed after another viral video showed two female suspects being arrested for retail theft. In it, one of the suspects turns to the other and says “stealing is a felony and this is Orange County, b****, they don’t play.”


“You know what’s great about that video is that the woman that is speaking on screen on the right—she’s on probation in our county for stealing last year. But when she gets in the car this time thinking there’s no additional consequences… now she’s looking at not only a felony—for both of them—but the one on the right who’s speaking is also looking at a probation violation.”


Beyond Orange County, Californians across the state are fed up with rising crime rates. That frustration is reflected in the passage of Prop 36 last November. In short, the bill established new penalties for certain drug crimes and increased sentence lengths for both theft and drug-related crimes by treating them as felonies. It passed by a whopping 37% percentage points.


"Voters in every California county—including more than 75 percent of voters in Orange County—voted in November to support public safety and voted to approve Prop. 36 to hold repeat thieves accountable, and that is exactly what we are doing,” Spitzer said in a statement to Fox News. 


Any way one cuts it, the overwhelming popularity of Prop 36 is a notable development for a blue state which has historically prided itself on its progressive attitude towards crime and corrections. Undoubtedly, it’s a referendum on the soft-on-crime policies of Los Angeles County DA George Gascón and Oakland DA Pamela Price, both of whom were defeated in the last election.


If anyone should feel vindicated by this trend, it’s District Attorney Spitzer.


“The good news is the message is out that in my county… we don’t play,” said Spitzer.


“As a Los Angeles County resident, I am jealous once again of Orange County,” comments one user on the CopsofSealBeach video.


“I’m moving to Orange County,” writes another.


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