Speaker 1: In the past two years, this family owned Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: restaurant in Fruitval Avenue has been robbed twice at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: The owner says he rarely sees police patrols despite the
Speaker 1: numerous armed holdups that have plagued this neighborhood for the
Speaker 1: past two years.
Speaker 2: And enough is enough. We're proposing not to pay taxes
Speaker 2: to the city and do you give me the survey
Speaker 2: that we deserve.
Speaker 1: Jose Ortiz, and Oakland native, says, in addition to the
Speaker 1: multiple robberies, he's seen a twenty five percent drop in
Speaker 1: business and customers are staying away because they don't feel safe.
Speaker 1: There's nothing on the books yet, but the full Council
Speaker 1: may need to consider a tax to Firman initiative for
Speaker 1: the effective businesses big and small.
Speaker 3: Wherever you're listening, from coast to coast, Alaska and Hawaii
Speaker 3: and strange foreign lands, some of your leaders are considering
Speaker 3: so called progressive justice reform. We are here to warn
Speaker 3: you about the reality. Specifically, what was known as Prop
Speaker 3: forty seven in the state of kelun A Cornea passed
Speaker 3: according to the excellent Katie Grimes in California Globe by
Speaker 3: tragically misinformed voters. In twenty fourteen, freight flagrantly titled these
Speaker 3: Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act by then Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: I didn't remember that. That's what it was called WOW.
Speaker 3: Which reduced a host of serious felonies to misdemeanors, including
Speaker 3: drug crimes, date rape, all thefts under nine hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty dollars, even for repeat offenders who steal every day.
Speaker 3: It also decriminalized drug possession from a felonine to a misdemeanor,
Speaker 3: removed law enforcement's ability to make an arrest in most circumstances,
Speaker 3: as well as removing judge's ability to order drug rehabilitation
Speaker 3: programs rather than incarceration.
Speaker 2: It has been a cataclysmic disaster.
Speaker 4: So what was it called the Safe Neighborhoods Act or whatever?
Speaker 2: The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools And what was their spin
Speaker 2: on that? I don't even remember.
Speaker 5: It.
Speaker 3: People will get counseling and as people only stink it
Speaker 3: was Let's I tell you what perfect ramp on ramp
Speaker 3: to discuss Prop forty seven in the effort to reform
Speaker 3: it was Sheriff John McGinnis, who was for years and
Speaker 3: years with Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, including being the sheriff.
Speaker 3: He's now a very popular and enjoyable radio host in
Speaker 3: California and a longtime friend of the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2: Sheriff John McGinnis, John, how are you, sir?
Speaker 5: Very well, gentlemen, great to be with you. Thanks.
Speaker 4: Do you remember how they spun it to get people
Speaker 4: to unfortunately vote for it in the first place.
Speaker 5: They did, they were in their estimation there was excessive
Speaker 5: incarceration and therefore give people a chance, give him an
Speaker 5: opportunity to assimilate into society, be treated more fairly. They'll
Speaker 5: live a better, healthier, happier life than that will make
Speaker 5: schools and neighborhoods safer. Ironically, this passed in November twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: It took effect immediately, so the very next day, there
Speaker 5: was a guy that went into a big box store
Speaker 5: in Santa Clarita down in Los Angeles County, and it
Speaker 5: showed that he had the intent when he entered that
Speaker 5: business to commit a theft, which makes it out of
Speaker 5: the formerly a felled burglary commercial burglary under Caifornia law,
Speaker 5: that all went away with Prop forty seven. So he
Speaker 5: was cited and released from that scene rather than being
Speaker 5: booked in jail. He went out to a vocal school
Speaker 5: bus stop bench, where he found a young lady waiting
Speaker 5: for the bus to take her to school in a
Speaker 5: residential neighborhood. He took her into a field, raped her,
Speaker 5: and left her for dad. So this guy would have
Speaker 5: been in custody but for the passage of Prop forty spin.
Speaker 5: Now he's a bad guy that was going to do
Speaker 5: bad deeds no matter what. But just the irony of
Speaker 5: this graphic illustration of its failure and the inconsistency with
Speaker 5: the message it purported to promise, is just It is
Speaker 5: frustrating beyond the ability to accept.
Speaker 3: And speaking of frustrating, you'll hear from various progressive leaders that, well, actually,
Speaker 3: crime is not risen, or crime is down here and there,
Speaker 3: and you know, you know better than us that if
Speaker 3: offenders are not arrested, and if they're arrested, they're not prosecuted,
Speaker 3: and if they're prosecuting, they're not tried, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: people stop reporting crime.
Speaker 2: They go why did they bother?
Speaker 5: Absolutely true, and we warned about this. There were several
Speaker 5: of us that read this horrible proposition and just really
Speaker 5: urged the public to be aware, don't fall for this.
Speaker 5: This is disingenuous. You will find among the casualties you'll
Speaker 5: have under reporting. And I took that message up and
Speaker 5: down the state of California to law enforcement officers, DA's
Speaker 5: city attorneys and really truly pleaded with them to continue
Speaker 5: to report crimes. The reality is the victims are not
Speaker 5: calling the police to report the crime in the first
Speaker 5: place because they rightfully believe no consequence, no results will
Speaker 5: come from that. So and I asked people rather regularly,
Speaker 5: just look back in your mind's eye prior to November
Speaker 5: of twenty fourteen, how often did you hear the term
Speaker 5: smash and grab thefts? If it wasn't a thing? Frankly,
Speaker 5: how often did you see tents and encampments on the
Speaker 5: streets and residential areas and commercial areas throughout the state
Speaker 5: of California? You did not, There were none because it
Speaker 5: was tolerated. Well.
Speaker 4: The product property, One of my favorite ones is you know,
Speaker 4: going to the nice mall and seeing an armed.
Speaker 2: Guard in front of your stores. I mean, that was
Speaker 2: never anything I ever saw in my life.
Speaker 5: No no, this is absolutely, un undeniably created a real
Speaker 5: mess in the state of California. And by the way,
Speaker 5: California is it's not unique to California. They're doing similar
Speaker 5: things in other states. You can see it elsewhere in
Speaker 5: New York, Illinois, Massachusetts doing many of the same kinds
Speaker 5: of things. But this is an opportunity. Now. The good
Speaker 5: news is, and it seems to have a tremendous degree
Speaker 5: of positive reception to actually reform this or to fix it,
Speaker 5: or to meliorate the consequences of Prop. Forty seven.
Speaker 2: It's called the pull your head out of your ass acts. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: I can't come up with anything better. Jack, that's good.
Speaker 2: What's it? What's it going to do? What are the
Speaker 2: reforms we're talking about?
Speaker 5: Well, by the way, let me just warn your ratifront
Speaker 5: is not a panacea. But it'll do is reclassify THEEPS
Speaker 5: with two or more prior convictions as jail elible felony,
Speaker 5: so you get two strikes as a convicted thief before
Speaker 5: you're now eligible for a felony prosecution. We used to
Speaker 5: have a law, and ironically this Penal Code section sixty
Speaker 5: sixty six that made a subsequent theft a felony. Petty
Speaker 5: theft of the prior was a felony, and it was
Speaker 5: seldom charged. There was prosecutorial and judicial discretion, but that's
Speaker 5: completely gone now and the crooks know it. So you
Speaker 5: can literally go into a retail store three hundred and
Speaker 5: sixty five days a year, steal nine hundred and forty
Speaker 5: nine dollars worth of merchandise and have no aggregation or
Speaker 5: compounding consequences for those thefts.
Speaker 2: That's so insane, it's absurd.
Speaker 5: Three hundred and sixty five misdemeanors they're subject to, they're
Speaker 5: issued to citation that they throw away, they don't pay
Speaker 5: any attention to. And in some of the jurisdictions in
Speaker 5: the state of California, you have hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 5: warrants for these kinds of behaviors that are unaddressed.
Speaker 2: Two hundreds of thousands.
Speaker 5: Great not it's incredible. You know, law of biting people
Speaker 5: get a traffic citation, they grumble at the idea, but
Speaker 5: they take care of right. The people who are living
Speaker 5: this criminal lifestyle don't care about it, so they routinely
Speaker 5: discard those citations, pay no attention to them. Whatsoever, they
Speaker 5: go on living that lifestyle. And of course one of
Speaker 5: the greatest manifestations of this is what's so oftentimes referred
Speaker 5: to as the homelessness epidemic, But when you think about it,
Speaker 5: is really not homelessness is the final symptom. It's antisocial
Speaker 5: criminal behavior left unaddressed that has created a problem. So
Speaker 5: it really I think it adversely impacts everybody, the business community,
Speaker 5: people trying to enjoy their quality of life, and even
Speaker 5: the offenders selves are not well served by this nonsense.
Speaker 3: All right, So given the time that we have John Sheriff,
Speaker 3: John McGinnis is on the line, why don't I hit
Speaker 3: you with some of the reforms of forty seven. You
Speaker 3: can comment for a second or two if you want. Oh,
Speaker 3: you mentioned it reclassified theft with two or more prior
Speaker 3: convictions jail eligible. Adds new laws to address smash and
Speaker 3: grab thefts that result in significant losses or are committed
Speaker 3: by multiple thieves together.
Speaker 5: That's interesting, yeah, yeah, And that's what you see happening routinely.
Speaker 5: What's the evening news. You see graphic images of it.
Speaker 5: So this targets that because as I say, now, there
Speaker 5: is no aggregation of those individual crimes that they're all
Speaker 5: treated separately as misdemeanors. And by the way, cooks know
Speaker 5: what's worth nine hundred and fifty bucks and what's not,
Speaker 5: so they use calculators in many cases to make a
Speaker 5: determination as to how much they can take avoiding felony consequences.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you can go ahead and aggregate those those
Speaker 3: thefts and charge felonies. I know it adds fentanyl to
Speaker 3: the list of hard drugs resulting in selny prison time.
Speaker 2: That's good. How many people would have to die before
Speaker 2: we wake up? That amazes me.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely insane. And this is a different kind of
Speaker 5: a poison. I still, you know, I think methan, fhetamine
Speaker 5: and fentanyl are in a race to see which is
Speaker 5: the most destructive. Fentanyl is clearly more deadly, but methan
Speaker 5: fetamine destroys communities. It destroys plumbing fixtures where this stuff
Speaker 5: is cooked, It destroys the underground water table. Do's so
Speaker 5: much damage. And by the way, it as a result
Speaker 5: of Prop forty seven that then fetamine was reduced from
Speaker 5: a felony to a mistemeanor. So a lot of this
Speaker 5: I think would go a long way in making things better,
Speaker 5: not an absolute pantasy. I think it's a first critical step,
Speaker 5: and it's also it's a resulted I think in a
Speaker 5: collective opening of the eyes to a great extent of
Speaker 5: the voters recognize the fallacy of these propositions, and the
Speaker 5: summary entitled to call this something like the Safe Neighbors
Speaker 5: and Schools Act there gives me hope for the future.
Speaker 4: Do you have any idea what the polling is on this,
Speaker 4: the likelihood people agree it needs to be reformed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this polls very favorably. In fact, when it's called
Speaker 5: the Homelessness, Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, it polls about
Speaker 5: seventy percent in the state of California, and when people
Speaker 5: hear more information, it goes up even more. Our first
Speaker 5: order of business is to get five hundred and forty
Speaker 5: six thousand signatures to put this on the November ballot.
Speaker 5: We're knocking on that number right now, but understanding the
Speaker 5: reality of signatures being rejected, I'd like to double maybe
Speaker 5: even get to a million or more signatures in order
Speaker 5: to qualify this. Without any hesitation, it'll get there. I
Speaker 5: think it's also a kind of an emotional and a
Speaker 5: dramatic statement that that many Californians are willing to sign this.
Speaker 2: So that's the right now, and you're having an event.
Speaker 2: Is that right in the Sacramento area? Tell us about that.
Speaker 5: It is at the Roosevelt Automol and Suburban Sacramento tomorrow
Speaker 5: from noon to four. People can come out and from
Speaker 5: the comforty of your car. I'll be broadcasting live from
Speaker 5: there from noon to four. Sign this petition from your car. Car.
Speaker 5: You can get out and say hi and socialize whatever
Speaker 5: your druthers, or you can be anonymous and not even
Speaker 5: be recognized as being there. But this is a big
Speaker 5: drive to get a significant number of signatures tomorrow. There'll
Speaker 5: be more efforts as well.
Speaker 4: Whenever these things don't pass, the things that I want
Speaker 4: to pass don't pass, it's often because I feel like
Speaker 4: they didn't anticipate the pushback. What a pushback do you
Speaker 4: anticipate because I can't imagine what it would be.
Speaker 5: Well, I anticipate that the legislature will try to create
Speaker 5: something else, and they can create an initiative and put
Speaker 5: it on the ballot November as a proposition without going
Speaker 5: to the for a vote of the public. It will
Speaker 5: be titled something like the Puppies and rainbows, right, and
Speaker 5: it will look very attractive.
Speaker 2: By the way.
Speaker 5: They've also promised that they're going to fix this. They're
Speaker 5: beginning to recognize now that they cannot deny the effect
Speaker 5: of Prop. Forty seven and the reality in which people
Speaker 5: are living, but cannot fix it even if they were
Speaker 5: of a mind to. This was created by the voters.
Speaker 5: The voters that were lied to, absolutely lied to and duped,
Speaker 5: but the voters approved it nonetheless, So it takes the
Speaker 5: voters to change it. And there's language in Proposition forty
Speaker 5: seven that says just that paraphrasing, nothing in this can
Speaker 5: be changed unless it's in furtherance of the spirit of Prop.
Speaker 5: Forty seven. So to some of these changes without a
Speaker 5: vote of the public would be absolutely constitutionally rejected. And
Speaker 5: they know that.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 3: We love that you're fighting against this and leading the
Speaker 3: charge and will certainly help any way we can. Michael,
Speaker 3: our favorite new co Amla Harris clip, the one we've
Speaker 3: been using lately. I think she really summons up how
Speaker 3: important it is to sign this petition. Do you have
Speaker 3: that handy Nope, he's got the oh my god, where
Speaker 3: is it look on his face.
Speaker 5: I'd love to hear it. Yeah and again. Remember she
Speaker 5: was the Attorney general to say to California that gave
Speaker 5: this the summary entitle that it had. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for your time. We'll keep an eye
Speaker 2: on it. John McGinnis, Saco County.
Speaker 3: Good to talk to you, John, Thanks, Armstrong and Getty