California’s Proposition 47 (2014) slashed penalties for drug and theft crimes, sparking a 9% theft rise by 2016—30,000+ auto burglaries in San Francisco alone—and a 13% violent crime spike, though reporting changes complicate data. Probation Chief Jim Salio links leniency to untreated addiction amid 69,000 U.S. overdose deaths (CDC). Hollywood’s backlash—Peter Fonda’s verified Twitter threats, De Niro’s Tony Awards ovation—exposes conservative suppression, while stars like Voigt and Woods remain marginalized, suggesting only economic boycotts can shift power dynamics. [Automatically generated summary]
Today and off to Cuffy Classified, Kurt Schlichter joins me to wrap up the week.
We have a lot to cover.
Criminologist Dr. Adam Dobert and I discussed how California, going weak on criminals in 2014, is contributing to a rise in crime today.
And fellow rebel, the Hollywood conservative Amanda Head is with me to discuss the backlash.
I mean, the disdain Hollywood and professional sports has for conservatives.
So much went on this week.
Actually, yesterday, things were happening about every five minutes.
They're here to help me unpack this crazy weak fellow rebel, trial lawyer extraordinaire, U.S. Army Colonel retired, or Colonel, U.S. Army retired, Kurt Schlichter.
Kurt, I don't know if you watched the rally, the Trump rally in Duluth a couple of nights ago, Duluth, Minnesota.
Trump was on fire.
This is a blue-collar town.
It looked like it looked like a Rolling Stones concert.
People were cheering, jumping out of their seats, bouncing up and down, standing over.
All that was missing, the lights were down, and people were waving their lighters around.
I mean, how did this guy lose?
Play Free Bird.
Play Free Bird.
How does he lose in 2020?
I don't see it happening.
That's Wisconsin.
Minnesota, rather.
There's this giant appetite out there, John, for somebody who wants to stand up for normal Americans.
Which leads me into my book, Militant Normals, which you should go, everybody should go buy, and you stow me a blurb on.
Anyway, you've got to blurb whenever you want.
Wait, is the book out already?
No, it's not until October.
Exactly.
Rumor has it.
Rumor has it that certain select people are helping you vet the cover for your book.
Yeah.
We'll talk offline.
Anyway, look, there's this huge appetite for someone who stands up for us.
And when you get idiots like Peter Fonda or Wanda Sykes or all the rest of them, you know, coming on there and attacking, you know, the guy who's the symbol, he's become the avatar of normal Americans, which is bizarre.
Even he pointed out, even Trump pointed out last night, you know, I'm this billionaire, man.
And, you know, you guys are all responding to me.
But facts are facts.
So when they're attacking Trump, normal people are seeing it and normal people are tired of it.
You know what's interesting?
Everybody's telling us, everybody's telling us, well, the conversation in living rooms and at kitchen tables and in diners and water coolers is immigration, immigration, immigration.
What?
What conversation?
But you talk to normal Americans and it's the economy, right?
So the way my takeaway from the other night in Duluth over Minnesota was Trump asked America, trust me on the economy.
They trusted him and you know what?
The bet paid off, right?
He delivered.
You weren't a Trump guy.
You're a convert.
You're a convert.
I was a convert by.
Yeah.
The best, the bet paid off.
So he's telling them again, trust me again.
And they're saying, what do we got to lose?
He's the first guy who's paid off.
He's the first bet who's paid off.
He's the guy who actually comes through.
I mean, you look at the normal Republicans, and they're just this, they're just not talking to or about or taking the side of normal folks.
Right.
You know, people out there are hurting.
They're under fire from the culture.
People Out There Are Hurting00:14:52
And what does, you know, Jeb, exclamation point, have to say?
Well, you're being uppity.
Oh, my.
Clutch, clutch, clutch.
He doesn't provide an answer.
He's just another voice going, tis, tiss, tis.
You're terrible.
We know we're not.
You know, go to Jeb for a second, right?
Because his pettiness, his pettiness is now costing his son.
So his son, George P. Bush, was running, is running for Texas Land Commissioner.
Yeah.
Pretty, pretty significant statewide office in Texas.
That's a big job there.
Big job, very powerful, very similar to the ag commissioner here in Florida.
People don't think much of the Agriculture Commissioner.
Well, in a state like Florida, it's a cabinet-level appointee, lateral to the attorney general.
No, I'm sorry, it's elected, not an appointee, my mistake.
It's an elected cabinet position, lateral to the attorney general.
Well, Don Jr., despite the dad's not getting along, Donald Trump Jr. likes George P. Bush.
Apparently, he's a very likable guy.
He was going to go and he was going to campaign for him, but he's pulled out because Jeb Bush won't stop attacking Donald Trump.
So this guy is so unhinged that he's now putting his own personal pettiness in front of his son's political career.
How petty are these guys?
I mean, they're just, they are just the worst.
And they get more liberal every day.
So now suddenly the true conservative position is catch and release.
When did that happen?
When did it happen that you don't separate criminals from their children?
I was unaware that this was a problem until next week.
It's a thing now.
It's a thing.
But Pelosi is really doing what I think is an incredible job.
I hope Nancy Pelosi lives to be 162 years old and stays in office as long.
Yeah, at least five more years.
Yeah, because exactly.
Because she's showing us exactly what the Democratic Party is about.
It was never about keeping families together.
This is about open borders.
Open borders, zero sovereignty for the United States of America.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Look, I'm out there with normal people occasionally, even though I'm a blue state trial lawyer.
Hey.
And no one is talking about this.
I mean, I was out, you know, whether it's at the gym, which, yes, I do go to, or it is, you know, a suburban party like I was at, you know, a kids' graduation party yesterday, and I'm with a bunch of suburban moms and dads.
No one was talking about immigration.
I don't mean a few people.
I don't mean a few hints about it.
I mean zero.
No one, nothing.
This is a Washington, D.C. firestorm.
And all the cowardly Republicans who have infested Washington and who think Washington has its fingers on the pulse of America, when in reality, Washington has its fingers on the pulse of Washington.
They're all freaking out.
And out here, we're like, you know, people are, to the extent they're thinking about it all, and they're not really talking about it, but they're like, okay, well, yeah, if I were arrested for a crime, I'd be separated from my kids too.
I don't understand.
I assume my kids would be upset too.
Why do foreigners get special rights?
I don't.
I don't understand.
You know, Kurt, last week I had a meeting in Miami, a dinner meeting with some old friends of mine, and we were in an area of Miami Brickle.
I used to live there.
It's downtown Miami, the banking district.
Nice area.
I mean, very expensive.
Still large South American population, large Cuban population in Miami.
And I was in a restaurant I used to go to all the time.
We had a table at the bar area, and there was a large table of Cuban-American guys, all born in Miami, but they had the Miami accent.
And a couple of people at the bar ran into my old neighbor and the Cuban guy.
And there was one guy at the bar.
Trump comes on, an older guy, and he gives Trump a smirk and he goes, oh, you know, F this guy, whatever.
And every Cuban in the place lost their minds on this guy.
They're like, you don't talk about the president like that.
We came here legally.
He's doing it right.
We look at our portfolios.
We're doing great.
I mean, his support among the Hispanic community in South Florida, if I'm using that anecdotal incident as a gauge, is skyrocketing.
Oh, I immigrate your wife.
You know, your wife is Cuban.
Well, look, the in-laws were here a couple weeks ago, and they were not big Trump guys because they're very religious and they're very decent people.
And, you know, let's face it, sometimes Trump shocks the squares.
Yep.
But at the end of the day, you know, Trump's not perfect, but he's on our side.
He doesn't hate us.
You look at these people, you know, you ice guys are the new Gestapo.
I know.
Well, you know, when a guy like you or me looks at a nice guy, I think that could be me.
I wore a uniform.
I carried a gun.
That's right.
That's right.
I did that.
You did too.
And I think a lot of folks identify with those.
And when you start saying, a guy who's just enforcing the law that our legislature passed, we do have a Democratic Republic.
And then you're calling him a Nazi for that?
You know, I don't think it resonates.
I mean, it may do real well on college campuses or CNN studios.
But among normal people, they're like, wait a minute, I don't get it.
You know, you talk about this Corey Lewandowski thing.
This is how bad it is.
It got me defending Corey freaking Lewandowski.
But when he went, wah, wah, you know, the Down syndrome kidney brought in and he's been separated.
You know, just kind of contemptuous.
And all I could think of was, well, you know, I'm no fan of Corey.
I got my own beefs with that guy.
But my only question is, what kind of person brings a kid with Down syndrome across a border through a desert?
Through a desert with rattle and coyotes.
Yeah, real coyotes and smuggling coyotes.
What the hell are you thinking?
I just, yeah, I'm not blaming the cops for doing their job.
No.
You know, what am I supposed to do?
Let him go because he's a kid?
Then doesn't that kind of reward it?
You know, if you send your kid to his room for, I don't know, throwing a ball through the window, are you separating children from their families?
Are you caging them?
Oh, you know, I mean, I don't understand.
Kurt, it's so ridiculous.
I talked about it.
You know how many kids, I mean, I don't say this in a cavalier way.
I don't say it.
I don't say this lightly.
You know how many times I was forced when I was with NYPD to remove kids from their parents and bring them to DCFS?
I mean, I can't tell you every domestic you walk into, that is a reality.
If both parents are going to jail, you don't know what you're walking in.
You don't know what you're walking through the door to see.
You've got to bring this kid.
It's heartbreaking.
Nobody wants to do it.
Nobody wants to do that.
But what are you supposed to do?
Well, you know, you beat the hell out of your wife.
But, you know, little Susie seems sad.
You can stay here.
God knows what you'll do to little Susie.
Or you got to take both parents.
You got to take both parents to jail.
Hey, little Susie, here's a bottle of water and a happy meal.
You'll be okay.
They'll be back in a couple of days.
Yeah, it'd be cool.
I'll send somebody around.
Yeah, I'll send somebody around.
Just watch the camera.
Got somebody you can call?
Exactly.
Exactly.
You know, here you go, kid.
Here's a bottle of water and a camel back.
Nicaragua's that way, about 3,000 miles.
Yeah, you know, it's ridiculous.
I think Trump, and I, when I first heard he signed the executive order, I wasn't thrilled.
I was like, ah, you know, I don't know if backing down's the right thing.
But he really didn't back down.
He said, okay, we'll just keep them together, but we're not catching and releasing.
We're just not doing that.
Take me on.
And then, of course, they kept freaking out.
And, you know, normal people are like, okay, well, they're going to keep them together now.
Okay.
Why is this still a problem?
I mean, is the argument that they should be released because they brought their kids around?
And we'll go there in a second, Kurt, but talk to me about that.
Put on attorney Kirchleck there's hat right now.
Does this EO hold up in federal court or does it get tossed out because it doesn't comport with the 93 Supreme Court decision, the 97 law?
Well, I think it will, I think the Ninth Circuit will likely do whatever it perceives as most damaging to Trump.
The problem is, I don't think there's an answer that damages Trump.
No, right.
If they say you have to catch and release, well, then Trump goes to Congress and says, the court is telling me I have to catch a release.
Change the law.
That's right.
That's right.
And then suddenly the Republicans have to stop talking about amnesty and start talking about enforcement, which will make them all cry.
Well, the other problem here in all this is Mitch McConnell.
Appears he wants to do nothing.
This clotor is nonsense.
Trump is right.
Clotor is nonsense.
There's no provision for it in the U.S. Constitution.
It's ludicrous to say, and we both know this.
If the Dems got back the Senate, Clotor would disappear.
It'd be gone.
Gone.
Gone the first day.
No, I think he's trying to preserve a Senate that no longer exists.
That's a big never Trump thing.
Now, I happen to think that Mitch McConnell is the best we can practically do at this stage.
And he has done a lot of things.
We're going to get Rubio, Lindsey Graham.
I mean, you know, who else are we going to get?
Yeah, I mean, but the simple fact is he's got to contend with a lot of people who want to pretend that the situation has not changed.
This is why, you know, I tweet constantly, and I know you're a huge fan of my Twitter account because you're awesome.
Pretty good Twitter candidate.
I'll admit, I get credit where Deutsche Flechter.
Okay, I see a lot of liberal statements, and I'll take the liberal statement that tells us how terrible and awful we are, what horrible things should happen.
Liberals hate you.
And I'll send it out.
Yeah, and get woke.
Get woke.
When somebody's telling you he hates you and wants bad things to happen to you, you should probably listen and act accordingly.
I don't mean you have to be hostile or vicious or obnoxious or violent or anything, but you need to accept the reality that you're faced with, which is there is a significant number of people on the left who actually hate you and want bad things to happen to you.
Everything from losing your job to being murdered.
Kurt, as we're doing this interview, there is a story, broke a little bit before, not a story, but a statement.
Cynthia Nixon, whose claim to fame is she was on Sex in the City, hold the view yesterday, the yipping harpies at the view, that we need to abolish ICE.
We need to abolish the Department of the Immigration to Customs Enforcement, the division under the Department of Homeland Security.
He said, quote, they have strayed so far from the interests of the American people and the interests of humanity, we need to abolish it.
These people are.
Well, that's an interesting perspective.
Look, all they have to do is be sane, and they can't even pull that off.
Now, I mean, you know, people hear something like that, and you're like, oh, man, you know, I can see soft-hearted kind of people.
Well, you know, the kids are really sad.
Maybe there's a way we can keep with their families.
And then you start hearing, well, we shouldn't have any border patrol at all.
And people are like, well, that's not what I'm saying.
I just, you know, I'm trying to ameliorate the damage that these people are caused by their own actions.
And that's not what I.
But this is why I want Netsy Pelosi around me because she's admitting that the left wants open borders.
They want complete anarchy.
They want to flood this nation with illegals.
Look, you say it all the time.
I say it.
They want us dead.
And when you read tweets from a guy like Peter Fonda, calling for the schools where Ice Agents' kids attend to be surrounded by people so the kids are terrorized and calling for Baron Trump to be ripped from his mother's arms, thrown into a cage, to be sexually assaulted by a pedophile.
He's a children, mind you.
Aaron Trump is 12 years old.
What other conclusion can we draw other than the left hates us and wants us to die?
Well, there was a tubby bag of goo, never Trumper, who basically tried to mock me the other day.
Does her name rhyme with Hanna Mavarro?
No, it wasn't that one.
It was a different one.
It was another of the cruise shilling types.
Oh, I remember this guy.
I remember that guy.
Yeah, and this guy, you know, he's, of course, just a lunatic.
And I'm sitting there and I'm going, okay, I understand that no one will ever love you and that no woman has ever wanted you.
And I understand that you have no power because your philosophy of abject submission has been rejected by the American people.
But can't you freaking read?
I mean, can't you read what they're literally saying?
Are you such a bad gaslighter that you can't even explain the tweet where they literally say, I think all conservatives should be hanged?
And he's like, why are you getting so upset?
I don't know.
Maybe I don't want to be hanged.
Right, right, right.
How dare they not want to die?
How dare they?
Look, the Never Trumpers are the guys hoping the crocodile eats them last.
Maybe if they're obedient, submissive enough, maybe if they humiliate themselves enough by dancering and capering for pennies tossed to them by their liberal, laughing liberal masters, maybe they'll get to keep their crappy little fake positions in power for just a little while longer.
But I'm a man and I don't roll that way.
Look, I think you're right, though.
I think that's exactly what it is.
They're craving for the relevance they used to have.
And now they think that if they grovel, if they grovel to their establishment masters, maybe, just maybe this ridiculous whining will somehow unseat Trump and they'll be back in a position of power.
They can relive their glory days.
These people don't understand this guy is going to be in office until 2025.
I think he's going to do very, very well.
I think we're going to do okay at the midterms.
You know, I just, the perspective shift.
I don't think we lose the house, Kurt.
I don't think we lose the house.
I don't think we do either.
If we do, if we don't lose the house, and if we expand our senate rate or margin, you know, a normal organization would do an in-depth rethink of itself.
They do, you know, a personal inventory, right?
And try and figure out what's going on.
The liberals have gotten to the point by embracing their hatred of normal Americans that they really can't do that because to do that is a concession that everything they said is wrong and that these people may have a point.
Yep, I mean, that's really what it is.
Now, to switch gears, we're running out of time.
But last night, some sad news.
We knew this was coming.
Charles Krauthammer passed away.
Now, I didn't always agree with him.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yes, I didn't always agree with things Krauthammer said.
A Brilliant Man Passes00:02:43
However, I respected the guy immensely because he was one of the few pros out there who did.
I mean, he's a brilliant man, right?
He was a JDMD, an absolutely brilliant, brilliant man.
But he did his homework.
He was so well-versed on every issue.
He went in so deep with his research that you always learn something watching the guy.
I didn't have to agree with him.
He was a never-trumper.
A little bit of a never-trumper, but I'll tell you something.
You got smarter every single time you watched the guy.
You know, the interesting guy is he was a guy who didn't prefer Trump, but he understood why people would, and he didn't look down on them.
He didn't demean them.
He didn't demeane them.
He tried to understand it like a good psychologist does.
He tried to understand what is the thought process.
You know, it's not so simple, you know, this idea that everything can be explained simply because you just totally lack character.
That's why you like Trump.
Right.
Well, if you're saying half of America lacks character, that puts you, that has implications for your future policy choices.
That's right.
And he just didn't, he wanted to know why people did it.
He didn't have to agree with them.
But he wanted to understand why.
Having done this now for enough years where I was kind of burnt out.
So I only watched news as a matter of research, right, for my own shows.
He was one of the few that I watched and enjoyed.
I really truly enjoyed his analysis and commentary because it was a learning experience, a learning curve for me, experience for me with him.
And then you realize how steep the learning curve of research was when you watched a guy like that, who was one of the best out there.
He really, really was.
So it's a loss.
It's really a loss to our business, right?
Politically.
It is.
And he was a guy with personal class.
Now, my wife and I went to one of these events and he was the guest of honor.
And, you know, they'll sometimes let you have photographs with him.
And somebody had invited me, and I was entitled to a free photograph with him.
I usually go, eh, I wanted to go up and shake his hand.
You know, I did go up and I'm, and, you know, he's been with 60, 70 people fawning over him, just telling how great it was.
It's easy to get tired.
You know, obviously he had physical limitations, but he was just as pleasant and as classy as could be.
Gentleman, yeah.
A real gentleman.
And you're just, you know, just a class act.
And I've never heard anyone say anything bad about him.
No, never.
Other than stupid liberals wishing him death.
Right.
You know, I know he was never sorry he's passed away.
Yeah, me too.
He treated everybody in the industry with dignity, with respect.
And he really was one of the best out there.
Anyway, Schlichter, we ran out of time.
Expanded FBI Definition00:15:04
You have a great weekend, my friend.
I'll talk to you next week.
Thanks.
forward to it.
You know, I often talk on the show about the broken windows policing strategy, things we did back when I was a cop in New York in the 1990s and how attacking the little things led to the bigger crimes being reduced, being mitigated.
Well, it's unfortunately, I should say it unfortunately seems to be the case, that liberals around the country, the left, are starting to reverse that policy.
Now an associated press story, thefts rise after California reduces criminal penalties.
Here to unpack this with me is our good friend, Dr. Adam Dobrin, a criminology professor and all-around knowledgeable guy on these issues.
Adam, I'm reading this story.
It's an Associated Press story out of Sacramento, California.
It says, California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting, and other theft.
Researchers said larcenies increased about 9% by 2016.
There are about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents than when the tougher penalties had been around.
This to me, I mean, you're the scientist, you're the data scientist, but this, to me, sure seems like correlation, is it not?
Seems like it to me.
And I often warn people when you have, I mostly look at homicide data.
When you have a small increase, you're going to have a huge percentage increase.
This is the inverse.
That rate increase is huge, but the percentage seems like a pretty, when you hear, oh, 9%, that's not much, but 135 for 100,000.
That's a huge increase.
That means they just have a pretty high baseline to start with.
Yeah, I mean, here's a number that it says San Francisco alone recorded more than 30,000 auto burglaries last year.
That would be 2017.
I mean, that seems to me to be.
And those are the recorded ones.
How many people in San Francisco don't even call the police to let them know about this?
Yeah, that's a good point.
What's the point?
So this says Proposition 47 lowered criminal sentences for drug possession, theft, shoplifting, identity theft, receiving stolen property, writing bad checks, and check forgery from felonies that can bring prison time to misdemeanors that often bring minimal, if any, jail time.
While researchers linked the measure more to theft, they found that it did not lend or lead to the state's increase in violent crime.
But violent crime spiked 13% after Prop 47 passed.
But researchers again said the trend started earlier and was mainly because of unrelated changes in crime reporting by the FBI and the LAPD.
But what do you think?
Are these researchers far left state researchers or does that claim hold water?
Did Proposition 47, which reduced the penalties on misdemeanor, larceny theft type crimes, have no direct effect on violent crime, or did it?
It's hard to say, you know, I don't want to put my reputation as a criminologist on the line here and say that's exactly what happened.
But any kind of measurement change, if the FBI is measuring things differently in California or if LAPD is reporting these differently, that's going to have a change.
But city after city, history has shown clearly that when you don't enforce these minor quality of life crimes, eventually you're going to have an increase in other type of crimes either, too.
So if the violent crime that went up was not a direct correlation, a response to these crimes going up because of the reduced penalties, it's going to happen.
So just let's just be patient and it's going to go up.
I mean, when you look at cities like San Francisco and just the epidemic of just overt drug use and vagrancy and just filth in the street, that eventually is going to create violent crimes.
If it hasn't yet, it will.
So they go into sex crimes as well.
They say the FBI broadened its definition of sexual crimes in 2014, while the LAPD improved its crime reporting after previously under-reporting violent crimes.
If it weren't for those changes, researchers found California's violent crime rate would have increased 4.7% from 2014 to 2016.
So what are they saying that the increase in violent crime would have been less had the FBI and the LAPD not modified its reporting mechanisms?
Well, those were significant changes.
The change in the sex crimes, but how many of the increase of that percentage of violent crimes was all sex crime?
The FBI changing the definition.
They had a very, very constricted definition of sex crimes until 2014.
It was laughably out of date.
What was it?
Let's get into the weeds a little bit on that.
What was the definition?
What is it today?
It basically said in a sex crime, only males could be offenders and only females could be victims.
That was sort of the biggest change that they had.
And then there were some more specific activities that were included, that were excluded.
But now they include a male can be a victim, which is a huge change.
Until 2014, by FBI definition, males could not be the victim of rape, which is just silly.
And they said only males could be the offenders of rape, which is also silly.
But what they also included was some measure of consent that it includes now people who are incapable of giving consent, people with less developed mental capacities, and also based on intoxication, that consent is a key part of this definition.
So it's a modern, modernized, real definition.
The previous definition basically came out of medieval England.
So it was undercounting all the crimes that were out, all the sex crime.
Gotcha.
So that expanded definition of what, for example, a sex crime was on the part of the FBI is partially why we're seeing, what is this, an 8.3% increase over what would have been a 4.7% increase.
Correct.
But those aren't all sex crimes that are responsible for that increase.
Right, right.
Was there any expansion in definition of violent crime?
Did they add anything that wasn't previously there?
Or could this have been the LAPD's reporting mechanism where maybe they did that?
Not since 2014.
I mean, there have been changes, some significant changes.
In 1968, they changed, they broadened the definition of aggravated assault.
I mean, I'm going to have to go through one of the books I wrote to really look at the, in the weeds for the definitions.
1990.
No, that was the NCDS.
Never mind.
But there have been some changes over time, but that was the biggest one recently.
You can exclude hate crime, they've changed, expanded the definition, but that's not relevant here either.
Okay, so this then might indicate, I don't want to put your reputation as a criminologist on the line, but this might indicate something troubling that there's another reason for the rise in crime.
It's not expanded definitions by the FBI.
I would say so.
Wow.
Okay, so that's not an idea.
Another caveat.
Crime has been historically low for just 10, 15 years, and so it's going to naturally, it has to go up.
But I've been saying that now for 10 or 15 years.
Crime has to go up.
It has to go up.
It has to go up.
And then it hasn't been going up.
So this is the early part of the reversal.
Now, when we see crime going up now in America, it's primarily hitting a handful of cities.
It's not the whole country that we're having this inverse.
And so there are, you know, a half a dozen cities where violent crime.
And again, what we're seeing in these California cities isn't violent crime.
It's a huge change.
It's these quality of life, the drugs, the vandalism, things like that, that California changed.
Now, the big problem, and I think that article that you're quoting alludes to, is this is going to have a longer-term effect that the politicians think they're being nice to the criminals by being less severe by changing felonies to misdemeanors.
In the long run, this is going to backfire because if these people were charged and convicted of felonies, that means they generally go to prison and they would get treatment for their drug problem.
Now that they're getting misdemeanors that aren't being charged, aren't being prosecuted, they're not getting treatment.
And so this is going to exacerbate the drug problem that's sort of the underlying root of all of this.
Okay, so let me let's dig into this a little bit more.
They're saying that the ballot measure led to the lowest arrest rate in state history in 2015, in California state history, as experts said police frequently ignored crimes that brought minimal punishment.
So does that mean that the police were saying, well, if the political powers that be aren't going to send these people to jail, then we're not even going to waste our time arresting for these crimes.
Absolutely.
And given the political climate in that era, that you see a couple of high-profile events where police were going after misdemeanor offenders that blew up and then the police got in a tremendous amount of negative press and actually life-threatening situations, then what's the point?
Why put your career or even your life at risk to enforce a crime that the system isn't going to follow through on?
I'm going to go through this pretty much paragraph by paragraph, line by line, because it's very interesting.
Jail bookings in 12 sample counties, I assume California counties, dropped about 8%, driven by a reduction in bookings for Proposition 47 crimes.
Well, that seems pretty reasonable.
While site and releases increased, researchers found.
So they were arresting less people, releasing more people.
This has to eventually lead to a significant increase in crime.
I mean, how could it not?
If bad guys know they're going to get away with crimes, why wouldn't they keep committing it?
If you're an idealistic, somewhat naive, hopeful person, you're going to think, well, this person's not going to be over-involved by the system.
The system's not going to create this label of criminal, so they're not going to self-identify as criminal.
So then they're going to become less criminal.
That's how you justify it to yourself.
Well, they kind of say this here, okay, in the next line.
Offenders convicted of those crimes, 47 crimes, were about 3% less likely to be convicted of a new crime within two years.
But the researchers said it's not clear if that was because they didn't actually reoffend, commit new crimes, or because they were less likely to be arrested and prosecuted because of the lower penalties, thereby keeping authorities in the dark about whether or not they were committing new crimes.
I added the end of that, but that's essentially the summary.
Yeah, if police aren't catching and prosecuting, then that's going to lower recidivism right there.
Boy, because there's no reporting up to the FBI up to the state.
So you don't need to.
And again, like I said earlier, the public is aware of this as well.
So they're not going to be calling the police.
If you get your car window broken and stuff stolen out of your front seat of your automobile, what's the point in calling the police?
Right, right.
They're not going to do anything.
They're going to tell you to call your insurance company.
And let's face it, even in places where they don't do this, the cops aren't out there looking for the guy that broke into a car.
No, but you couple that with sort of the mentality of the left right now that cops aren't the good guys.
And the less interaction you have with the police, the better.
It's like a perfect storm of fomenting more and more petty crime because the public's not going to call the police, but the criminals know that even if they are caught, which is a low probability event anyway, even in the cities that do prosecute, let me just, let's all be aware of this.
When crimes are committed, the actual probability of getting caught by the police is very, very, very low.
That the arrest statistics, and I'm going to combine them.
I'm not going to be real simple for the index offenses, murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny, burglary, and arson.
It's around 10 to 15% of perpetrators that are apprehended after the fact.
no no oh crimes that are reported to the police those index offenses no hold on go back Those index offenses are, is that number you gave me, the 10 to 15% of people caught for those index offenses?
Or are those index offenses?
Of all the index offenses that are reported to or discovered by the police.
Oh, gotcha.
Okay, so the rape, robbery, all the index offenses that are reported to law enforcement, the arrest rate's only around 10, 15%.
Correct.
And so when you start looking at these petty crimes, first of all, very, very few of them actually get reported to the police.
And the lower the seriousness of the crime, the lower the probability of an arrest to start.
Yeah, I mean, look, I work in the Bronx.
You know, we know people that work in busy areas.
Somebody broke into a car.
We were filing a report and sending it over to whatever investigative unit handled that.
Nobody ever expected it to be solved.
We all knew we were generating that report as a matter of crime stats.
The person was going to go to their insurance company.
They're going to get the window fixed.
And everybody was going to go on their merry way.
The likelihood of that detectives aren't stopping what they were doing, dusting these windows for fingerprints to hunt down the guy who broke the window.
And the reality is a lot, we see this after city after city after city in the past 15 years or so, is a lot of cities are overtly doctoring those crime statistics so that they don't look like they're high crime cities.
Well, we see that everywhere where they sort of cook their crime books, right, by discouraging residents from taking a minor thing a little bit too far, especially the quality of life crimes.
Right.
And so I think you couple that with everything that's going on in these California cities.
When they say crime went up, whatever, 9 or 12%, it's most likely more than that.
That's just based on very limited data.
Okay, so let's go back to something you spoke about a little while ago from this AP piece.
And this piece is only from about from last week.
It was very recent.
Reduced penalties mean fewer drug addicts now seem to be getting treatment than are stealing to support their habit.
And they put that in quotes.
Are stealing to support their habit.
That St. Louis County, St. Louis Obispo County chief probation officer, Jim Salio, president of the chief probation officers of California.
Explain that for us, Adam.
Well, I think it's pretty straightforward.
It's that when you have drug addicts who are committing these crimes to get money to support their drug habits, then unless they get some form of treatment, they're just going to continue on this self-destructive path, and it's going to get worse and worse and worse.
And last year, according to the CDC, we had almost 69,000 drug overdose deaths in this country.
And one of the things that does seem to work, and you know, rehab programs aren't the greatest things in the world, but some of these drug treatment programs in correctional facilities do have a pretty good track record.
Sooners Behind Bars00:03:47
And so by being nice to these people, by not arresting them, from dropping it to a felony to a misdemeanor status, that even if they are arrested, they're not going to be in a facility.
You're encouraging the addict to go steal more to support their habit.
You're basically giving them permission.
You're doing that, but then also you're not creating an opportunity as pejorative as the opportunity is, they're behind bars.
But that is a forced treatment model where you have a, it's not a perfect success.
There's no such thing as perfect success, but you have some measures of success that these people get treatment for their drug problems.
Look, something's better than nothing, right?
I mean, even if it's the most basic treatment in a county jail, some treatment is better than no treatment.
Absolutely.
Having them on the street being able to rip people off for drug money.
And even the eight months or so they're in jail, that's eight months that they're not doing drugs and they're getting clean and they're not overdosing.
So you just save their lives for at least eight months by incarcerating them.
People don't like it when you put it that way, that they're safer in prison than they're on the street.
They are safer in prison than on the street.
I mean, absence of treatment.
The people who promote the idea of reducing these crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and then not even enforcing those misdemeanors are the same people who are strong into treatment and rehabilitation programs.
So what they're doing is they're killing their clientele in the stream.
Where do they get people from?
And so it's allowing these addictions to get worse and worse and worse.
And again, it seems like the California Police Chiefs Association appears to agree with us.
Morgan Hill, California Police Chief, David Swing, who's president of that group, said researchers' findings are, quote, consistent with what police chiefs across the state have seen since 2014.
And they show the need for a proposed initiative intended for this November's ballot that would partially roll back the 2014 law.
That initiative, floated by the Chiefs Police, the California Police Chiefs Association, would allow prison sentences for serial thieves, reinstate DNA collections from those convicted of crimes where penalties were reduced, and bar the earlier release of criminals convicted of additional violent, serious, and sexual crime.
Now, seems like common sense.
What blows my mind is that all of these things were eradicated in Proposition 47.
Now, it's been a while since I looked into this, but California has a very, very strict three-strikes or even two-strikes policy.
And they've had massive prison overcrowding in California.
This may have been a sort of backdoor approach to reduce prison crowding without presenting it that way, presenting it as a way to be nice.
And these aren't bad people.
But the reality is, when these are felonies, even if California's got some crazy stories of these low, low-end felonies with people who are now being sentenced to prison, or not now, for the past 15 years or so, for 25 to life because it's their second or third strike.
And so it does.
They're permissive on some things, but then they're draconian on others?
Right.
And each way it's going to backfire.
That sooner or later, you either get everybody in prison or you've got to start flushing people out.
It just seems like it's not a well-integrated system.
So, the basic takeaway from this is that, in addition to pretty much everything else that government in California touches, they're screwing up law enforcement as well.
There you go.
You got to protect your reputation as a criminologist.
As always, Adam, an absolute pleasure.
Backlash Against Conservatives00:12:35
There's a lot of conference in California.
Next, the big one is in the fall, and I will not be going.
No, I don't think the state of California is hiring you anytime soon, not with your political views.
Dr. Adam Dobrin, criminology professor, my good friend, always my friend.
A pleasure.
We'll be speaking soon.
So much going on this week, but I really wanted to focus on the backlash by Hollywood and professional sports against conservatives.
I mean, they really do hate us.
They basically don't want us to buy tickets to their movies.
They don't want us to patronize what they produce.
And now, pro sports is creeping in.
As former NBA legend, Boston Celtics legend, Kevin McCale, was seen at the Trump rally in Duluth, Minnesota, a couple of nights ago.
There were people actually calling for McCale to be ostracized from basketball the way Pete Rose was from baseball for gambling on the game.
Here to discuss it all with me is our very own the Hollywood conservative, Amanda Head.
Amanda, it's getting ridiculous.
We saw De Niro a couple of weeks ago at the Tony's acting like a moron.
Well, I expect that, right?
He's in an echo chamber.
He's at the Tony Award, arguably the most left-wing room on the planet outside of the Chinese Communist Politburo, whatever they call it, or Kim Jong-un's inner circle.
That I expected.
Then we have Peter Fonda calling for violence against children.
And now the NBA, or I should say, sports sportscasters, right?
Calling for Mikal to be Kevin McCale, formerly of the Boston Celtics, to be basically ostracized from baseball.
Let me read you this, Amanda.
Quote: If Kevin McHale actually showed up to Trump's rally in Duluth today, with everything that is happening now and what Trump's done and stands for, yeah, he's canceled, wrote sports talk radio host Henry Lake.
One of my childhood idols, Kevin McHale, just kicked six-year-old me right in the guts.
And I felt it 32 years later with interest, wrote a fan in a widely shared tweet adding F you Kevin.
I mean, this is unhinged behavior, isn't it?
Yeah, but you know, I mean, we've actually seen instances of this very recently.
We saw it on social media with Jack Dorsey tweeting that he went to Chick-fil-A and he was forced to apologize.
We are at a point where if you are not violently opposed to the Trump administration, and I talked about this in a video this week, you know, we blurred the lines between so much stuff and we've gone so far to appease people, and especially with like identity politics and such, we've gone so far that if you don't violently oppose this administration, then you are far right and you should be doxxed on the internet, removed from the job, and your life should be destroyed.
And by the way, Amanda, we don't even know if this was Kevin McCale at the rally or a guy who looks like him.
We don't even know that yet.
Nobody's been able to confirm it's him.
And the backlash is just deafening.
But you're right.
They hate us.
The left hates us.
They're comparing ICE agents to Nazi SS and the Gestapo.
They're comparing the Department of Homeland Security's headquarters to the Nazi HQ and holding facilities for people that came here illegally to concentration camps where people were exterminated.
I mean, they won't stop.
There is no end to their unhingedness, if that's a word.
The whole comparisons, I mean, again, the Nazi thing is like shorthand for Republican, right?
Like that's everything we do is something within the Nazi regime.
It's something Goebbels or Hitler would have done.
But the ironic thing is, is it's like, you know, pick up the history book.
If you think that it was Nazi policy to detain illegal non-citizens, detain their children in a facility where they get three meals a day, a roof over their head, video games, healthcare, eye care, education.
If you think that's Nazi policy.
And by the way, Amanda, a right to counsel that the U.S. government pays for.
Yeah, if you think that's Nazi policy, you're a freaking idiot.
Oh, no, you're a moron.
You're an absolute moron.
And you got people like Nancy Pelosi out there saying after Trump gave them what they wanted, he signed an executive order reuniting the families that a deal was cut with the devil.
Nancy Pelosi said a deal was made or cut with the devil.
They just want open borders.
But I really want to talk about this movement in Hollywood to hate conservatives.
I mean, De Nero at the Tony Awards got a standing ovation.
Sports, people in the sports casting game are coming out, celebrating those, calling for Kevin McHale to be essentially kicked out of basketball as if he was working with bookies to rig games.
And then you've got Peter Fonda calling for children to be terrorized and the son of the president to be raped by a pedophile.
Peter Fonda didn't even lose his verification on Twitter.
Nope.
Look, Peter Fonda and Jane Fonda, brother and sister, the whole Fonda family, let this serve as a stern warning to anyone who thinks that their cousin is cute.
This is the product of incest.
This is the level of idiocy that you will achieve by procreating with a family member.
They've gone insane.
It's like Jane and Peter are trying to one-up each other.
Jane Fonda, you would think that she would have learned from the 70s what it's like when you Hanoi Jane, right?
American rhetoric.
Yeah, Hanoi Jane.
But you know what?
Peter, he's F-list.
He's not even D-list.
I would say we should boycott him, but I think he's pretty much unboycottable.
And let me tell you what the biggest travesty is here.
He totally ruined Easy Rider for me, because at least Dennis Hopper, I mean, cool.
He destroyed a great movie.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
On the left, you've got people, you know, like this, this Celtics player, what's his name?
Mikhail.
Who the left is now demonizing, even though we don't know if it was him.
And, you know, Jack Dorsey and all of these people.
Well, but Amanda, go back there.
I want to go check.
Now, now it's enough.
The left is so unhinged.
It's enough to just look like another guy.
Maybe look like, maybe that's not even you.
You just look like another guy who was at a Trump rally, and all of a sudden, you're going to be punished.
Look, my dad, all along growing up, people said that he looked like a cross between Steve Spurrier and Donald Trump.
And I'm a little worried for his life now.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
Now, poor guy.
Yeah, but what I was saying is, you know, you look at the way that the left treats someone, you know, one of their own, who maybe slips out of line.
They step out of the box a little bit.
They step away from the propaganda and they eat Chick-fil-A or they go to a Trump rally or they hold a normal interview with the president of the United States before he took office.
That's what the left does to you.
Can you imagine if people on the right started attacking you and I, John, if we went to Starbucks or if they started attacking us for having an iPhone?
Exactly.
Let me give you, let me take it a step further, Amanda.
Could you imagine if Peter Fonda said that about one of the Obama kids?
Oh my gosh.
I mean, would Hollywood be releasing his movie?
Would Sony be releasing his movie?
Of course not.
But, you know, it's sad, but I'm just, you know, I mean, and you are too.
We're used to it.
We're used to it.
We're desensitized to it.
We're used to it.
We expect it.
Well, where does it end?
Look, Twitter is proven now.
Conclusively, conclusively proven that there is a double standard.
The fact that Henry Fonda didn't even lose three hours on Twitter.
The fact that Henry Fonda still has a verified account, the fact that Twitter hasn't issued a public statement, they're looking into it and they've shut his account down.
The bias is now conclusively proven, in my opinion.
Where does it end?
Because conservatives aren't going to migrate off Twitter.
They're too invested.
I admit it.
I'd like to.
I can't.
It's a very effective platform for media and brand building for me, for you, for many in our business.
But we're not going to migrate off Twitter.
They've got us.
They've got us.
I think the only way it ends, and I don't foresee this happening because I live in Hollywood.
And unfortunately, I witnessed the cowardice of people within the entertainment industry and how much they so tightly cling to their fame.
You know, you have a lot of celebrities out there who spout off this hate and this leftist propaganda, but you have a lot of celebrities who also keep quiet.
Those are the ones, surprisingly enough, who look at these far-left hippie celebrities and they're thinking you people are maniacs, but they don't have the guts to say anything because they know that they will completely lose their hats within the industry.
This will end when some of those people start growing balls.
Well, that's exactly what it is, right?
You need more John Voigts.
You need more Vince Vaughns.
You need more Adam Sandlers and his partner.
I can't think of his partner's name right now.
He's been in all of his movies.
Alan, you know what I'm talking about?
He's a pretty unabashed Republican, not an uber conservative, but a right-leaning Republican.
Alan, I can't think of his name.
James Woods and Kevin Sorbonne.
James Woods.
Right, right.
Point is, we need more of these people.
James Woods is about the most outspoken.
But, you know, here's the thing: John Voigt, James Woods, Adam Sandler are Hollywood legends.
They're very, very wealthy, very powerful guys in Hollywood.
You can't do anything for them.
They're so good at what they do.
They have such brands that their brands are impervious to their politics.
What about the next generation, though?
Because I would have thought Roseanne Barr fell into that category.
Apparently, she didn't.
Yeah, and what's concerning is that there is no one really within my generation.
One of my dear friends who is on a really, really big show right now, he's from Oklahoma and he's a hardcore conservative, but he'll never say anything.
So it's a generational thing for those people.
They have obtained success.
And like you said, they're untouchable within the industry because they are always going to be lucrative when it comes to box office sales.
But you have people, you know, around my age in their 30s in the industry who, you know, they've obtained success, but they're not quite at that level yet where they're untouchable.
And I don't know if they will, you know, hopefully someday they'll start speaking out after they achieve that level of solidified success.
But I mean, who knows?
I mean, Hollywood just might end up being one of those lost cultures here in America.
And I say this, I feel like I say this on a weekly basis.
I'm a broken record.
But conservatives, we really have to part have to start putting our wallet where our mouth is.
People, Ryan always makes my boyfriend makes fun of me for my boycott list.
I have a running boycott list in my phone, but I absolutely refuse to pay $13 a ticket to go see some people in the movie theaters.
And I refuse to go see certain people in concert.
And I refuse to buy certain people's music on iTunes.
And yeah, it's good music.
I like it.
I would like to have it in my iTunes library, but I'm not going to patronize those people.
And you know what?
You got to draw the line somewhere.
I don't blame you.
Got to double line somewhere.
I mean, we're constantly, if enough of us do it, you hit it in the wallet.
But look, Roseanne lost her show.
Peter Fonda gets his movie released.
Her ratings are higher than his.
She was making ABC Disney far more money than his little boutique film that 11 people will watch will ever make.
Sony, it's like Sony classics.
It's not even regular Sony pictures.
So you got to stop watching the alternate program.
You got to not watch the Roseanne spin-off.
You got to, I mean, people have to start feeling more convicted about this stuff.
And yeah, it's inconvenient to have to read a book instead of see the movie that you've been wanting to see, but it's got a liberal, a-hole, lefty celebrity in it.
So put your god gum wallet where your mouth is.
Yeah.
No, Amanda, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, I'm glad you're out of that business and on this side of the world where you can at least view your opinions.
Amanda Head, fellow rebel, Hollywood Conservative, my good friend, as always, an absolute pleasure.