Americas_Criminologist_07_14_2026_Guest Zach Smith Heritage Foundation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Col steal sus Wight just dissing me as a faith.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Shadows secrets.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Doctor currys do the same.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
I'm graminologist sales of Aloss, Freya and Bruce, And here's
America's criminologist, doctor Curry Myers.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you, mister producer. I appreciate it. Welcome to America's criminologist,
Doctor Curry Myers. Here, retired major county sheriff, former special
agent and state trooper, also spent fifteen years in the
world of academia, serving as a school dean and teaching criminology.
Don't hold that against me, by the way, but I
sure enjoyed it. And I was one of the few
professors that actually had practical experience and could use my

(01:06):
twenty four years in law enforcement to give contexts. So
I'm glad I did it and still mentoring a lot
of my students that are out there. This show, as
you know, is where we talk about crime culture and
the foundations that sustain a civil society. I have a
new book coming out in the spring of twenty twenty seven.
It's The Rise of fareral Man, Return of feral Man.

(01:28):
It's a two volume examination of America's moral and cultural crisis.
The first volume, The Rise of Feral Man, explains how
we lost our way. The second volume, The Return of
Faraoh Man, offers a practical roadmap for restoring faith, family,
and formation, and the foundations of healthy civilization. So say
stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to

(01:49):
that release. I'll be appearing on Guadalupe Radio this week
on Friday in Dallas, actually discussing that book content. So
if you're interested, you can listen live on GRC online.
Also put it out on my substack page once it's
downloaded to My substack page is doctor Currymeyers dot substack

(02:11):
dot com. All of my radio shows, all of my interviews,
all of my published works, research papers, whatever it may be,
is there on that substack for you to see, so
feel free to take a look at it. This segment
of America's Criminologist is brought to you by Real Resilience.
That's our e E. L. Resilience. It's a transformative program

(02:33):
helping inmates prepare for successful re entry. Real Resilience believes
lasting change occurs when individuals can see a better future,
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(02:55):
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(03:15):
can go to swank dot com and locate their real
Resilience tab to check out their correctional models for both
jails and prisons. Or won't be disappointed. All right, here's
my rift for the day. You know, one of the
mistakes we make in America is believing that public safety
begins with the criminal justice system. Well, it actually doesn't.
It starts in the home. The evidence is clear, accountability works,

(03:39):
police matter, prosecutors matter, consequences matter. But those are the backstop,
They're not the foundation. The first line of defense against
crime has always been the institutions that shape character long
before someone else ever encounters a police officer. That's strong families,
strong communities, moral framework, that teaches personal responsibility, and that

(04:03):
has been dissipating over the years. The good news, my friends,
is the last couple of years we're seeing a seed
change with the youth. There are many young people now
that are tired of moral relativism and they're starting to
see the light. If we're serious about making America safer,
we need more than good policing and sound prosecution. We

(04:26):
need to rebuild the very institutions that form good citizens.
And we need to stay true to the constitution that
our founding fathers built for us. And it was done
through providence. They were guided and that brings us to
our great guests today. We've had him on the show before.
He's a brilliant legal scholar. Zach is senior legal Fellow

(04:49):
of Courts and a constitution at the Heritage Foundation. It's
one of my favorite foundations to look at. There's website
there that you can I highly recommend you view. All
of zach public works is on that as well as
all the other experts that serve at Heritage. He previously
served for several years as an Assistant United States Attorney

(05:11):
in the Northern District of Florida, and I got to
tell you, I worked with a lot of adas in
my career as a special agent, and good ones are
important to have, and I was very blessed to work
with him. As a matter of fact, one of the
adas that I worked with President Trump just or not
just he nominating him to the federal bench. And he

(05:33):
took over the federal bench just last week, so we're
excited about that. His name's Tony Mativ and he was
the Attorney General Kansas. Chris Kobok appointed him the KBI director,
and he was the KBI director of the last couple
of years, and there wasn't a finer KBI director in
its history. He did amazing things, and I'm really privileged

(05:56):
and honored to see him become a federal judge. It's
kind of judges that we need. Zach received his undergraduate
masters and law degrees from the University of Florida. During
law school, Smith served as the editor in chief of
the Florida Law Review and served on the executive boards
as several student organizations, including the UF chapter of the

(06:17):
Federalist Society. That's another good one, Zach. Welcome again to
America's Criminologists.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
Well, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's good to be with you my pleasure. Your article
makes a that you wrote I think it was last month,
a couple of weeks ago, over last month, makes a
compelling argument that jurisdictions which abandoned progressive prosecution and reinvesting
in police experiencing dramatic crime reductions. So would you walk

(06:44):
us through the evidence that convinced you were seeing a
return to what many of us and applied criminology have
argued for decades.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah. So what's happened in blue cities over the past
several years is politicians in those cities have told us
don't believe our line is that crime isn't as bad
as it seems, or that we can actually under police communities,
we can prosecute feer crimes and things won't get any worse.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
Now.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
People aren't stupid. They understand what they're seeing in front
of them. They understand when the situation in their communities
have gotten significantly worse. And unfortunately, that is what has
happened in many of our nation's biggest cities over the
past several years. Drugs are rampant, crime is out of control,
and their entire categories of crimes, things like petty theft, prostitution,

(07:31):
drug possession. They're simply not being prosecuted or not even
being dealt with with arrest or helping to get those
individuals into treatment programs where they could benefit from that
program potentially. And so what I talked about in this article,
and it's not rocket science. I think it's something we've known,
as you know, has worked for many years. Is getting

(07:52):
back to that basic task of policing and prosecuting, particularly
repeat violent offenders, is one of the most cost effective,
one of the most important things local governments can do.
And so as one of the case studies, I look
at our nation's capital in Washington, DC, look at what
President Trump has done there. He put the National Guard
on the street. That's in part to help make up

(08:14):
for the almost five hundred officers shortfall at his shortfall
that the local police department there is suffering because of
decisions of local officials to defund the police. So he
immediately put more officers on the street in the former
of National Guard soldiers. And then he also appointed a
US Attorney for the District of Columbia who serves as

(08:35):
the district's local DA, Janine Piro, Judge Janin, who has
said she will prosecute violent crimes. She thinks there should
not be categories of crimes that are universally off the table,
and so because of that, DC has had one of
the most dramatic turns arounds in terms of bringing down
violent crime rates, in terms of bringing down the murder

(08:55):
rate that we've seen in many, many years. And it
just goes to show that this common sense approach of
policing and prosecuting can be effective and can at the
end of the day, save lives.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Oh, I completely agree with you, and there's I've talked
about this phenomenon that's going on, so I'd like to
spend some time really attacking this particular issue and trying
to break it down for the listeners and the viewers.
I have proffered a phenomenon known as the red state
versus Blue state theory. Red states crime is down. Right now,

(09:32):
crime is down, or people purport it to be down.
What we do know is that Red States crime is
down because they're actually enforcing the law. Law enforcement didn't
change that much, and when it did a little bit
during COVID, it's come back to fuller strength. There is
still a lag in the hiring the police officers of course,

(09:53):
because we lost so many during that time period, but
not as much in red states that are occur that
we have now there's some blue cities and red states,
and that affects, you know, whether or not crime. In fact,
most of the I think somewhere in the neighborhood of
sixty percent or forty percent of the crime in America

(10:17):
is in blue counties across the country if you look
at total crime. And once again, if you believe the statutes,
they also believe in supporting for illegal immigration enforcement and
they have consequences for the actions there. In my home
state of Kansas, the attorney general there, Chris Kobok, actually

(10:38):
asked the federal government to have endorsements for KBI agents
to also be able to enforce immigration law, and that
was granted to them. So they've been doing that for
quite some time now. Blue states crime is down, which
and this is interesting phenomena because of quite a few
different areas. Number One, they happen to leave out much data,

(11:01):
so the data really is no everybody's fudging the numbers, Zach.
And that's that's one of the things that we people
have to understand is that you know, as you know,
the science behind data often is flawed more often than not.
I think criminologists, most of them in the academia, have

(11:23):
a tendency to go left anyway in their political opinions,
but they It really bothers me because most academicians and
most people who are looking at data look at quantitative
numbers only, and they don't look at qualitative numbers, which
are qualitative as the color behind the numbers that you get,
and there's reasons why crime goes up and down. I

(11:45):
guess my first question in this important area right now
is am I dreaming this? Or do you concur or
also see the fact that we have this two state
phenomena in which crime is going down in red states, yes,
because of enforcement and it's actually less crime. But in
blue states they're not enforcing the law and they're not

(12:09):
telling the truth on data.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
So I think there are at least three areas to
unpack in that conversation, at least three to get us started.

Speaker 6 (12:18):
Now.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
You mentioned the numbers, and I talked to at the
outset about initially many blue city politicians were telling their residents,
don't believe your lying eyes, and that's where we got
these insane numbers coming out of places like Los Angeles,
Cook County, Illinois, Chicago, New York City, where they were
showing drastic decreases in crime, even though if you walked
on the street things look somewhat apocalyptic, where you would

(12:42):
see homeless encampments, drug addicts, crime victims that were pretty
prevalent in otherwise formerly gentrified areas of the city. And
the reason those crime statistics aren't reflecting the reality in
some of those cities is one in many instances, if
you're looking at arrest statistics, police officers simply stopped arresting

(13:03):
for many of those crimes because they knew there wouldn't
be a prosecution. And often that individual wouldn't even have
to go to jail to be held for a period
of time to maybe detox or get sober. They would
just simply be turned back out onto the street. So
why are police officers going to waste their valuable time
and resources put themselves in danger to arrest when they
know there won't be any accountability for that individual they're arresting.

(13:26):
So that's one reason I think you saw some of
those arrest numbers coming down. The second reason you're seeing
the crime statistics showing potentially a lower crime rate in
some very big blue cities than what actually exists is
that the FBI recently changed the way they're reporting their
crime data. Now, this just so happened to go inside

(13:47):
when a lot of other factors were happening as well.
But what happened with that change in reporting, It's made
it harder to observe overtime trend lines in some areas.
And then you also had some of our nation's big cities,
like Los Angeles, for example, either not reporting their crime
data or reporting it in bits and pieces so that
it's hard to show the complete picture. The other thing

(14:11):
I quickly say about this big blue city phenomenon, crime
in those cities may in fact be coming down somewhat,
and that may be in part due to the increased
renewed federal presence in those cities. We saw this during
the first Trump administration. The Justice Department prioritized prosecuting repeat
violent offenders. The Justice Department during the first Trump administration

(14:34):
ordered US attorney's offices the local federal prosecutors to emphasize
drug crimes, gun crimes, violent criminal offenders to make sure
that those individuals were being prosecuted and held accountable. Unfortunately,
we saw them move away from that during the Biden administration,
but now that the Trump administration is back in office,
you're seeing those same types of directives going out again,

(14:58):
ordering that federal authorities go in and aggressively enforce federal law.
We're appropriate.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, you bring up great points, and one of the
problems I think people you're aware of it. I'm sure,
but because you kind of alluded to it. But one
of the things that I saw from the Biden administration,
the Attorney General at that time, it was a Christmas
we the country and it talked about not accepting profits

(15:31):
any longer for drug cases. And that was astonished. Now
I had actually an assistant US Attorney tell me that
that they really could not do proffit anymore on drug cases.
So what it did, it had a significant impact on
mandatory minimums and the ability to do it so and

(15:52):
most people, and the whole impetus behind that was supposedly
to get other information, maybe you might actually throw out
the case instead of trying to proffer it down. But
the other issue is, and it is again, this isn't
rocket science. And I appreciate you saying that because it's not.
It's very easy to understand cause and effect here. Yeah,

(16:12):
it's common sense. When they got rid of the proffers,
there was no incentive for the bad guys to give
any information. So our cases fell aligned with the fallen
prosecutions because they weren't giving up their sources well anymore.
And it's very frustrating that the and it was literally

(16:34):
done the week prior to Christmas. I think it was
twenty twenty three. I think I can't remember the exact date,
or twenty two, but it had a significant impact on
the federal drug cases all across the United States.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
Right. Well, what I was going to say too, look,
one of the least glamorous cases, but I think most
effective cases that US Attorney's offices can focus on are
nine to twenty two g cases fell in into farm
cases because by definition, you know that that individual is
already a felon. You know that he or she is
already breaking the law by possessing a firearm they're not
supposed to possess. And at least in my anecdotal experience,

(17:11):
and I think the data will like this as well,
these are often individuals who are driving a lot of
violent crime in the community, they're repeat offenders, and so
refocusing US attorney's resources to combat those repeat offenders to
make sure that those are the individuals that are being prosecuted,
that are being taken out of our communities so they

(17:32):
cannot create for their victims. That is one of the
best use of resources in my mind, that federal prosecutors
can bring to bear that will make a significant difference
where those felon in possessions, those repeat offenders are prosecuted. Now,
one of the other things you mentioned was this red
state blue state phenomena. I don't know if you remember
a few years ago, Gavin Newsom was trying to be

(17:54):
clever and he was saying, well, Missouri or red state
has a much higher murder rate than many bluelue states
does as well. So several of my colleagues we actually
looked at this data. Now the study is probably three
to four years old right now, but we found exactly
to what you were alluding to earlier. If you took
the blue cities out of these otherwise red states, the

(18:16):
crime rate, the murder rate in particular, would fall significantly.
And so at that time, if you took the city
and county of Saint Louis, a very blue enclave in
an otherwise red state, the murder rate in Missouri would
fall by almost a third, even in blue states. If
you went to Illinois and took Cook County, Illinois, Chicago

(18:37):
out of Illinois murder rate, Illinois murder rate fell by
almost fifty percent forty to fifty percent, depending on how
you look at the numbers. And so I think it
just goes to show that crime really is a hyper
localized phenomena. And so even if you have this national
trend line that looks relatively good, and I think President

(18:58):
Trump his team deserved a lot of credit helping to
drive down those crime numbers in many of these blue cities,
but there are still certain cities, certain neighborhoods that are
still plagued to too large of a degree of violent crime.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. I mean,
I do a top twenty five most dangerous cities in
America based on not just data from the FBI, because
that's flawed. I had other factors in there. But Saint
Louis makes the top five almost every year, and Kansas City, Missouri,
gets in the top twenty five, but they're blue cities.
To your point, there are blue cities, and then you

(19:33):
have places again you were spot on. Indianapolis is a
perfect example Marion County that accounts for I think somewhere
in the neighborhood of eighty five percent of the murders
that occur in the entire state of Indiana happened in
that one county. Now, I went out and embedded with
the Riverside County Sheriff's office in California. That's Chad Bianco

(19:55):
is the sheriff out there. He just ran for governor
not too long ago. Just a really good guy, very
good sheriff, and it's a pretty large sheriff's office. They
had a thing called Proposition forty seven that they were
able to voter's landslide almost by seventy percent of the vote,
got rid of it and brought in Proposition thirty six.

(20:15):
Proposition forty seven would not allow the judges to have
the three important tiers of making a decision on corrections,
mental health, drug treatment, or actually jail or a combination
of those three. And they actually did away with it.
And then we saw some states like Illinois and New York.
I think New York right now is they've done something

(20:36):
about speedy trial where you've got to get all the
evidence to the defense and like a three three day
time hack, that's almost impossible to do. So they're dropping
cases right and left in New York because law law
enforcement can't get them the defense attorney that the information
needed in that very short window.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
It's exactly right. And look, one of the other things
we haven't talked about yet is these ball reform efforts
that are happening in many deep blue cities. New York
was one of the most extreme examples. In fact, New
York's efforts at ball reform, and I hesitate to call
it reform because these were really radical propositions that were
being put forward. But they were so aggressive that even

(21:23):
New York State had to roll back some of the
most extreme iterations of new policies they had put in place.
And if you think about it, bail has always been
designed to serve really two primary functions. Is to make
sure that someone's going to show up when and where
they're supposed to for court, and that if they were
released back into the community, they're not going to pose
a danger to others while their trial is pending. And

(21:46):
so what new York has done what Illinois has done
with the Safety Act. It's a very Wellian name because
it doesn't promote safety.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
They always pick those names.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
If you talk to any law enforcement or prosecutors, particularly
outside of Cook County, they will tell you the very
harmful impacts these reforms are having, because essentially what has
happened in New York and Illinois some places in California
as well, is that judges cannot consider that dangerousness prong.
It's been defined in such a way, or defined so narrowly,

(22:20):
that it's almost impossible to hold anyone pending trial to
show that they would in fact pose a danger if released.
And so as a result, that's why we're getting these
very horrific stories of individuals who are out on bond,
pending murder charges, pending rate charges, pending these other various
serious charges, who are then going out committing for their crimes,

(22:40):
creating more victims while they are already facing trial and
prosecution for very very serious charges as well.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
What do you think. I know you're not someone that's
involved in prophecy, but I'm going to ask you a question.
So New York City has gone completely wacko in their politics,
and we're already starting to see the effects. He already
wants to draw down NYPD. They're already at their lowest
numbers in history. The draw down may take them to

(23:10):
about twenty five thousand officers, which sounds like a lot
of officers, but it's not for New York when at
one time they had forty five to fifty thousand officers.
Are what do you think are going to be the
consequences of really a communist in being in power in
one of the greatest cities in the world that happens

(23:31):
to be in the United States. What are we going
to see there?

Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah, look, I don't think you have to be a
prognosticator to see where this is headed. It's un fortune,
it's very sad to see. In fact, whenever you have
seen policing decreasing, police departments being understaffed, under resourced, you're
seeing crime increasing. And don't forget in Manhattan they have
Alvin Bradan office who's one of the very radical source

(23:56):
back district attorneys who has implemented a host of problematic policies.
And I do think right now you are seeing the
federal government keeping some of the most extreme iterations of
what could happen at Bay Because you've seen the Southern
District of New York, the Eastern District of New York,
those federal prosecutorial offices there still going out prosecuting violent offenders,

(24:18):
working to get recidivus off the street. If you get
an administration that is not as committed to doing that,
if you get another president in office who agrees with
some of Mamdani's policies or some of these other soft
on crime policies, then that backstop goes away as well.
And that's when I think you will really see things

(24:38):
starting to get very very bad, very very fast.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, it's not going to be pleasant. And the other
thing is we're going to see droves and droves of
NYPD officers retire, start retired early again, leaving or transferring
to other country, other cities across the United States. It
was already getting bad. But anyway, I'm just gonna say,
O my floor, UH, a recruit to come down to.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
The their skitch.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
UH from.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
A very significant h newe NYPD meets UH officers on
the streets.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
I want to ask you about discretion because I think
it's an important thing to have prosecutors do need discretion.
Judges need discretion sometimes. I would make the argument that
even a police officer in the street needs some latitude
to have discretion with things that they see. That's the
way it used to be. There was a time where
everybody had some discretion out in the field. We seem

(25:49):
to be doing away with discretion. Uh, that is common sense,
and we do discretion by actually ignoring the law. There's
a difference. There's a difference between discretion and just ignoring
the law saying it's discretion. And I think your article
kind of jumped to that because of the rogue prosecutors,

(26:11):
right right.

Speaker 4 (26:12):
Well, I appreciate you bringing this up, because if you
listen to what Alvin Bragg or Larry Krafsmer in Philadelphia,
or any of these other rogue prosecutors say, they say
they're simply exercising prosecutorial discretion, which is you mentioned Curry,
is something that every prosecutor in the country is familiar with,
something every prosecutor in the country and police officer in
the country exercises to some degree every day. But what

(26:34):
these individuals are doing Alvin Bragg, Larry Krasmer in Philadelphia,
George Gascon formerly in Los Angeles, they're not exercising prosecutorial discretion.
Prosecutor discretion has always meant taking an individualized look at
each case, an individualized look at each defendant, and making
a decision based on the facts and circumstances in front

(26:56):
of you. Maybe there's an ever, so you need to
issue a place agreement. Maybe there's not enough evidence, so
you need to dismiss the case. But it's an individualized determination.
These blanket policies saying you won't prosecute entire categories of crime,
that is not prosecutoral discretion. That is prosecutor prosecutorial usurpation

(27:17):
of the legislative function.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
All right, Zach, you're going to be able to come
back for our second half?

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah, i'd love to.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Very good. Why don't you? I want to make sure
everybody gets it. We'll we'll do it again at the
end of the show. But how can they follow your work?

Speaker 4 (27:29):
Yeah? You can follow me on now on that Instagram
and YouTube. You can follow me at Zach on Law,
at Zack on Law, or you can follow me on
x at tz Smith.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Very good. You're listening to America's criminologists, some doctor Curry
Myers and we'll continue right after this commercial break. Hi, folks,

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Hey, my friends, is doctor Curry Meyers, America's Criminologist. I
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(31:02):
It's really an important tool, Real resilience, because reentry isn't
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(31:24):
Had a great show so far, so we really appreciate
Jack Smith, who is a senior legal Fellow of Courts
and the Constitution at the Heritage Foundation join us and
Zach once again, thanks for coming on. I know you're busy,
but your intellect and your legal knowledge is really important
to be able to share, so thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
Well, of course, thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
One thing I wanted to ask from the last segment
that we couldn't get to is if if you could
recommend just three criminal justice reforms at every governor or
mayor should implement tomorrow morning, regardless of party affiliation. What
those three things be.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
Well, I think you have to fund the police, like
we were talking about earlier, make sure there is adequately
staffed in resource to effectively do their jobs. There needs
to be accountability when local elected officials will not do
their jobs. Whenever you have local sheriffs or local prosecutors
who say they will not enforce the laws that their
states of legislatures have passed, there needs to be a

(32:22):
mechanism to hold those individuals accountable for not doing their job.
And that will look a little bit different from state
to state. You're seeing some states, like Texas, for instance,
considering giving more power to their state's attorney general to
have concurrent authority over certain types of cases. Some states
are considering expanding their ability to impeach or remove local officials,

(32:44):
but there needs to be some type of accountability. The
third reform I would say that's important is believe it
or not. I'm actually a big supporter of alternatives to incarceration,
things like veterans' courts, domestic violence courts, drug courts, but
they have to be run appropriately and aims that appropriate
offenders typically first time nonviolent offenders, and there has to

(33:05):
be accountability if those individuals won't get the help or
services that they need. And unfortunately, what we've seen is
an effort to categorize a lot of non prosecution policies
as these alternative treatment programs. But if you take away
that accountability piece, meaning if you don't get the help
you need, if you don't complete the treatment, then you

(33:28):
go to jail, you'll serve out the remainder of your sentence.
That is one of the key components that makes those
types of programs so effective when they're targeted at the
right offenders.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Where do you think that there's a lot of federal
funding out there? There's always been a lot of federal funding,
but sometimes it turns into waste. Is there something different
that we can do from an oversight point of view
that would allow for the money. I think you're always
going to have some waste, but it seems to be
out of control, especially in most recent year. And I

(34:04):
don't want to necessarily say fraud because that's going to
agencies often or sometimes the prosecutor's office. But it's just
like mismanaged, and they don't watch it because it's not
their money or their budget anymore. They kind of go
wild spending in buying crap instead of dedicated Is there
something we can do differently to tighten down the monies

(34:25):
that come out that hold people more accountable without adding
seven thousand layers of bureaucracy that would you not make
it worth being able to get the federal grant?

Speaker 4 (34:35):
Well, I think at the federal level, at least in
the Justice Department. Unfortunately, what you saw really during the
Biden administration were really some egregious grants going out the door,
and they weren't designed to promote community safety. They weren't
to designed to help these departments get equipment they may need, bulletproofs,
training they may need. It was really designed to promote
a very radical left wing agenda. And I think what

(34:58):
has happened and what we're hearing now from Trump administration
is that when that rush of cash went out the door,
particularly at the very end of the Biden administration, it's
very hard to determine exactly where it went, who's getting it,
if they are in fact meeting the programmatic requirements they're
supposed to be meeting, and so that's part of the
reason you've seen the DOJ taking a very hard look

(35:19):
at many of those grants that have been taking place.
And I think as well, if you look at this
fraud task for us that the Vice President, Andrew Ferguson
from the FTC, the DOJ are all putting renewed emphasis
in focus on making sure that not only is fraud
not taking place, but also that waste and abuse isn't
taking place as well. And so look like, as with

(35:41):
so many other things we're talking about today, I don't
think we need to reinvent the wheel. But first and foremost,
we have to really get our arms around what grants
are out there and how they're being used, and make
sure that grants really are only being used for the
purposes they were intended to be used for.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
A curve on you, but some of your words kind
of made me think about this particularly issue, and as
a constitutionalist, I'd like to ask because I have my
opinions on it. So when the when the country was founded,
the federal the the founding fathers never envisioned a national
police force, and I completely agree that a national police

(36:22):
force is something that we shouldn't have. Uh, there was
only a few federal agencies that had law enforcement authority.
It was the Originally Benjamin Franklin made his postal inspectors.
He gave them law enforcement authority actually prior to the
Constitution being signed. So technically the Postal Service had their

(36:42):
the first law enforcement but they really weren't going out
kicking down doors and wrestling bad guys, but they did
have some authority. Then you have the United States Marshals,
which makes total sense because you've got to have somebody
that does writs for the courts and makes arrests and
warrants and helps maintain prisoners and all those kinds of things.
And then finally, customs and customs played an important role,

(37:05):
especially with the founders who decided that ninety percent of
the budget for the United States government would be based
on tariffs and not on personal income or any kind
of income on the people. So it was on tariffs.
So for those that say tariffs you are something that
are bad. Sometimes it can be overdone, of course, but
terifts are more targeted in that particular way. Do we

(37:32):
get concerned over time at the growth of the ability
of federal agencies and their numbers and their ability to
enforce skyrocketing number of criminal statues that were never intended. Now,
this has nothing to do with the hard working men
and women that are in federal law enforcement, because I
love them and I've worked closely with them. I was

(37:52):
a DEA Task Force Agent for many, many years, and
so I've done federal court cases, and I have great
respect for FBI and ATF when they're doing when they're
being pro gun and friendly to gun owners. Uh so,
what are your thoughts there?

Speaker 6 (38:10):
Is?

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Is is it looming that DHS can grow to a
leviathan that has to be you know, watched or does
it turn into something else? TSA is another one that
you know right now, they say the courts, but I've
also heard, well, maybe someday they'll be in bust depos
and maybe someday they'll be on on the interstate highways

(38:33):
because that's federal. Maybe they'll be like TSA troopers. Where's
where is enough enough?

Speaker 4 (38:40):
Well? I share your concern. Look, I have great respect
as well for the many men and women in federal
law enforcement, work closely with them during my time as
an assistant US attorney. But I think we should always
be wary of giving the government too much power. You're
absolutely right. The Constitution doesn't contemplate a general police power
for the federal government. The federal government is supposed to

(39:00):
be a government of limited and enumerated path powers. Now
I think we've strayed from that in many ways today.
And one of the things I find shocking I think
many of your listeners will find shocking as well, is
we actually don't know how many federal criminal laws are
on the books today. It's tried to be counted several times,
several different ways, but no one can say for certain

(39:21):
exactly how many federal criminal laws are on the books.
So we certainly have an over criminalization problem. And again,
I think we saw this play out in real time
during the Biden administration, where unfortunately the Biden DOJ, the
Biden earraw FBI, they were taking very aggressive readings of
certain criminal laws. They were enforcing criminal statutes that hadn't

(39:42):
been enforced in many years, or hadn't been enforced in
particular ways ever before. And so that was a very
real concern, and I think it's a concerned many people
still rightly have now in terms of kind of this
over criminalization problem. That is a very very important issue
to keep in mind and talk about, and I think
we need to have fewer federal criminal laws. But what

(40:05):
has happened is this conversation about over criminalization, making too
many things crimes, and then getting back to the core
task of prosecuting and enforcing core criminal laws, things like
violent crimes that wasn't happening as well. And that's where
you really run into problems. You know, in law school,
we call these malum prohibitum things that are illegal only

(40:28):
because the government says are illegal. And then malaman save crimes,
things that we all know are inherently wrongful. Craping, robbing, stealing,
murdering from people. We inherently know those are wrong things
to do. They're wrongful actions. And so we have to
be careful when we have this conversation to say, yes,
we have too many laws on the books, too many crimes,

(40:49):
but at the same time, we need to get back
to and focus more resources on prosecuting these core violent
crimes that are still occurring.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's so important to notate and
make sure that people are aware of this because really
every federal agency has eighteen eleven gun total special agents.
I mean you think of the department. They have special
agents that that are have arrest powers and go out
and do their work. And I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm just I just we have to understand the use

(41:22):
of that and whether or not it can go too far.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
Of course, at the yeah, Thine, I would say, unfortunately.
You know what's ironic about this is many blue city
politicians decry this kind of over federalization of policing. And
if you listen to a lot of ICE agents, DEA
agents even talking today, they will tell you local law
enforcement is not able to cooperate with them because of

(41:47):
policies local leaders have put in place, and so as
a result, more federal agents are having to go into
these communities, having to back up their fellow federal officers
because local law enforcement is refusing are not being allowed
to really help them enforce the law.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Well, you are spot on there. It's once again, federal
agents have always enforced these kind of laws, and law
enforcement at the local and state level has always helped them.
I can't remember a time where you didn't go, Okay,
Customs is here, or atf is here, or FBI is here,

(42:26):
the Marshall Service or immigration or border patrol, whatever it
may be. If they came into my county where I
was sheriff, and I was sheriff of a county of
six hundred and fifty thousand, one of the largest counties
in the Midwest, Johnson County, Kansas. They're in the Kansas
City metro area, and we had people purposely that would
go help federal agents if they came into town. And

(42:49):
now we're not doing that well by design, that's not
how the federal government works. Because if they're coming into
a town or a county that they don't know, yes,
there may be some agent and stationed in that particular
area or close to it, but not the lion's share.
They don't know the vibe, they don't know the city,
they don't know the bad guys, and all of a

(43:09):
sudden they're forced to do things that's not in their baileywick,
if you will. And so all of a sudden they're
on the street and they're trying to stop protesters and
they're trying to do that when that is a perfect
example of what local law enforcement should be doing. So
and then finally, and this is my biggest issue, is

(43:31):
sheriffs maintain jail, and there's often people in jail that
have federal writs or warrants to include immigration, and not
being able to pick up those people in a safe
place like a jail and get them transferred over to
federal custody is making it unsafe in those areas when
they let people go and they have to go find

(43:52):
them on the street because they have a responsibility to
go capture these people because most of them are criminal,
illegal aliens.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
Well, that's one of the reasons I was so gratified
to see that Judge Hannah Dugan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin was
actually prosecuted federally first Injustice. You may remember she was
the Milwaukee State court judge that actively helped in an
illegal alien who was appearing in her state courtroom from
being arrested by ICE agents essentially directed them down the

(44:20):
hall while she helped this illegal alien escape out the
back door. Now, because of that, as you mentioned, those
ICE agents had to have a much more dangerous confrontation
with that illegal alien in an uncontrolled environment on the
street instead of taking him into custody in the controlled
courthouse environment. And so Judge Jugio was actually prosecuted. She
was convicted for committing a federal felony. Now I talk

(44:43):
about this on some of my social media channels, but
what I was outraged by the federal judge hearing her
case didn't give her jail time, didn't give her probation.
He only gave her a five thousand dollars fine for
obstructing justice and putting these ICE agents in a very dangerous,
very precarious situation. So she's actually appealing her ruling in

(45:07):
that case. Stay tuned, but I think at least prosecuting
her shows that this administration is taking that type of
obstruction of justice conduct very very seriously.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
I want to switch to one thing before or we
want to get your opinion on one more thing before
we switch to the Supreme Court. Sure, cameras are becoming
more and more of an issue. I just saw where
New York City, New York State is increasing their camera budgets.
They're going to be known as best route cameras in
the and I just went through this with Chicago. So

(45:41):
not only am I applied criminologist, I consider myself a
criminal justice ethicist. Are there things that are done that
we shouldn't be engaged in? And one of that is
is profit for police, making police turning police. Here's a
perfect example where they're trying to decline and diminish the

(46:01):
ranks of New York City police officers. Chicago did this
a few years ago. They started deplenishing the number of
ranks of officers, but then they turn around and add
more speed cameras to because they need the revenue off fines.
And New York is going through this again. That's something
else that Mondami has requested, and Governor Hockle went along

(46:25):
with it. What are your thoughts on the use of technology.
I'm not afraid of technology. We need to embrace a
lot of things. I love AI. It's they're things that
you need to be able to control it, understand it,
use it as your friend, and not let it go rogue.
But we are getting to the point where I could see,
especially blue cities, relying on non police officers and it

(46:49):
just to go after nothing. But folks that have really
don't get the due process that they would get with
a regular police officer making this and issue in a
citation and understanding discretion. You know why they were doing
what they were doing. Do you have any thoughts there?

Speaker 4 (47:09):
Yeah, Look, we're in a Brave New World. All this
again has somewhat of an Owellian feel to it, although
technology is pervasive and the amount of data that our
cell phones are collecting us each on us, each and
every day as we simply walk around is astounding. And
maybe this will be a good segue into our discussion
of the Supreme Court cases, because there's actually a court

(47:30):
case from this most recent term, Chatty versus the United States,
where the court grappled with this in some form or fashion.
Police officers have recently been able to use something known
as geophys warrants to help solve crimes. Is a very
powerful tool. They can essentially ask Google or Meta or
Apple or other big tech companies they each collect the

(47:50):
data in a little bit different way, but to tell
them every specific device that was at specific location at
a specific time. And Google in particular was collecting a
lot of data sending it to the cloud, and so
they were able to narrow down which devices were at
a particular location in the Chattery case, which ones were
near a bank robbery when it occurred, and through other

(48:13):
investigative work other databases available to police officers, they were
able to find out who mister Chattery was and essentially
prosecute him and ultimately convict him for committing that bank robbery. Now,
the question the Court was being asked to decide was
do those Geofinns warrants do they comport with the Fourth Amendment?

(48:34):
You know, the Fourth Amendment says that we the American people,
were free from unreasonable searches and seizures, that officials have
to get a warrant before they can search our papers
or effects, papers, places, or effects, and so the Court
was confronting that issue. Now, what was interesting is the
Court punning in some degree. They said, well, because of

(48:55):
the way this search took place, because of the way
Google stored the data, in a legal sense, never really
took place. So there wasn't really a search as we
think about it, for Fourth Amendment purposes. And the Court
left for another day whether these types of general request
to big tech companies, whether that would look something like

(49:15):
the much hated general warrant from the colonial era, or
whether they would still make the particularity requirements that the
Fourth Amendment requires.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
So that brings up the Supreme Court decision. I'm I'm
at a loss of words how this happened on birthright
citizenship because if you look at the history and documents
of birthright citizenship, it's gone far away from the original
purpose of birthright citizenship. What are your thoughts there is
this is this decision final? Or is something that can

(49:46):
still be done in order? And did the Supreme Court
give us little hints on what we can do in
order to establish birth rights citizenship?

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Yes, you look good's ringing?

Speaker 2 (49:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:59):
Chief Justice drawn Roberts here at the majority opinion in
this case, I think he just got it wrong. Now,
what was interesting The vote count for the outcome was
six to three. Six justices agreed that there disagreed with
the president's legal position about his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now,
what was interesting on the constitutional question whether the Constitution

(50:22):
itself requires a birthright citizenship. That was only a five
to four vote, And that narrower margin was because Justice
Brett Kavanaugh said he would have decided the case on
statutory grounds. He thought the I and S Act that
Congress passed in the nineteen fifties that that required birthright citizenship,
but that the Constitution itself does not. Now, if we

(50:42):
step back here for a minute, Curry, I think this
is worth noting when President Trump first issued his executive order,
many in the mainstream media, many on the left, said
that it had no basis in law or fact, that
it was such a frivolous position that the attorneys representing
him should potentially be sanctioned. And yet at the end
of the day, four Supreme Court justices essentially agreed with

(51:05):
the President that the Constitution does not require universal birthright citizenship.
And I think from a practical perspective, look, just as
Samuel Lito or arguments in his opinion, he was absolutely right.
The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, the ratifiers of the
fourteenth Amendment, would never have intended for birth tourism to

(51:26):
be allowed. Someone can come into our country, have a child,
and then immediately leave, and yet have that child be
recognized as a citizen. Now, in terms of what we
can do in the wake of this decision, because it
was decided on constitutional grounds, the options are somewhat limited.
You are seeing the Trump DOJ pushing forward in all

(51:47):
hands on deck enforcement effort to combat fraud and visas
in these birth tourism rings that are taking place. You're
hearing Congress may change some of our immigration laws as
a result of this, So there's still a lot to
be determined. But unfortunately, I do think the Supreme Court
just got that decision wrong.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Now, do Trump administration do a petition for rehearing? And
what are those? Is that even done at the Supreme
Court level?

Speaker 4 (52:14):
It is, It's very rare, It's very hard to get
I actually talked about this on my social media that
at zach on Law on YouTube or Instagram or at
tz Smith on x I had a video where I
went through this. But Supreme Court Rule forty four. Government's
petitions for rehearing, they're very rarely. Granted, there's only one
instance I know of in the history of the entire

(52:36):
Supreme Court where the Court has agreed to rehear a
case and then reverse its original decision. So it's somewhat
of a long shot, but I think it shows what
an important issue this is and how seriously the President
and his legal team are taking this decision.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
So are all nine justices involved in a vote on
whether or not they rehear or is that up to
the Chief Justice.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Well, here's where things get a little wonky in some regards.
So in order for the Supreme Court to hear a
case originally to grant a petition for Sorcerai, only four
justices have to agree. A minority of the justices have
to agree to take the case, but five justices are
needed to rule on a case. For the petition for rehearing,

(53:23):
a majority of the justices, five justices have to agree
to rehear the case, and at least one of the
justices who's previously in the majority has to be one
of those justices who wants to rehear the case. So
it's a very tough battle. It's an uphill battle for
the President to ask, but he has made that request

(53:43):
and so we'll have to wait and see what the
court does with it.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
And hopefully Congress will be working on being able to
address that you through some sort of law here in
the future. So I know we're getting close to the
end of time, but looking ahead, heritage does important work,
especially in this area of law, criminal justice issue the courts.

(54:07):
What in the next two years, what kind of things,
if you can, are you working on a heritage to
bring to light?

Speaker 4 (54:15):
Well, I appreciate that. Obviously, we're celebrating our nation's two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary this year, so I think getting
back to that origional understanding of our founding principles is
so important. So we're talking a lot about what is
the Declaration of Independence. We all know those famous famous
lines from the declaration that all men are created equal,
but there are also twenty seven specific grievances of the declaration,

(54:38):
so we're going to talk about that, and then of
course we're going to talk about how we deal with
some of the big issues of our day rogue federal judges,
roague prosecutors, immigration, birthright, citizenship. So stay tuned. We'll have
a lot more to say on all of these fronts.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Outstanding. One more time, Zach, how can people follow your work?

Speaker 4 (54:55):
Sure? You can find me on Instagram, our YouTube at
Zach on Law at z A c k on Law,
or you can follow me on x at tz Smith.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Thanks for coming on, Zach, you're a rock star brother.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (55:09):
Well.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Thank you for having me on. I always enjoy the conversation.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Very good, folks. This is it for this week. Join
us again next week on Tuesday, and don't forget to
visit my substack doctor Currymeers dot substack dot com. Stay safe,
have a great week.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Call steal sus Cales Wade, shut us just testing me
as a phase shadows a secrets line, Doctor Curry, last,
let's do it the sky. I'm mal Co scram anologist
coming to salsa law, and Anos cackles a crime frekin

(55:55):
same food star