April 13, 2026 • 15 mins
The numbers don't lie. The George Soros-funded DAs and the effort to defund police have a profound impact on the safety of a community. Zack Smith of the Heritage Foundation shared the stats.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Good ay, mates, and welcome. It's the third hour of
the Morning Show with Preston Scott. I got to turn
the page on the rundown and here we go into
the third hour. It is show fifty five eighty one.
That is Jose in Studio one A. I'm here in
Studio one B, and I'm pleased to have with us
a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, manager the
(00:28):
Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program at Heritage, co author
of Roague Prosecutors, How radical Soros lawyers are destroying America's communities.
He is our friendy Zach Smith. How Zach, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm doing well, Preston. Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I'm always fascinated by what is the straw that breaks
the back when writers choose to pick a topic and say, Okay,
I'm now writing about this. Was this a culmination of things?
Or did Was there one story, one event, one community
that brought this article out?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Now it's really a culmination of Thanks Preston. Look, as
you mentioned, I've written a lot on crime, police and
criminal justice issues over the past several years, and I
travel a lot for my job. I have an opportunity
to go into many of these communities, places like Washington,
d C, Memphis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and I saw
a firsthand just how bad things had gotten in many
(01:26):
of those cities of the past four or five years.
And recently I noticed a turnaround in some of those cities. Now,
there's still a long way to go in many of
these places, but particularly in Washington, DC, compared to the
state of things three years ago, it is a much
much cleaner place today, is a much safer place today.
And I said, well, let's take a look and let's
(01:46):
find out why this sudden turnaround has happened.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, I want to do a deep dive into Washington,
DC because in your column you cite some things that
I want to get into. But I want to back
up just a little bit. You know, there were some
of us that looked at the election in New York
City and the proclamations that now Zoron Mom Donnie has made.
And now he's told us that he is the Grand
Puba of all things, that he will overrule the police
(02:13):
commissioner as needed. Yeah, Flintstone's reference, You're welcome. I look
at New York City and say you know what they
voted for this, But this is going to be a
good thing for America to see, to see how things
so dramatically change and not for the better, because it's
not possible for it to work to move towards the better.
(02:35):
What's your view of New York City and what you're
going to see from a crime perspective there with Mom
Donnie's positions.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, it's a sad state of affairs, Preston, There's no
doubt about it. And I think in some sense we're
going to get a real life, real time natural experiment
where you're seeing New York, Chicago, a couple of these
other deep blue cities who are doubling down on their
fell policies when it comes to criminal justice. So you
have Zoron momde who obviously is pushing policies that I
think will make New Yorkers less safe. He's pushing policies
(03:05):
that will likely lead to a rightist level staffing shortage
among the New York Police Department. The NYPD there, you've
already seen record numbers of retirements, record numbers of officers
leaving for our home state of Florida and elsewhere around
the country as well. And then keep in mind, on
top of that, you have Alvin Bragg, who is the
rogue Soils backed prosecutor there in Manhattan, continuing to push
(03:29):
his problematic policies. Now, the one silver lining for New
York maybe that things aren't going to hit absolute rock
bottom immediately because you still have the Trump administration, the
Trump doj going in aggressively prosecuting violent crime at the
federal level. That's something that the Biden Justice Department wasn't
(03:51):
doing well, wasn't doing very much of, to be perfectly frank,
But the Trump administration is doing that now. If that changes,
I think that would be really a night nurse scenario
for New York City.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And what's really interesting to me is that Mom Donnie
is so extreme he's even having to fight the liberal
government of the State of New York on some fronts.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, whenever you see New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul
coming out trying to be the voice of reason, that
should be a red flag for everyone that something has
gone terribly wrong, terribly off the rails in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Zach. You brought up the nation's capital at the very
beginning of this. Tell us, give us a retrospective here.
When Joe Biden took office, what started happening?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Nothing good? Preston, Now that's kind of part for the
course for stuff coming out of Washington, DC. But it
was really sad. Things got really bad in the District
of Columbia. It was leading our nation in terms of murders,
is leading our nation in terms of carjackings, leading our
nation in terms of violent crimes being committed. And they
were really at least two causes behind that. The first
(05:02):
is you had local radical city council members who pledged
to defund the police. I talk about it in my article.
One city council member was giddy that the funding cuts
would lead to the largest decrease in the local police
force in nearly fifty years. And guess what that turned
out to be. Right, DC police are shorthanded by almost
(05:23):
four hundred sworn officers today. That's a fifty year low
in terms of manpower for the local police force. And
then you had the Biden US Attorney for the District
of Columbia, who essentially serves as the districts of local
elected DA but he's appointed by the president because of
the unique status of the district. But the Biden appointed
(05:44):
US attorney essentially took a soft on crime approach. Wasn't
prosecuting a number of crimes, just cutting sweetheart plea deals
with repeat violent offenders. And so of course you start
to see those violent crimes exponentially increasing.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You know, we always hear the left throw out how
there are so many minorities in prison that the numbers
are disproportionately high, but they ignore the other disproportionately high
part of the equation that you quantified in your in
your article, the victims.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, nobody talks about the victims, Preston. That's often the
forgotten component of this conversation. Whenever we talk about murders. Yeah,
we talk about the numbers. But keep in mind each
one of those murder victims, that was a person with
a families, people who cared about them, who loved them,
a community that suffers as a result of it. And
to your point, you know, one of the sad realities
(06:38):
is that young black men are disproportionately victims of violent crimes,
particularly murders and shootings. And so whenever you see those
violent crime numbers increasing, the shootings, the murders increasing, that
fortunately means more young Black men are being victimized, and
so the very individuals so many of these policies are
(06:59):
designed to have it actually ends up hurting those individuals
the most.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You talked about murders, You talked about carjackings. Give us
quantify that just a little bit. Give us some numbers
that you have.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, So let's go back about fifteen years or so.
In twenty twelve, the district had a forty nine year
low of eighty eight murders. Now, for a big city
like DC with a long history of violence, with a
long history of crime, that is a tremendous accomplishment eighty
eight murders. By twenty twenty three, the district was experiencing
a twenty five year high of two hundred and seventy
(07:35):
four murders. So you went from eighty eight to two
hundred and seventy four murders carjacking in twenty nineteen. As
recent as twenty nineteen, there was a relatively low number
for DC of one hundred and fifty two carjackings that
occurred in the district. If we fast forward to twenty
twenty three, there were nine hundred and fifty seven. Think
(07:56):
about that present nine hundred and fifty seven, almost one
thousand carjackings inter nation's capital in just that short period
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three. That's an increase
of almost five hundred percent. And keep in mind you
even had members of Congress being carjacked outside of their
own apartment buildings. That's how bad things got, and it
(08:17):
was a really unfortunate and very sad thing to see.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
When we come back, Zack Smith will stay with us.
We're going to talk about how George Sorow's factors into
any of this, and whether it's quite so isolated as
maybe some of you might think, because it's really not.
We're also going to talk about the after because things
have changed. The old adage there's a new sheriff in
town has literally proven to be accurate in the case
(08:44):
of Washington, DC, and we'll talk about it next with
the Heritage Foundation. Zach Smith, friend of the program, been
with us for many years, senior legal fellow, and we're
talking about an article that he wrote highlightings up before
and after, if you will, a snapshot of how these
rogue prosecutors across the country are causing really big problems
(09:08):
for communities across the country. Communities large and small, because
the effort by George Soros is in communities large and small.
And Zach, I want you to just share a little bit.
How does George Soros factor into this whole equation? What
does he have to do with state attorneys across the country.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, well, George Charles, he's very good at finding arbitrage opportunities.
He's very good at finding where his money, his resources
can be most effective. And he realized that state attorneys
are local DA racist typically are very low profile, low
dollar affairs, and for a relatively modest investment when we're
talking about political donations, he could have an outsized influence
(09:50):
on those races. And he was also smart enough to
realize that he didn't have to do the hard work
of convincing legislatures to change their laws to overcome a
governor's veto to get new policies put in place. He
just had to change who is in charge of enforcing
many of those laws. And so he has funded, to
the tune of millions upon millions of dollars directly funded
(10:12):
many of these DA races. He's put in place an
entire infrastructure to support their work. And unfortunately, even though
there have been a lot of successes recently in pushing
back against this radical movement. It's still very much alive
and well, I mentioned New York earlier, there's still row
prosecutors and places in California, places in Texas, and even
(10:35):
in Florida. Montiq Correl in Orlando is still in office
and still promoting a number of very problematic policies.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I mentioned that things changed with the election of Donald Trump.
Let's quantify that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, Well, Donald trumk he came into office. The first
thing he did he appointed a new US attorney, Jean Pierro,
Judge Jenin, who said she's actually going to prosecute crime.
She made clear that if you commit a sense in
the District of Columbia, you're going to be prosecuted and
appropriate cases of prison sentence is going to be sought.
Or even if you murder someone, she will seek the
(11:10):
death penalty for you if the circumstances warranted. So that's
a big change in and of itself. And then the
other thing that the president did he deployed the National
Guard to Washington, d C. Now, he got a lot
of blowback for that. Many people on the left were
very unhappy about it, But essentially what he did by
deploying the Guard to Washington DC, he solved the immediate
(11:31):
man power shortage. I mentioned it before the break that
Washington DC's local police force was at a fifty year
low in terms of manpower. Well, by deploying the Guard,
he essentially solved in some respects that manpower shortage. Now,
the Guard is not a permanent solution. I don't think
anyone thinks that it will be a permanent solution, but
it helped immediately solve that manpower crisis and press them
(11:55):
the numbers the results speak for themselves. I mentioned in
twenty three that the district had two hundred and seventy
four murders. Well, guess what. So far this year, there
have only been twelve murders in Washington DC. That's a
sixty eight percent decrease from this same time period last year.
(12:15):
And if that number holds, this will be the lowest
year for Washington DC in terms of murders committed really
since good records were kept beginning all the way back
in the nineteen thirties. Of carjackings have also plummeted this year.
So far, there have only been thirty seven reported carjackings.
That's down by about forty four percent compared to this
(12:38):
same time last year. And so this idea that we
cannot police, we cannot prosecute, our way out of a
violent crime crisis plaguing many cities today, I think these
results show that that is just not true, that these
tactics work, and that more cities should be adopting them.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Let's take thee before, because I think it's a harbinger
for what we're going to probably see in New York City. Zora,
Mom Donnie's talking about cutting five thousand police officers from
the New York City Police Department.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's terrifying. There's another way to put it. It's terrifying. Look,
we know that putting police officers on the street, empowering
them to appropriately and responsibly perform their jobs, is one
of the most effective crime finding tools available. And you
know what, preston, if you go into many crime ridden neighborhoods,
the residents of those neighborhoods will tell you we want
(13:31):
more officers on the street. We want more officers in
our neighborhood to help enforce the law, to help enforce
community standards. And so whenever you're talking about that drastic,
that dramatic of a decrease in the number of sworn
officers is going to cause many problems. And I think
what happened in Washington, d C. On a much smaller
(13:52):
scale shows just how bad it can get how quick.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So is the big takeaway. I feel like there are
two big takeaways here, and you correct me or amplify
or change whatever. One is. Defunding the police does not work,
and two, funding the wrong people to become the district attorney,
state attorney, or what have you, the lead prosecutor in
a given community can have a remarkable impact on the
(14:19):
quality of life in that community.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
One percent agree with both of those things full stop.
What I would add on top of that is, look,
we're not trying to reinvent the hill the wheel here
when it comes to protecting communities. Think back to the
early nineties in New York City, Rudy Giuliani and goll Braddon.
They employed what's known as broken windows policing. Basically, they
enforced the small things, stop small problems from becoming big problems,
(14:43):
and we saw a record decreases in crime when that happened.
We know that by putting officers on the streets by
prosecuting criminals, particularly repeat violent offenders. That that is how
we protect our communities, how we enforce law and order.
And yet so many on the left today say that
we don't have to use those techniques, that those techniques
(15:03):
are harmful, and again, nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Zach is always great intel. Thanks for writing it and
appreciate you joining us this morning.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Talk to you soon, of course. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Thank you. Zach Smith with us from the Heritage Foundation,
Senior legal fellow, manager of the Supreme Court and Pellid
Advocacy programmedt Heritage and co author of a book Appropriate
Huh Rogue Prosecutors, How radical soorros lawyers are destroying America's communities. Look,
this is as important a topic as you can imagine.
(15:36):
In the upcoming election cycle. Are you in a community
where the state attorney's up for a re election or election?
Pay attention to who is funding who. That will tell
you a lot of what you need to know.
Good ay, mates, and welcome. It's the third hour of
the Morning Show with Preston Scott. I got to turn
the page on the rundown and here we go into
the third hour. It is show fifty five eighty one.
That is Jose in Studio one A. I'm here in
Studio one B, and I'm pleased to have with us
a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, manager the
(00:28):
Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program at Heritage, co author
of Roague Prosecutors, How radical Soros lawyers are destroying America's communities.
He is our friendy Zach Smith. How Zach, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm doing well, Preston. Thanks for having me on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I'm always fascinated by what is the straw that breaks
the back when writers choose to pick a topic and say, Okay,
I'm now writing about this. Was this a culmination of things?
Or did Was there one story, one event, one community
that brought this article out?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Now it's really a culmination of Thanks Preston. Look, as
you mentioned, I've written a lot on crime, police and
criminal justice issues over the past several years, and I
travel a lot for my job. I have an opportunity
to go into many of these communities, places like Washington,
d C, Memphis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and I saw
a firsthand just how bad things had gotten in many
(01:26):
of those cities of the past four or five years.
And recently I noticed a turnaround in some of those cities. Now,
there's still a long way to go in many of
these places, but particularly in Washington, DC, compared to the
state of things three years ago, it is a much
much cleaner place today, is a much safer place today.
And I said, well, let's take a look and let's
(01:46):
find out why this sudden turnaround has happened.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, I want to do a deep dive into Washington,
DC because in your column you cite some things that
I want to get into. But I want to back
up just a little bit. You know, there were some
of us that looked at the election in New York
City and the proclamations that now Zoron Mom Donnie has made.
And now he's told us that he is the Grand
Puba of all things, that he will overrule the police
(02:13):
commissioner as needed. Yeah, Flintstone's reference, You're welcome. I look
at New York City and say you know what they
voted for this, But this is going to be a
good thing for America to see, to see how things
so dramatically change and not for the better, because it's
not possible for it to work to move towards the better.
(02:35):
What's your view of New York City and what you're
going to see from a crime perspective there with Mom
Donnie's positions.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, it's a sad state of affairs, Preston, There's no
doubt about it. And I think in some sense we're
going to get a real life, real time natural experiment
where you're seeing New York, Chicago, a couple of these
other deep blue cities who are doubling down on their
fell policies when it comes to criminal justice. So you
have Zoron momde who obviously is pushing policies that I
think will make New Yorkers less safe. He's pushing policies
(03:05):
that will likely lead to a rightist level staffing shortage
among the New York Police Department. The NYPD there, you've
already seen record numbers of retirements, record numbers of officers
leaving for our home state of Florida and elsewhere around
the country as well. And then keep in mind, on
top of that, you have Alvin Bragg, who is the
rogue Soils backed prosecutor there in Manhattan, continuing to push
(03:29):
his problematic policies. Now, the one silver lining for New
York maybe that things aren't going to hit absolute rock
bottom immediately because you still have the Trump administration, the
Trump doj going in aggressively prosecuting violent crime at the
federal level. That's something that the Biden Justice Department wasn't
(03:51):
doing well, wasn't doing very much of, to be perfectly frank,
But the Trump administration is doing that now. If that changes,
I think that would be really a night nurse scenario
for New York City.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And what's really interesting to me is that Mom Donnie
is so extreme he's even having to fight the liberal
government of the State of New York on some fronts.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Well, whenever you see New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul
coming out trying to be the voice of reason, that
should be a red flag for everyone that something has
gone terribly wrong, terribly off the rails in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Zach. You brought up the nation's capital at the very
beginning of this. Tell us, give us a retrospective here.
When Joe Biden took office, what started happening?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Nothing good? Preston, Now that's kind of part for the
course for stuff coming out of Washington, DC. But it
was really sad. Things got really bad in the District
of Columbia. It was leading our nation in terms of murders,
is leading our nation in terms of carjackings, leading our
nation in terms of violent crimes being committed. And they
were really at least two causes behind that. The first
(05:02):
is you had local radical city council members who pledged
to defund the police. I talk about it in my article.
One city council member was giddy that the funding cuts
would lead to the largest decrease in the local police
force in nearly fifty years. And guess what that turned
out to be. Right, DC police are shorthanded by almost
(05:23):
four hundred sworn officers today. That's a fifty year low
in terms of manpower for the local police force. And
then you had the Biden US Attorney for the District
of Columbia, who essentially serves as the districts of local
elected DA but he's appointed by the president because of
the unique status of the district. But the Biden appointed
(05:44):
US attorney essentially took a soft on crime approach. Wasn't
prosecuting a number of crimes, just cutting sweetheart plea deals
with repeat violent offenders. And so of course you start
to see those violent crimes exponentially increasing.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
You know, we always hear the left throw out how
there are so many minorities in prison that the numbers
are disproportionately high, but they ignore the other disproportionately high
part of the equation that you quantified in your in
your article, the victims.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, nobody talks about the victims, Preston. That's often the
forgotten component of this conversation. Whenever we talk about murders. Yeah,
we talk about the numbers. But keep in mind each
one of those murder victims, that was a person with
a families, people who cared about them, who loved them,
a community that suffers as a result of it. And
to your point, you know, one of the sad realities
(06:38):
is that young black men are disproportionately victims of violent crimes,
particularly murders and shootings. And so whenever you see those
violent crime numbers increasing, the shootings, the murders increasing, that
fortunately means more young Black men are being victimized, and
so the very individuals so many of these policies are
(06:59):
designed to have it actually ends up hurting those individuals
the most.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
You talked about murders, You talked about carjackings. Give us
quantify that just a little bit. Give us some numbers
that you have.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, So let's go back about fifteen years or so.
In twenty twelve, the district had a forty nine year
low of eighty eight murders. Now, for a big city
like DC with a long history of violence, with a
long history of crime, that is a tremendous accomplishment eighty
eight murders. By twenty twenty three, the district was experiencing
a twenty five year high of two hundred and seventy
(07:35):
four murders. So you went from eighty eight to two
hundred and seventy four murders carjacking in twenty nineteen. As
recent as twenty nineteen, there was a relatively low number
for DC of one hundred and fifty two carjackings that
occurred in the district. If we fast forward to twenty
twenty three, there were nine hundred and fifty seven. Think
(07:56):
about that present nine hundred and fifty seven, almost one
thousand carjackings inter nation's capital in just that short period
between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three. That's an increase
of almost five hundred percent. And keep in mind you
even had members of Congress being carjacked outside of their
own apartment buildings. That's how bad things got, and it
(08:17):
was a really unfortunate and very sad thing to see.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
When we come back, Zack Smith will stay with us.
We're going to talk about how George Sorow's factors into
any of this, and whether it's quite so isolated as
maybe some of you might think, because it's really not.
We're also going to talk about the after because things
have changed. The old adage there's a new sheriff in
town has literally proven to be accurate in the case
(08:44):
of Washington, DC, and we'll talk about it next with
the Heritage Foundation. Zach Smith, friend of the program, been
with us for many years, senior legal fellow, and we're
talking about an article that he wrote highlightings up before
and after, if you will, a snapshot of how these
rogue prosecutors across the country are causing really big problems
(09:08):
for communities across the country. Communities large and small, because
the effort by George Soros is in communities large and small.
And Zach, I want you to just share a little bit.
How does George Soros factor into this whole equation? What
does he have to do with state attorneys across the country.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, well, George Charles, he's very good at finding arbitrage opportunities.
He's very good at finding where his money, his resources
can be most effective. And he realized that state attorneys
are local DA racist typically are very low profile, low
dollar affairs, and for a relatively modest investment when we're
talking about political donations, he could have an outsized influence
(09:50):
on those races. And he was also smart enough to
realize that he didn't have to do the hard work
of convincing legislatures to change their laws to overcome a
governor's veto to get new policies put in place. He
just had to change who is in charge of enforcing
many of those laws. And so he has funded, to
the tune of millions upon millions of dollars directly funded
(10:12):
many of these DA races. He's put in place an
entire infrastructure to support their work. And unfortunately, even though
there have been a lot of successes recently in pushing
back against this radical movement. It's still very much alive
and well, I mentioned New York earlier, there's still row
prosecutors and places in California, places in Texas, and even
(10:35):
in Florida. Montiq Correl in Orlando is still in office
and still promoting a number of very problematic policies.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I mentioned that things changed with the election of Donald Trump.
Let's quantify that.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, Well, Donald trumk he came into office. The first
thing he did he appointed a new US attorney, Jean Pierro,
Judge Jenin, who said she's actually going to prosecute crime.
She made clear that if you commit a sense in
the District of Columbia, you're going to be prosecuted and
appropriate cases of prison sentence is going to be sought.
Or even if you murder someone, she will seek the
(11:10):
death penalty for you if the circumstances warranted. So that's
a big change in and of itself. And then the
other thing that the president did he deployed the National
Guard to Washington, d C. Now, he got a lot
of blowback for that. Many people on the left were
very unhappy about it, But essentially what he did by
deploying the Guard to Washington DC, he solved the immediate
(11:31):
man power shortage. I mentioned it before the break that
Washington DC's local police force was at a fifty year
low in terms of manpower. Well, by deploying the Guard,
he essentially solved in some respects that manpower shortage. Now,
the Guard is not a permanent solution. I don't think
anyone thinks that it will be a permanent solution, but
it helped immediately solve that manpower crisis and press them
(11:55):
the numbers the results speak for themselves. I mentioned in
twenty three that the district had two hundred and seventy
four murders. Well, guess what. So far this year, there
have only been twelve murders in Washington DC. That's a
sixty eight percent decrease from this same time period last year.
(12:15):
And if that number holds, this will be the lowest
year for Washington DC in terms of murders committed really
since good records were kept beginning all the way back
in the nineteen thirties. Of carjackings have also plummeted this year.
So far, there have only been thirty seven reported carjackings.
That's down by about forty four percent compared to this
(12:38):
same time last year. And so this idea that we
cannot police, we cannot prosecute, our way out of a
violent crime crisis plaguing many cities today, I think these
results show that that is just not true, that these
tactics work, and that more cities should be adopting them.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Let's take thee before, because I think it's a harbinger
for what we're going to probably see in New York City. Zora,
Mom Donnie's talking about cutting five thousand police officers from
the New York City Police Department.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's terrifying. There's another way to put it. It's terrifying. Look,
we know that putting police officers on the street, empowering
them to appropriately and responsibly perform their jobs, is one
of the most effective crime finding tools available. And you
know what, preston, if you go into many crime ridden neighborhoods,
the residents of those neighborhoods will tell you we want
(13:31):
more officers on the street. We want more officers in
our neighborhood to help enforce the law, to help enforce
community standards. And so whenever you're talking about that drastic,
that dramatic of a decrease in the number of sworn
officers is going to cause many problems. And I think
what happened in Washington, d C. On a much smaller
(13:52):
scale shows just how bad it can get how quick.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So is the big takeaway. I feel like there are
two big takeaways here, and you correct me or amplify
or change whatever. One is. Defunding the police does not work,
and two, funding the wrong people to become the district attorney,
state attorney, or what have you, the lead prosecutor in
a given community can have a remarkable impact on the
(14:19):
quality of life in that community.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
One percent agree with both of those things full stop.
What I would add on top of that is, look,
we're not trying to reinvent the hill the wheel here
when it comes to protecting communities. Think back to the
early nineties in New York City, Rudy Giuliani and goll Braddon.
They employed what's known as broken windows policing. Basically, they
enforced the small things, stop small problems from becoming big problems,
(14:43):
and we saw a record decreases in crime when that happened.
We know that by putting officers on the streets by
prosecuting criminals, particularly repeat violent offenders. That that is how
we protect our communities, how we enforce law and order.
And yet so many on the left today say that
we don't have to use those techniques, that those techniques
(15:03):
are harmful, and again, nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Zach is always great intel. Thanks for writing it and
appreciate you joining us this morning.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Talk to you soon, of course. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Thank you. Zach Smith with us from the Heritage Foundation,
Senior legal fellow, manager of the Supreme Court and Pellid
Advocacy programmedt Heritage and co author of a book Appropriate
Huh Rogue Prosecutors, How radical soorros lawyers are destroying America's communities. Look,
this is as important a topic as you can imagine.
(15:36):
In the upcoming election cycle. Are you in a community
where the state attorney's up for a re election or election?
Pay attention to who is funding who. That will tell
you a lot of what you need to know.
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