Is Bail Reform Putting Victims at Risk?

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What the public doesn't know is that many bail agents find themselves in a role of a counselor. Often they're guiding families on how to keep their loved ones detain. Too often family members are terrified to post bail for someone they love. Not just because of the cost, but because they fear what that person might do once they're free. Good, bail attorney, who works out of Texas.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

So this is something we don't talk about enough. How many families are really scared of their loved ones?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Oh, let me tell you, the big issues that nobody's talking about with charitable bail funds, because by the time someone has been bonded out a number of times, they've run through their friends, they've run through their family members. And when they get to that point, we call them career criminals because they've burned their family enough, they've burned their friends enough that there's no one else that will bond them out. And then those are the people that the charitable bell funds are finding themselves bonding out, and those are career criminals. They need to be staying in jail. Their families are afraid of them for a reason.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Absolutely. The Rob Rayner case is a perfect example. Their son was very sick, and he should have stayed in prison.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yes. And you know, the another example of that is the Ilias Rutska, the girl from Ukraine that was stabbed to death. Mr. Brown, who stabbed her, his mom said he should have been in jail. So, and she had taken him to a halfway house because he'd gotten off his medications and he was no longer controllable. And so she even said he should, you know, he was on bond at the time. He's she's like, he should have been in jail. I mean, I have a good example with my sister. My sister, when she had a car wreck in 1989 in October, she broke every bone in her face and she started a 30-year drug addiction to prescription drugs. And, you know, as a poor attorney just graduating from law school, I tried, I tried like the Dickens to get her arrested and held in jail so we could get her straightened out. And they would not hold her. And they wouldn't hold her back in 89. They certainly won't hold hold somebody now in 2026.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

So where does the laws fail here, really? I mean, because you can't really hold people without a reason.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So the problem, the biggest problem with this bad bail reform, where we're just, you know, the whole concept of bad bail reform is well, people want to come to court. They want to resolve their criminal case, and we don't need bondsmen. We don't need my clients to to do what they do. And I think during the pandemic, that was proven to be absolutely false. I mean, we even have data that the president cited in his executive order encouraging states to get rid of cashless bail. And that data is from Yolo County in California. And it compared two people nonviolent offenses released, compared their releases. One was released on simple release, just their promise, and the other was released on a surety bond from the private industry. The person that was just simply released on their promise had a 200% greater chance that they would commit a new violent offense in the next 18 months compared to someone that was released on a private surety bond. And, you know, what's the difference? Family involvement. You know, when you have family standing up for you and saying, I still think you, Tiffany, you have value. You can turn this around. And what you're talking about is when they've burned those bridges, this the family no longer wants to help them. They want them to stay in jail. We should be listening in that situation. But we're setting up bad bail reform where we just refuse to hold them. We're just going to release them. And and that's just causing crime to increase.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I feel like people obviously the jails they get overcrowded, and some people have to get out. But if anytime it's a violent offender, like let someone out who just got caught with marijuana. You know, they're not hurting people.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, but you know, the problem they have is, you know, that's the argument that the uh charitable bail funds have been making for years is low-level offenders are getting stuck in jail. But the problem is when they started posting bail for people, they discovered that their whole narrative of what they've been saying has been false for so many years. There's not any low-level first-time offenders stuck in jail, and the jails are full of very dangerous people right now because we've had this period of bad bail reform, which has sent a message that we're not going to hold anybody accountable. And so crime is increasing. When crime gets increasing, then you know, the more and more there's more and more bad people, and those are the ones that are getting held in jail.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

So if a family is going through this, what steps do they have to take?

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Well, okay, so bail gets set. And once bail is set, then the family, if they want the person out of jail, they can contact a bondsman and pay a premium. The problem we have is like in New York and California, and you know, for certain low-level offenses, like if you were arrested in Houston right now on a certain misdemeanors, you'd just be released. But, you know, there's some violent offenses for that. Assault, for, you know, first time assault is a misdemeanor. That's I consider that a violent offense. And so it depends on what the charge is. If it, but if it's a serious charge, the person will stay in jail if no one posts a bond for them. And if if it's a violent offense, like in Texas, they've kind of gone the opposite direction of the rest of the country, and they've strengthened their criminal justice system, and so they've limited the use of these simple release mechanisms, which we call, you know, in Texas, we call a personal bond. So you're not eligible for a personal bond for certain violent offenses, and there's a long list. And so in those situations, you'll either post a whole cash, you know, the entire amount of the bond in cash, or you'll have to hire someone to post the bond for you and you pay a premium. And if nobody in the family does that, you're gonna stay in jail.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

How does this work? Like people, they can still put up like mortgages and cars and all that.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

That's collateral with the bonding company. So, you know, it depends on how how large the bond is. If it's a small bond, if it's a$5,000 bond, you're gonna pay$500 in premium generally, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more, depending on the circumstances. They're not gonna require collateral. But if you've got a$200,000 bond, I mean the premium on that's gonna be$20,000 and they're gonna require collateral because if you don't show up, the the bonding company has guaranteed that amount to the courts. And so, unless certain things happen, that money will be paid. And so, you know, bonding companies are not in business to charge 10% premium and then pay out, lose 90%. And so they look for protections on risky bonds. Well, you know, by and large, you know, like in Texas, historically, they've not regulated what bonds been charged. So they may charge a down payment and then have a payment plan. But, you know, we've got a couple of counties that have decided they don't like that. They want the whole thing paid up front or they don't want them out of jail. I disagree with that because I think that tends to crowd the jail even more. We should let the market regulate that. But I mean, that's what we normally do. I mean, what I point out is when crime goes up because of soft-owned crime policies, the public will not abide that. It won't last long because the public demands public safety. But on the opposite end, if we're holding everybody in jail pretrial, the public won't pay for that. So we've got to find a happy medium. And the medium, the middle ground, I think, is is more use of the private surety bail system. And because they have the lowest failure-to-appear rate by far. And in the criminal world, if you if you miss court, your case has to be put on hold until you come back. I mean, they can't go forward without you. And so why are we using these experiments on release systems that have a 50, 60, 80 percent failure-to-appear rate?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Right. I mean, anyone who knows they're facing a great deal of time is gonna want to run.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

I mean, if they can, I mean, you know, I mean, like, I mean, there's a lot of people that would like to run, but where are they gonna run? I mean, you know, they've been born in the United States, they've been raising estates, their whole family's here. But, you know, we do have situations like that. But if you're if you're new into the country, you know, you could be deported just from having the charge. And so, you know, what people don't realize right now, we're in this period of time where if you're arrested and you're not here legally and and someone posts a bond for you, like the private surety bond system posts a bail for you, you will be turned over to ICE in a lot of places, and then you'll be deported. Well, the bonding company has guaranteed appearance. Well, they can't come to court if after they're deported, and so that's a recipe for disaster for the bonding company because they've guaranteed appearance, but the person's then been deported, and so they're gonna end up paying the full amount of the bond to the county. Well, the bondsmen are being very careful. I mean, but yeah, it causes a lot of stress. And you know, bail is not supposed to be a moneymaker for the county, it's it's to get people to go to court. And so there's a lot of case law on that. The purpose is to get people to go to court. So if they're deported and the county doesn't want them anymore, you know, they we we shouldn't be penalizing the bail industry for that. We we've got to find a solution for that. Because if if a family lies to us and they go get released to ICE, how do we get how do we get off that bond before they're deported? And that's causing problems. We had a proposed constitutional amendment in Texas on that, but it didn't pass or didn't didn't get out of the legislature, so it didn't go before the vote voters. So we still have that issue. So I think bondsmen are being very careful and verifying citizenship before before they post bonds right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Well, isn't there paperwork that goes with, you know, if ICE goes ahead and deports you, like saying, okay, well, this is where the person is, clearly they they can't come.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Well, but you know, if they can't come, I mean, if that's true, but the bonding company guaranteed appearance for that court court date. And so, sure, they can't come. And that's the the point I'm making. It's because of a an intervening event that the bonding company has no control over, that the defendant can't come or did not come, but still the bonding company guaranteed appearance, and so they're still required to satisfy their guarantee in in Texas until we've got to find a solution for that.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

I mean, and that's gonna be every state. We're all having issues with this kind of stuff. You know, I'm in Florida and it's a hot mess here too.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

But you know, there are states that have uh statutes that say if they're deported, then you know you cannot collect you know on the bond because you know it's a superseding event. And I think that's that's good law. And so we need to look at something like that.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Right. I wish sometimes when they make a law in one state, it went to all of them because the laws are there for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

And well, but you know for the most part they're really but you know, the states by and large regulate crime. I mean, they're the ones that punish crime, and so we do have you know groups that propose model statutes. And so we do have a lot of model statutes. I think the best example of that is when someone flees, so commits a crime, they issue a warrant, but then they flee to another state. And so it's a fugitive from justice warrant system. And so when you in Florida come to Texas and you commit a you're you're stopped, you have a traffic stop, and they're like, oh, Tiffany has a warrant for a really, really bad felony out of Florida. Well, you get taken to the nearest jail, but we can't post bonds for you for a warrant out of Florida. We can only post bonds for you for warrants out of Texas. So you will get held and they can give you what's called a fugitive of justice bond, which is only good for 90 days. And the purpose of that is to give the governor of Florida time to decide whether he's going to seek your extradition. And so he issues a governor's warrant. So during that 90 days, he issues a governor's warrant. So, okay, so now they want to extradite you. They'll bring you back to court and say, are you gonna fight extradition? If you are, then they're just gonna give you a regular bail bond because it's really a habeas corpus proceeding, whether they're gonna release you or whether they're gonna require you to go back to Florida. And if you come back and say, hey, no, I'm not gonna fight extradition, then it's over. You go back to custody and they just ship you to Florida. But they have a really good procedure for that, and that is a model statute that a lot of statute, a lot of states have adopted.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Good. We need to all be on the same page.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yes. We do, we really do, especially on the pretrial bail, what's good bail reform and what's bad bail reform, because we have certain urban areas where politics has overtaken what's good and what's bad policy. And, you know, the activists are saying we're gonna do this no matter what, and we're not gonna admit it's not working. And you know, we s we've seen the penalty and the punishment of that to public safety, especially in our urban areas in California, New York, Illinois is a really bad example in you know, in other places.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Right. So say I'm a mom and my son attacks me, he goes to jail, and then he's able to get bond. What am I to do as a parent for my own safety? How old is it?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

In our example, how old is it? Let's say 21. Okay. I mean, I think if you said in Texas, if you said 16 or older, then I would say that part of your criminal case you want to get a protective order which says he can't come back to the house. He can't b be within this distance from you. And I'm not really, I mean, those are a necessary evil, but I don't I don't know how much protection they give you because if he decides to get out of jail and come home and beat the crap out of you and kill you, well, okay, he's violated the protective order, but you're still dead. And I think a lot of domestic violence survivors have lost faith in the criminal justice system, especially during this bad Bell reform, especially during COVID, because the jails didn't want to hold anybody and they still don't, so they just release them. And then we've had terrible, terrible examples, especially in Texas. We had an example in Houston where a gentleman was arrested for beating his wife, and he was released on a personal bond, just simple release on his promise, and then he went home and stabbed her 30-something times and killed her. And the reason why he stabbed her 30-something times was because she was pregnant and he did not want any other man to help raise his child. And so her and the baby were both killed, and we've had bills proposed at the legislature in her honor because of how bad that was.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Right. And in those instances, I almost feel like the judges need to be held accountable. Like he attacked her. Why are you allowing this?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

You know, but used to be they would be held accountable at the ballot box, but now it's become so left versus right, and so we're, you know, we're overlooking that. And so I think we're fixing, we're coming back to a time where judges will be held accountable. But we're kind of committing the same cycle that we did in the 60s, where we were feeling safe, we were more forgiving on our criminal laws, and then crime went up, and then the two parties couldn't agree on how to address it, and so we had a backlash, and then we got Reagan elected in part because of crime, and with his war on drugs. I think that's just repeated itself. I think one of the reasons why Trump was elected on Trump 2.0 was crime and immigration policy. It was a backlash of one party refusing to address those issues and even admit that there was a problem. And so now we address that. I'm not sure how long it we need one more national election where one side loses because of their soft-on crime policy. And when they do that, then that party will self-correct and become a law and order policy party like it has been historically. Both of our national parties has have historically been soft law and order policy parties. And so we need one party to correct and and get back to that. And so we need one more national election where they lose to get to get to that result, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

We need to, because I think that's going to make them think about their choices just a little bit harder if you're using it.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

That's a great point. I mean, you know, we have examples of that even in the court system where, you know, these soft-owned crime policies have increased crime. And, you know, there was even a case, and I think it's Sanchez versus Alabama, where they lived under a preliminary injunction where they couldn't hold anybody because it was, you know, a judge imposed these soft-owned crime policies on them. And the sheriff of that county said, I'm not going to settle. I'm appealing. And they went up on appeal, and four years later, they won. And so they came back on got the went back to their old ways and have accountability. And they told people, if you don't do what you're told to do, you will go back to jail. And what do you know? Six months later, crime started going down. I mean, we know what to do to fight crime. We just have people preventing not doing it in our urban areas, in our soft on crime people. The people proposing soft-on crime policies, we know what to do to do it. I mean, Trump has proven that with his with crime, with what he did in DC and in other areas. And he's proven that, you know, we know how we know how to address the border overnight. We don't need new statutes. We just need somebody that's willing to follow the law that we already have.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

I covered a case, I believe it was in California, where a guy went to prison for rape of two women and one attempt rate of a child. And he went in front of the parole board and told them, do not let me out. And they let him out early. He didn't even finish this whole sentence. Early they let him out. And then he ended up murdering someone. He raped her and murdered her.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Well, you know, California is such a bad situation right now because, you know, years ago there was a federal lawsuit where they were alleging that the prison system in California didn't have the medical facilities, the medical doctors, nurses, whatever to provide proper medical care. And so they imposed a limit, a cap on how many people they can have in their prison system. But the, but the but the remedy did not require them to release people who were sick. It just was across the board releases. And, you know, it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the minority or the dissenters in that case would be the majority today if that issue went up to them because the the makeup of the court has changed. But at the time, the dissenter said when you release the equivalent of a brigade of criminals back into society, there is nothing you should expect except that crime will increase and that everywhere this has been done or tried in the past, crime has gone up. And I would argue that's exactly what's happened. And because of their refusal to build additional capacity, that's a backdoor limit that requires bail reform, criminal justice reform, because they refuse to build additional capacity in their system.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Well, they need to beef up their reform because I'm telling you what, a lot of people, they're repeat offenders. And for some of them, they prefer to be in jail because they're getting free meals, their clothes are washed, they can sleep all day. It's easier for them.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Well, but that's so some people But the reform in California, when they say, Oh, this will make us safer, it's a lie. It's only to decrease the jail the prison and jail population. It's not for any other reason. And when they call the bill to make us safer, it's it's a lie. It's not. It's just to decrease the population of the prison or the jail. So and that's it. It's not to make us safer, it's the opposite. And they will what they'll argue is well, on a percentage basis. Crime stayed the same because we released more criminals. What they're not telling you is, yeah, but crime went up 40% because of the amount of criminals they released into the population. But they're just playing numbers, playing the numbers game, and they're just, I mean, they're cooking the books to say, you know, don't believe your eyes that crime is going up. Believe us when we say it's not. Fake news. Yeah. Well, and I wrote an article last October saying, you know, here are all the reasons why we should not be believing the FBI statistics, because all the activists would say crime is not going up, and you don't have to believe us. You can just look at the FBI statistics. And there's a whole host of reasons why those weren't correct. And so I wrote an article about it. Well, probably 10 days later, suddenly the FBI statistics had been updated and they showed for the first time that crime was actually going up. And and and that's still incomplete because the data, I mean, they were switching over to a new system, and a lot of police departments were not reporting to the onto the new system because they had to get new equipment. And so suddenly the activists couldn't argue right before the election that crime wasn't going up. And you know, so so what happened is during the election, that's the moment when they started yelling Trump is a fascist, Trump is Hitler, because they could no longer talk about crime.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Well, I'm glad maybe they read your article and they're like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

No, yeah. I would like to say it was all me. I it was because of me. But no, I was just the timing. I mean, I was just very, very lucky with the timing. But yeah, I'm sure Biden himself read my article and said, oh my God, let's correct this. No, it was just lucky timing.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Especially because certain offenders, they don't, they don't change, you know, the domestic violence, the sexual offenders, the rape, like they just they don't change.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Well, you know, there's a lot of studies that say crime is committed by and large by the same people. So we have this city within a city, this crime city that that's committing about 60% of the crime or more. And so if we could just address them and hold them accountable and hold them, then we would be decreasing crime. But what our activist friends don't realize is there's also the gray area between the two cities, and that's full of people watching. And they're watching to see is the crime city being held accountable today? And if they are, well then I'm going to be a law and order citizen today. But if they're not being held accountable today, well then I'm going to join the crime city today because they're not being held accountable. And so we can decrease crime by addressing the 60% or the people who are committing 60% of the crime. But also in doing that, the people that live in the gray area will be influenced to be law and order citizens. And that's what we're losing.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Right. I mean, so many criminals, after they get let go, like a slap on the wrist three, four times, they're like, I own this shit. You can't touch me.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

That's a great way to say it. And what I say is it they see that as a green light to commit more crime because they're not being held accountable. And if they just don't come back to court, then their cases are put on hold. And if that happens enough, then their backlogs grow and that puts pressure on courts to dismiss cases. And if you dismiss a case, a criminal sees that as a green light to commit more crime because there was no consequences. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Right. Serial killers. Oh my God, got away with it for like because it was always just okay, go back out.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Well, generally in Texas, historically, if you commit murder or you're accused of murder, you're not going to really be released from jail. You're going to be held pretrial, you know, capital murder. But during COVID, Houston, which is Harris County, started releasing people and they released some accused of murder on personal bonds. And then they would go and then commit another murder. And so I started arguing that in Harris County in Houston, Texas, you got one free murder before they'd hold you. Kind of like a dog, you got one free bite before you were considered dangerous. And I'm like, Where this is ridiculous. What's wrong with holding people who are accused of these very serious crimes like we have always done? Only in Houston is are we turning day into night and saying that's good policy?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

You're healed.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

You're healed until you murder again.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

So, what advice do you have for people? Like, where do we go from here?

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Well, first of all, I'm very hopeful because these soft-owned crime policies are not sustainable and the public will not stand for them. These soft-owned crime DAs have a short shelf life. I don't think any of them have lasted more than two elections. I mean, Gascon out in LA ran for re-election a second time and got his butt kicked. I mean, it wasn't even pretty. He got beat by 20-something points. And uh and by and large, when they those DAs get replaced, they get replaced with law and order DAs. So there's there's a lot of hope that there's a lot of hope that what's it's not going to continue. And so I I think that's that's a good thing. The other thing is we've got to get politics. I mean, politics is always in the criminal justice system. It's, you know, the legislature is political, but it's in a it's in a drastic amount right now. And we've got to get politics out as much as we can from the criminal justice system. Because right now the politics is so bad, the politicians won't admit when something's not working. I mean, you know, I mean, you can look at the uh immigration because there's so much similarity between immigration and crime policy. So you've got one side of the political spectrum saying, oh, these people just want a new life. We don't, they we should not kick them out of the country. And we're like, well, what about vicious criminals? People who've been uh convicted of of vicious crimes in their home country, they won't respond to that argument. I mean, they just won't respond. And so we can't get agree on us on just the basic facts. And, you know, I I do think it's going to be hard to find a compromise on criminal justice reform, bail reform when one side of the debate won't even admit there's a problem. And so that means we have to find a solution without them, which is what happened in the 60s. That's how we got Reagan. And then they corrected and became a law and order policy again. Because if you look at Clinton, Clinton was a law and order president. Obama was a law and order. I mean, you know, the the left is demonizing Holman, Holman, who is the immigration czar. Obama gave him awards for doing the same job. So why is it being demonized under one president and he was received rewards on the other? It's because their focus groups say that this is the only or one of the only po issues that they can get they can use to try to take over the house in the the election that's coming up. So it's just a focus a focus group issue that they've identified with several others.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

I agree. Get politics out of it. Like y'all fuck enough shit up. Just out. Get out.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

That's funny. You're too funny. Yes. I would agree that we need to get politicians out and we need to admit that when something's not working, we should be able to admit it's not working. That's the problem right now. We won't admit it. They won't admit it. We just need more time. We need to throw more money at it. I mean, you know, it looks like in Minnesota, when you throw more money at it, everybody's getting it but where it needs to go.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Exactly. Someone's eaten really good.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah. Isn't that sad? I mean, and you think about, well, if Minnesota has that, you know,$9 billion in fraud, then how much does California have? I mean, it's 10 times that, 100 times that, whatever. But how many other places that we have that? And it's really, really sad. And and you know, it just proves that a lot of what we hear from Trump, even though it gets demonized, turns out to be true. I mean, the first time I heard that Venezuela was sending their criminals, they were emptying their jails and sending them to the United States was during the election, and Trump said it. I tried to share a story on Facebook about it. It was immediately deleted. And I thought, well, that's a mistake. It just disappeared. So I shared it again, immediately deleted. And then after Trump said it, then suddenly the press was trying to disprove it. And they said, well, it's they're not taking over all the apartment complexes, just some, which they didn't realize made them sound stupid. And then now we take it as a fact that there are countries that emptied emptied their prison system and sent those people to the United States, and we're getting them out of the country. And how many other things have we heard in this election in the election cycle? And only because it was said by one candidate, it had to be not true, and it's turned out to be true.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah. The problem is when politicians open their mouths, you never know if you should believe it.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And that is absolutely true. I mean, and but you know, we're now in a situation where every Republican candidate for president from now on will be called worse than Trump. Because the worst thing they can say is you're Trump. And so now every Republican, I'm just calling it right now. You wait, you can you can send me an email and say, can you were right? But you've already seen it with Vance. They're already setting him up saying he's worse than Trump. We can't have him president. He's worse than Trump. I mean, we're two year we're three years away from that election, and there are and the left is already demonizing Vance in advance of the election. He's worse than Trump. Every candidate for president from now on on the Republican side will be worse than Trump.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Can our legislators help with this kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_00 32:51

Well, you know, uh, historically the parties have self-policed. You know, you know, I heard one time that said that for a democracy to survive, it relied upon the consent of the losing party to govern. And if you think about it, since Trump won Trump won and Trump two, the losing party has refused to consent to allow Trump to govern. The problems we're having are because the losers have refused to consent to be governed. And that's if we don't have that, and they spend all their time delegitimizing the election, and you know, the other guy lied, he cheated, then it's hard to have a country that runs smoothly. So we need to go back to where we put country first. And I think by and large, you know, people can disagree with me, but I think the right does. I mean, Obama and Biden didn't have great trouble in getting their cabinet nominated or confirmed by the Senate. The the right doesn't prevent the the left from putting up candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court when I mean they may not vote on them if there's if they can figure out a reason, but they don't, once they're there, they don't prevent them. That's not true on the other side. And so until we can get that party to self-govern a little bit, to moderate, we're gonna be in this period of problem. And I think it they will start self-moderate moderating if they will lose another national election on crime immigration policy, and they'll moderate then. They won't have any choice.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

I hope we turn something around because it ain't looking good in any state.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

I mean, well, right now you have so much money. I mean, look at Texas. Texas has always been a conservative state. Even when the Democrats were in charge of Texas, it was a conservative state. But the problem is right now, the Democrats on a national on a statewide election usually lose by 13 points. And the reason why is because for you to run a campaign statewide in Texas, you have to raise a bunch of money. And to raise the money from the money people on the left, you have to say things. You have to say certain policies. And the problem is once you say those things and you get the money, you've now disqualified yourself pretty much from being able to win the election in Texas because Texas is a conservative state.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

So many games you have to play.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah, well, you know, used to the the left had room in their party for conservatives. They don't anymore. And what they're finding now is they're running, they're having less room for people of all kinds. And so their party gets smaller and smaller. That's why they need this immigration issue. And, you know, I for a long time I used to like, why are we having this immigration fight? Why are we doing this? Well, we found out now. If they can flood California with illegal aliens, they get larger representation. They get more members of the House assigned to California. So they get more power by bringing in illegal immigrants.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

It's insane.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Yes. It's absolutely insane. That but again, it's not gonna last. It's now chasing the rest of their citizens out of the state. So they've started losing seats. And some there's a there's projections that in the next census, they may new, you know, these states may lose enough seats where even if Kamala Harris had won the Rust Belt, she would under the new census, if they're not careful, she'd have still lost. Because that's what's coming under their current policies, because they're running off people. I mean, can you imagine we have this big fence around California that says y'all can be crazy, but we're not. That's that's not sustainable. That's not sustainable.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

And people are fleeing in buses from there. Like people who live there, they don't want there.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

And they're trying to figure out ways to tax them when they leave. I mean, they need the money, and so it'll be interesting. And but you know, they're kind of in a box. If you think about it, the elected officials cannot agree that something's not working because the activists won't let them. If they were to agree, oh, this is not working, we need to find another solution. Well, the activists will put up somebody to run against them, they'll demonize them, and they'll be done. And they will be done, period. And so that's why you see a lot of situations where you know the politicians can't agree something's not working because their political life will be they're being held hostage by the activists.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

It's okay to admit defeat people. It's okay. It makes you grow.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

Yeah, it is, but you know, when you're a politician and you spend all your life just as a talking head, what can you do if the people who are giving you money suddenly say, I'm not giving you any money anymore because you agree that something's not working that I don't agree with. Wow. I mean, our election reform that created the ability for people to give unlimited money to political action committees is the cause of a lot of this. So billionaires have untold say in our elections now because they're not giving money to the campaigns, they're giving it to these groups that are then going in and support the campaign. They can't coordinate, but they they coordinate. So I mean, can you imagine? So Kamala was in the election for how many weeks and she got two billion dollars and she lost. And you could argue whether she lost big or lost little, she lost, but I mean, she was spending money hand over fist, and and she ended up in debt after the election. I don't think that she's paid back now. And wow, I didn't know that. And just think, so they gave her two billion dollars and she lost. Is there any chance that they're gonna give her two billion dollars again to run a second time? No. No, there's no chance. I mean, she doesn't know it yet, but she's not running, she's not gonna be the nominee again. The Democrat Party has a history of they usually do not select somebody who lost a second time. I mean, you have to go way, way back in history before they did that. Now, the Republicans, they're more likely to do that because it's your turn. I mean, Reagan lost a Ford and then he came back and ran again and won. So I I I think, I mean, it looks like to me they're clearing the field for Newsom right now. And I don't think Newsom can win. So some people are saying that the eventual nominee is not anybody that's on the horizon right now. But we'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

You never know.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Well, I'm hoping that the candidate is going to be someone who's taken a stance on crime, because it needs to be someone on the left who's taken a strong stance on crime, and if they've taken these soft on crime policies, they'll lose. And so that's what we need, so that they'll lose and they'll start moderating. Newsom, he tries to sound like a moderate, but he will he will rule from the far left. So if you want crime to go down, it he can't be the winner. But it doesn't have anything to do with Democrat or Republican. He's just soft on crime.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Right. We've had enough of that.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

We've we have. We've had enough of the soft-one crime. I mean, look at California. They elected Proposition 47, which changed certain felonies to misdemeanor, including including crime under 900 theft under$950. Then the the uh soft-on-crime DA said, well, you know what, we're not going to prosecute that anymore. And so suddenly shoplifting goes sky high in in you know LA and our urban areas. Stores can't stay open because they can't withstand$25,000 a day in shoplifting. And then crime in the area goes up, and then drug use goes up, and then commercial property values start plummeting. They go to start selling for 30% to 50% of what they were selling for five years before. And so what happens? Well, the public can't stand that. And so they roll back Proposition 47, and the only reason why it wasn't a complete victory is the legislature in California is not funding the rollback. And so we're still having those problems because they won't fund what the people voted for. A backdoor soft own crime policy.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Yeah, it's just a mess. Big old mess.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

Well, this has been very interesting. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

No, uh no, I guess not. I'm just um I appreciate you talking to me about all these issues today. And, you know, we have so many. I guess I would just close with, you know, we have signs where the public has had enough. And we've had examples, especially in New York, where members of the public have tried to come forward and help when someone's in distress. And the DA in in New York has even prosecuted a couple of them criminally. And you would you could say, well, why would he do that? Well, he's trying to discourage further vigilantes from getting involved to stop crime. Because, you know, as I said, you know, the public only has limited time where they're gonna put up with this and they're gonna demand public safety. And the first thing would be, you know, he would call it vigilante justice, where people in the public are gonna step in and stop things like this. And that's what's happened. And so they've tried to prosecute them to try to send the message to the public, do not try to stop this, do not get involved. But if the, you know, if law enforcement isn't gonna do that because of whatever policy, whatever's going on with the elected officials, the public is gonna demand it. And so it's it it that's where we are. And I I loved what happened in DC because crime has gone down so much in DC, and uh, it just shows we know how to do it. All we have to do is let good cops be good cops. And the reason why that kind of hit me home is during Trump's first administration, my daughter was in college, and she applied to be an intern at the White House. And she was accepted, and she was a bunch she was a one of a bunch of interns, but she was one of three who was in the West End, West Wing, every day for a semester during Trump's first term. And so As a parent, with someone living in a kind of a dorm-like facility across the street from the United States Supreme Court, I mean, her public, her safety was very much my biggest worry. I mean, when when she told me she'd applied, I'm like, well, great, you'll never get it because you know the odds. And then when she told me she got it, I was like, congratulations, you can't go.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

You're grounded.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

I was like, you cannot go because it's not safe. And I I don't, I can't just get in my car and drive to Washington, DC from Texas when you need something. And so, I mean, we're we're very close. I'm like, you can't go. And of course, she did. She had a great experience, she had a great time, but that's why it's like Washington DC was a safe place then. We can make it a safe place again. We know what to do. We can do that anywhere. We just have politicians tying the hands of people for political reasons.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

And all about enforcement. You gotta enforce it.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

You gotta have enforcement, you gotta have h hold people accountable, and then once they're being held accountable, why do you know? Crime starts going down. Who knew? Who knew? Well, and when 60% of the crime is being committed by a small group of people. Wow, who would have ever thought we need to address a small group of people?

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Well, thank you so much for having me. You know, if people want more information about my group, we can you can go to pbtx.com, which is the professional bondsman of Texas. We have a blog where we highlight criminal justice stories that we think are important. But we also have our own podcast, which has a link on our menu, or you can just go to thebailpost.com. The Bellpost. And all we talk about is criminal justice issues. What works, what doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

I love that. I'll make sure I put the links in the show notes. So anyone who wants, it'll be right there, ready for them. This is great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

You're very welcome.