HOW COULD THIS FELON BE RELEASED?

This is in response to the information in the June 2 edition of The Californian regarding a criminal identified as Sergio Venegas who was sentenced to 56 years in prison in 1989 after committing several violent felonies. If I remember correctly, those crimes required a person to serve at least 80 percent of his time. Instead it appears he was released on parole in 2021. If my math is correct, he didn’t even serve half of that time. And now he is being prosecuted for very similar crimes against another young woman living in our community expecting to be safe when she goes shopping.

This is appalling. How could the Department of Corrections believe that this man should be released? In my opinion, he should never have been released but unfortunately, for the citizens of this state, the liberal people running the state government haven’t been affected by crimes such as these. They live in gated communities, possibly have bodyguards, but the main point is they don’t care about the rest of us citizens who have to live with these liberal changes to the laws. We are suffering as a result of irresponsibility on their part to do what they swore to do when they took these roles and that’s protect us as citizens.

Our representatives from the Valley are conservative and support our desires for strong law enforcement and appropriate punishment for violent felonies. Until Newsom and his cronies are voted out of the state government, cruelty will continue to occur and become even worse, I’m afraid. No wonder people are buying more and more weapons to protect themselves and their families. I’m giving some serious thought to that myself.

— Betsy Gosling, Bakersfield