Fair Warning, Dude: Don’t Steal a Car a Month in Colorado

CLAY: Buck, we talked about the viral video of the 16-year-old kid throwing punches at the police officer. Certainly, we talked about Lee Zeldin — we’re both in New York City right now — an assault on Lee Zeldin that got basically no time, immediately released. Now, there have been federal charges brought since then. Colorado. Colorado’s got an interesting Senate race that is going on there, possibility of a big Republican upset, and if that happens, it’s gonna be because of things like what Attorney General Phil Weiser is saying. You don’t really want to punish car thieves until they’ve stolen cars three or four times.

I’m not even making this up. Listen.

BUCK: Wow!

CLAY: Three or four! First couple of car thefts, you get a free pass. Pass go. Go ahead and drive ’em wherever you want.

BUCK: Is this guy Attila the Hun? Let’s be kind. Let’s be nice. After the 15th car you’ve stolen, I think they can assume you’re a car thief who needs to be punished. Three or four cars? Oh, that’s JV stuff right there.

CLAY: Maybe I’m in the minority here. I’ve gone my whole life without stealing a car. Evidently, in Colorado I’ve gotta buy one, get one free on the car theft because nothing will happen to me ’til I get to three or four. I got a crazy idea. Can we play that one more time? Because people won’t even believe that’s real. Hey, they’re getting tough on crime in Colorado. Once you get to three or four cars, they’re gonna throw the book at you. Listen.

WEISER: After someone commits a third or fourth car theft in, say, three months, they should be kept in with a really high bond because you got a sense they’re gonna get out, they’re gonna commit more crimes.

CLAY: You got a sense, Buck, when you’ve stolen a car every month for three consecutive months, you’re probably gonna steal another car — and then, they gotta get really severe with you.

BUCK: Yeah, I mean, what is this guy? It’s not part of the Taliban here. I mean, they shouldn’t be getting so strict with people, Clay. Three or four cars? Like I said, folks, you gotta understand something. There are arrests being made every day in New York City — I’m sure in Colorado, too — of people who are doing bad stuff who have been arrested 40, 50, even a hundred times, okay?

The fact that the system gets to the point where you have people who only finally get locked away when they murder somebody after being arrested 30 or 40 times, it’s clearly failing, and this isn’t failing because of what was passed even necessarily at the state legislature. It’s, a lot of it, because of prosecutors who are deciding to just give the sweetest deals possible to people — not even deals, to just say, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t do it again.”

CLAY: Buck, what did we talk about yesterday, Baltimore? The study that was done about who’s committing murders. One of those stats was 90 out of 110 murders that that guy had tracked down, if the people who committed the murders had been serving the actual sentences that their violent crimes would have required them to serve, those murders wouldn’t have happened. That’s where we are right now.