C&B Know How to Stop Crime: Lock Up Criminals

CLAY: Buck, I’m looking at updated murder rates all over the country because crime has not declined in 2020. And you and I, I think, were both prescient on this where initially Democrats said, “Oh, well, crime went up in 2020 because of the pandemic and all the covid-related restrictions,” when the reality was, Buck, it skyrocketed in the wake of George Floyd and the BLM protests and the demonization of all police officers across the country.

But I just want to hit you with some cities. Many of these cities we are on right now. So far this year, murder is up 20% in St. Louis over last year. Murder is up — and these are decent-sized cities I’m trying to pick. Murder is up 20% in San Francisco. Murder is up 40%, year to year — these are year-to-year numbers — in New Orleans. Murder is up 92%, Buck, in Milwaukee, where we are number one right now in the audience.

We appreciate everybody listening in Milwaukee. But notice these are staggering numbers versus 2021 when, by the way, the numbers were up pretty significantly there as well. Houston, according to this data — where we are also number one in the marketplace, appreciate all you in Houston — up 21%. Dallas up double digits. Cleveland up double digits. Cincinnati up over 30%.

Birmingham, Alabama — another city we’re number one — 41% increase in murder. Atlanta up 43%. These are staggering numbers, Buck. Baltimore up nearly double digits after it continues to skyrocket. These are big, massive increases, and the Democrats don’t have an answer for it. In fact, let’s play this audio because I do think it’s just so emblematic of the refusal to acknowledge the issue. And it is Jen Psaki. Here she is.

BUCK: Yeah, the alternate universe is the one that Jen Psaki is living if because let’s just… This was actually perfect. She looks at the left-wing networks and compares them to Fox there. What matters more to the day-to-day lives and existence of the average American? The elevated status of some NATO troops overseas at one point in time, or the possibility of being bludgeoned to death on the way home from work by somebody who’s been arrested 50 times by the municipal or state authority where you live?

Which one is more likely to affect the American people listening to this? How many more Americans are the victims of larceny, burglary, rape, murder, assault? Go down the list of all the crimes and the huge spike in them, and the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands of people that are suffering as a result of this. I’m not even just talking about the normal day-to-day crime that we’ve gotten used to in this country that is already too high before the surge, Clay.

I’m talking about the last almost two years now. We know it’s not covid. And here’s what they won’t do. They make it seem like it’s all so complicated. “Oh, we need to have… We need to come up with some new strategies and community outreach.” Step one: Lock up criminals — and this is the thing that they are not willing to do. Lock. Up. Criminals.

People who break the law need to be taken off the streets and serve time in prison. If you ask, it’s actually an even bigger problem. I’m here in New York City. The stats on crime in New York City, Clay, in my neighborhood — I live in Midtown, so I live right in the middle of it, right? Larceny — grand larceny is up 74% year over year!

CLAY: It’s crazy.

BUCK: People, they’re just stealing stuff all over the place! My beloved scooter, although it did get replaced, was stolen in the blink of an eye!

CLAY: (laughing) You’re lucky to still have your scarves!

BUCK: Oh, man. Well, I hide the fancy ones in my pocket. I make sure that no one knows. But the reality here, Clay, is that they won’t do the most fundamental, the most obvious things to deal with the problem because it goes against their ideology. So they come up with all these other explanations. Do you see this, just real quick, in San Francisco?

I just thought this was amazing, because you have these libs who clearly vote for Democrats, and they’re woke. But they also have to deal with the reality sometimes. This is the CEO of Kraken, Jesse Powell. He just wrote this email yesterday. “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.

“Business partners were afraid to visit after being victimized. Crime, mental illness, and drug abuse are out of control in this city, which is dramatically underreported because it’s so commonplace. The police are known to arrest the same offenders dozens of times, thanks to the District Attorney Chesa Boudain’s catch-and-release program which has resulted in numerous preventable murders of innocent people.”

CLAY: No doubt. No doubt.

BUCK: This has been happening in cities all across the country where Democrats are in charge.

CLAY: Joe Biden — maybe the only thing he’s been right on, Buck — 1994 passed the crime bill, and you can trace a substantial decline in crime to this country to what happened in 1994. I keep saying this, but it’s so true: Being concerned about incarceration rates of criminals is a luxury of a low-crime environment. If you are sitting around saying, “Man, we are being too difficult on violent criminals,” then what you are really saying is, “I feel safe.”

And, Buck, there are a lot of people in big cities all over this country who don’t feel safe right now. And I always say one way to check and see whether your neighborhood is safe is by the question that I would ask is: How many women feel comfortable going out for a jog or a walk by themselves in the evening? Right? It’s a great test of safety in any number of neighborhoods.

Would your wife, would your daughter, would your girlfriend feel comfortable going for a jog in the neighborhood or not? I would submit to you that over the last four or five years, the number of women who feel safe going out to walk after dark, going for a jog — some places even during the day, that feel safe in their neighborhoods — has unlimited all over this country.

And it’s why to me, Buck, you know, we talk about covid and this needs to be a reckoning in 2022 as well. But until there are consequences over crime — and I think it’s gonna happen. You’re already seeing it happen, Buck. Chesa Boudain’s getting recalled. The same thing is happening in L.A. where the DAs are being overwhelmingly rejected.

Was it Gascon, I think, in L.A. who overwhelmingly was repudiated by other DAs because of his soft-on-crime policies? This is happening everywhere, and there have to be consequences for these DAs, too, because their choice not to prosecute and their choice not to hold people accountable for violating the law is leading to tons of deaths than otherwise.

And then we can’t underrate… I believe the number of police shooting deaths have skyrocketed so far this year again — again — and that is because we have so demonized police in this country, and it has real tangle, consequential results in terms of their safety on the streets.

BUCK: A lot of foreign policy issues in general, I’d say, you should be able to have a conversation without getting overly testy even with people who disagree, because it’s very complicated and there’s multiple things going on, a lot of things to consider. We’re talking about straightforward stuff. We want fewer people on the streets clubbing old ladies with lead pipes and stealing their handbags! Doesn’t everyone agree?

CLAY: Yes, which by the way, everyone agrees with: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic!

BUCK: But the Democrat apparatus pretends that that’s not what’s going on. The Democrat apparatus tells us that they’re reforming a racist criminal justice system, or they’re pushing for “equity and inclusion” by doing “more community outreach” with police resources instead of just protecting everybody. And you and I always talk about, the communities that suffer the most from the idiot lib decisions of people like Pelosi and AOC and Schumer, they don’t suffer. They live in fancy houses. They’re millionaires; they’re doing great.

CLAY: They got security guards. Yes.

BUCK: It’s the people that they’re pandering to in high-crime communities by saying, “Oh, the cops aren’t your friend. We’re gonna make this all better. We’re gonna have bail reform and criminal justice reform, and that’s gonna make your community better.” Those are lies, and the people that they’re pandering to with those lies are being hurt. They’re literally, physically being hurt by those lies.

CLAY: Numbers for you, Buck. This is from Sunday. So, unfortunately, it may have increased since then. Police officers shot in the line of duty through Sunday, 101 of them. That is — and this is a staggering number — a 43% increase from 2021. The numbers have been skyrocketing in general. Buck, 2021 was the highest rate of officer shootings in a generation.

So we now, compared to 2021, are up 43% on police officer shootings so far through this year, through the first quarter, compared to the worst year in a generation. This is real, consequential, at the very essence of being safe in this country. I hit you with the numbers on murders, but that police officer number should be staggering. It should be being asked of so many different Democrat politicians across the country.

BUCK: You can see also, Clay, since the beginning of BLM 2.0 after George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis and the BLM movement and the protests and the riots and the Republicans all of a sudden on defense. Let’s just be honest about it: The Trump administration went on defense for a while there on criminal justice issues, talking about doing “criminal justice reform” for about six weeks or so until the statues started to come down and the riots started to go after federal courthouses.

And then all of a sudden, I think there was a snapping back into reality on the right. But you can see the spike in all these crimes we’re talking about started when the left went on offense with its ideas about criminal justice across the board — for prosecutes, for police, for judges, for everything — and they had already been putting people in these places, in these positions for years.

But then they felt the Chesa Boudins and the Larry Krasners and others, “Oh, now’s my moment, now we’re gonna show what real criminal justice reform means.” And, Clay, you and I both know what means and everyone listening knows what it means. More dead people, more assaulted people, more crime, more disorder on the streets. That’s what this actually has meant. So you want this to stop, folks, we gotta take power away from the people that have done this and have made these decisions — and that means the reckoning, Clay, of 2022 must occur.

CLAY: The great reckoning has to happen.