Derek Spencer wasn’t a mystery. California had him behind bars three times on felony charges in two weeks. Each time, they put him right back on the street as if they’d caught him jaywalking. And Cheryl Macy paid the price for the criminal justice system’s dysfunction with her life.
On September 3, Sacramento deputies arrested the 44-year-old social misfit Spencer for felony vandalism, resisting arrest, and assaulting a deputy with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors begged a judge to hold him. The judge set bail. Spencer posted it and walked on September 11.
Folsom police then booked him for burglary on the 13th. Jailers cut him loose with a pinkie promise to behave the next day. The very next day he stole a car. And got caught. He posted bail yet again (because the car theft apparently didn’t violate his bail on the assault charges) and was freed by the 17th. He then skipped court on the 18th. A warrant issued and nobody treated any of it as a warning.
On the 19th this one-man crime wave stole another vehicle and some guns, fired at a moving car in El Dorado County, pointed a firearm at people in Placer County, and rammed a sheriff’s cruiser near Iowa Hill.
Cops shoot dead gunman who sparked terror in small California town – as woman’s body is found https://t.co/lBjdCBDy4N pic.twitter.com/hQvg5Xpk0z
— New York Post (@nypost) September 21, 2026
Then he murdered Cheryl Macy, 76, a mother, grandmother, and former Placer County DA’s office employee, shooting her inside a home. He then fled into the timber, shot at deputies and helicopters, and lit fires as search teams closed in.
Spencer’s rampage and his life finally ended when he shot at deputies from behind a berm. Unlike Cheryl Macy, they shot back. With gusto. Sadly, it was too late for Macy.
Sacramento’s DA said the machine had “prioritized criminal offenders over victims.” That’s not a glitch, that’s the product. The Kowalczyk precedent and the politicians who clapped like seals for it turned detention of a repeat predator and felon into a procedural sin. Judges were instructed that maintining public safety is merely a suggestion. Cheryl Macy paid for California’s woke criminal justice system with her life.
Florida, a state that was drowning in gun crime in the 1990s, passed 10-20-Life: ten years for possessing a gun in a crime, twenty for firing it, twenty-five to life if someone is wounded or killed. Firearm-related crime collapsed to historic lows because the state stopped treating armed animals as clients.
El Salvador stuffed gang members into cells. Official homicide rates fell on the order of 98 percent from the mid-2010s peak. Cage the killers and the killing tends to stop.
Who would-a thought?
California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York and their imitators have deliberately chosen the opposite approach. They recast catch-and-release as a virtue, letting feral predators continue to victimize the law-abiding population. Those in charge then called anyone who objected a bigot.
Their “reform” and “restorative justice” is nothing more than a transfer of risk from the offender to whoever opens the door next.
The politicians who pass this garbage aren’t virtuous, self-sacrificing do-gooders. They work behind metal detectors and armed details. Some live in gated compounds with private security while they lecture you about “incarceration trauma.”
They advocate for the disarmament of the little people while they (or their minions) have guns. They will never meet a Derek Spencer in a gas station or parking garage. Their children will never be part of the social experiment. These SJW politicians trade grandmothers’ lives for donors’ applause, approving op-eds and press releases about compassion.
Locking up bad guys works. Letting them go so activists can feel righteous and rake in more grant money is a policy that’s written in other people’s blood. Cheryl Macy’s killer needed a jail cell, not compassion. The cowards who made this possible should be forced to bury her body.