What Does Soft on Crime Mean? These Two Fallen Police Officers

BUCK: The big story that I think is getting people fired up — and it’s getting me fired up — because mirror images in city after city, Clay, all across the country, progressive prosecutor in New York, crime, violence, all of it gets worst. In Houston… I spoke to our friend Michael Berry about this recently. I said, “What’s your prosecutor like down in Houston?” Progressive prosecutor, they’ve had huge spike in murders the last couple years, huge spike in shootings.

Los Angeles, San Francisco, crime through the roof. Gascon is the DA. George Gascon is the DA in Los Angeles, and he is a progressive prosecutor. He wants to end this mass-incarceration situation, which they all say, which is let more people out of prison, give them shorter sentences overall. Here is the story as we know it right now: Two police officers were killed yesterday in eastern Los Angeles.

Two El Monte PD officers were killed, gave their lives serving their citizens in their country, and what you need to know about the shooter is that he’s a gang member — a gang member who actually had the name of his violent gang literally tattooed on his face. He was a multiple offender. He had burglary charges, drug charges, and a weapons charge.

Now, the weapons charge would have triggered, under California law, Clay, a third strike. This was a felon in position of a firearm, and instead of actually going with a third strike — which is the law in California, you have to serve real time — Gascon gave him two years of probation. He didn’t serve any time in prison for being a felon gang member in possession of a firearm. Two police officers are now dead, their wives receiving folded flags, their children now growing up without fathers.

And everyone’s looking at Gascon and saying, “These brave men gave their lives. They shouldn’t have been in jeopardy from this gang member at all.” How can anyone think the Democrats are serious about crime, serious about guns, Clay, when they will literally violate their own state laws? Prosecutors like Gascon will violate the laws of their state so that they can go soft on a hardened gang member.

CLAY: Yeah. This is part and parcel of the $40 million that George Soros spent to get left-wing prosecutors in office who were not going to prosecute crimes. And you remember back before she dropped on the as the White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was mocking Fox News for covering the soft-on-crime concept. You remember that interview where she pointed at Fox News and was laughing.

We should pull that audio. She laughed, “What does soft on crime really mean?” Well, this is what it means, Jen. This is when you have someone who should be behind bars and takes the life of our police officers. And on this show — even though most will not mention them — Michael Paredes, Joseph Santana are the two police officers who lost their lives because this gang member killed them, this man who should have behind bars.

They have, these two officers do, five young children between them so he when you think about the consequences of what “soft on crime” means, it puts brave police officers in danger. Again, those guys’ names, Michael Paredes, Joseph Santana, two L.A.-area police officers, have five young children between them. Buck. Those kids are gonna grow up without dads and those guys — if you saw the video, they were playing it on Fox News — this guy was trying to attack his wife —

BUCK: His girlfriend.

CLAY: — girlfriend, who had checked into a hotel to try to escape him, and you can see these officers responding and running into that hotel room, and they were never gonna come out because they got shot, I believe, as soon as they got in there.

BUCK: They did kill him in the gunfire exchange as well, whatever silver lining that is.

CLAY: Three deaths, but this guy should have never been on the streets of Los Angeles, and this is being replicated all over the country where violent criminals are not being put behind bars. Here’s the deal. We know that we could solve issues with violent crime by doing two things. One: Put more police officers on the street and give them the ability to do their job. Two: When those police officers arrest people for committing acts of violence, put the criminals behind bars. Two-step process that is guaranteed to lower the overall crime rate everywhere. Democrats won’t do it.

BUCK: So the progressive prosecutors have gotten their way and the country has suffered. As I’ve said, even if you live in a rural area, relatively speaking there’s been a substantial increase nationwide in violence crime and lots of different crime categories even in rural areas. There has been a nationwide phenomenon. Wherever Democrats are in charge of the prosecutor’s office or the police department or the mayor’s office, you have seen things get worse.

So now we’re at the pushback phase. Now people have recognized this, and that’s why the recall George Gascon effort. You can go to RecallGeorgeGascon.com/petition. They’ve reached 567,000 signatures, but the people behind the petition effort are saying they need to get to more like 650,000 to 700,000 because of signature issues and any problems that might arise. They want to make sure they’ve got a clear margin. So for anyone who lives in Los Angeles and can be a part of this — we’ve got a great audience —

CLAY: Go sign up today.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: Go do it today because what they find is some of these female falsifying signatures and when they go back and check them even if you’ve reached your target limit, Buck, you need be well over it because this has become a major issue everywhere with these recall petitions, they will try to falsify them. Go sign up today this guy needs to be out of a judge.

BUCK: Absolutely. Gascon has got to go. And I want to be very clear about how this required, this is one of those moments we’re literally speaking… We’ve got Democrats who listen this show too we’re actually bringing every I keep saying, “Jump into the Clay and Buck pool! The water is warm.” These are Democrats who ousted Boudin in San Francisco and it will be largely, not entirely…

There’s a million Republicans who live in Los Angeles County. It might even be more than that now. But there will have to be Democrats recognizing at some level, “This is so reckless and so dangerous that it goes beyond politics.” But also, Clay, how can we take all the lecturing that we’ve seen about guns we need to deal with guns and take guns seriously in recent weeks.

“Don’t you want to stop violence? Why won’t you have magazine limitations?” How about getting violent gang gangers found illegal with a firearm and previously felony convictions how about locking them up and not worrying about mass incarceration. That would actually stop violence on a massive scale.

CLAY: No doubt. And again, this is not a very complicated two-part plan. Everybody can steal it from me — it works — put more police on the streets and let them do their jobs and put violent criminals behind bars, whether you live in a rural area, when you live in a city no matter what stay you live in right now that’s what you should be demanding of everyone who is charged with trying to eliminate or reduce violence in all of your communities.

More cops on the streets with the ability to do their jobs, put violent criminals behind bars. This is, unfortunately, like going back in time. Those of us who remember the high-crime era — and, Buck, we’re in New York City right now doing the show. You’ve talked about you remember Times Square before Rudy Giuliani, massive issues with all sorts of crime everywhere, and then he came in and he cleaned it up. We know what works. We just gotta implement these policies.