 Are there actual policies that are discouraging police officers from pursuing stolen car crimes, car theft? Well, no pursued policies are part of that, but that of course isn't universal. That depends on the city. But I don't wanna let these prosecutors off the hook. I mean, Gascon may have been right, but it's not that the police were doing this necessarily without cause. If you arrest somebody first, I mean, there's a risk to that. You could get hurt. There could be a viral video. You don't get in trouble for not working as a cop. So every time you do, I mean, there's a decision should, is this worth it? And if you do put yourself at risk and you do make a good arrest and then the charges aren't pressed or prosecuted, you kind of go, well, what's the point? Why did I put myself out for this when it doesn't happen, when the system breaks down, post arrest? I mean, right now in DC, and I don't, you know, more than half the cases, I don't remember the exact number, but more than half of arrests aren't charged. That of course has an impact on how police do their job. You might say, you know, they're taking, they're doing what the prosecutor wants to some extent. And keep in mind that the prosecutor has an incredible amount of discretion and total immunity. So it's a very important job. But if the prosecutor decides that their primary focus is to reduce incarceration rather than prosecute criminals, the system breaks down. I mean, that's their job is, you know, it's an adversarial system and they're supposed to be the ones who are prosecuting criminals. There's a far cheaper version of the argument that you're making. I think you're making a much better argument, but the cheaper version goes like this. And we see this on Twitter, social media all the time. People essentially say, whenever there's a high profile crime and a viral video in any big city, New York, LA, DC, San Francisco, there's a whole bunch of people who respond with this chorus of, well, you voted for this, didn't you? And what you're saying is almost like the good faith and far more rigorous version of, you voted for this a little bit. Do you, what do you think of that sort of reaction that many people have? Is it, you know, sort of a half truth? Is it something that's just totally counterproductive to talk about or is it useful to try to get people to understand the relationship between the prosecutors that they put in place versus and how that affects which crimes are actually gone after and the overall quality of life in their cities? I mean, often the people who make that argument, I'm a little bit larry of, I don't know, sometimes it's too simplistic, but the basic concept is, yeah, elections have consequences. These prosecutors are not silent about their goals. When the Manhattan DA announced, you know, that he wasn't gonna prosecute shoplifting, that matters. I mean, I often think there's a weird sense that criminals don't have agency. They know very well what the policies are because they deal with the system. And you have, especially in democratic cities, these elections are determined in primary elections by and large, voter turnout is incredibly low, which I think is a greater problem for democracy in our country. But you get someone who says a certain platitudes that you wanna hear and people go, oh, that sounds good, but they're not, but yeah, they have consequences. If prosecutors don't wanna prosecute and we have to figure out what our goals are and apparently people are voting for this. And then when it happens, they kind of go, oh, I didn't actually, I didn't expect that. Well, then you have to put someone else in that office. Let me speak as someone who maybe it would be in that category of like I, people would say like I got what I did as a voter. I was in California in the early 2010s when some of this stuff was on the ballot. I recall voting to and, you know, rethink aspects of three strikes, for instance, where it would be like if the third strike was what they call, I think a leaner, then they wouldn't necessarily incarcerate the person for 20, 25 years or whatever the third strike is supposed to be. And then there was a slew of them there and the famous, you know, $950, anything below $950, shoplifting would not be a felony. I don't think I voted for that one, but then there's like drug reforms. I, there's some sense where I feel like some of those were a good idea. Like I still think that super long, you know, endless sentences aren't always the great, the right way to go. And we need to rethink drug policy, but also like shoplifting or stealing a car is a crime that needs to be prosecuted. Like if you had to drill down on like what you think are the most destructive one or two policies for like real law and order, like what would those be? I'm not a fan of three strikes, but I might be a fan of 10 strikes. At some point when you have repeat offenders, I mean, you know, enough, you know that someone with 12 felony convictions, if you've released that person, even, you know, pending adjudication, they're gonna go and do a 13th. I mean, that's what they do. So I don't necessarily have the solutions, but just sort of saying, well, crime is down nationwide. So it doesn't matter. It's not a moral or politically winning position. Some of it is also look shop, it's not like shoplifters were always prosecuted, you know, before 2020. There is a resource limitation and you have to pick your battles, but don't announce non-prosecution as a policy. You need the discretion to say, okay, maybe, you know, let's be realistic. We're not gonna prosecute this person, whatever, it's not worth it. But then you get someone who is a repeat violent offender and if you get that person for shoplifting, yeah, then you go after them for what you got. So it's this sort of blanket statements of non-prosecution from prosecutors that I think is very troubling. But then it, you know, it combines with changes in state. Here's the thing, there've been hundreds of different laws and elections and changes in policy over the past decade and policing in the criminal justice system. And I can't think of a single one that would be considered getting tougher on crime. I'm not against a lot of these reforms. Some of them are often, there's part of it that's good and then like there's a hidden part that actually is, you know, a poison pill and disaster. Well, it's not a poison pill. It's just a disastrous part of the policy. But when you collectively, you've have, you know, you've passed hundreds of laws that make it tougher to prosecute or police cities. Yeah, collectively they have an impact and they keep saying, well, you can't, you know, it's not this one, okay, maybe it's not that one. But some, you know, overall, tell me how, you know, it's just, it's chipping away constantly. There's a motivation that I think a lot of people don't realize which isn't to improve policy. It's too, it's driven by an ideology that wants to abolish police and prison. And so anything that sort of moves in that direction, they can, you know, they can support. And then individually, you know, they'll give it a nice name and there might be a good part of it too, like with bail reform in New York City or New York State was not all bad, but parts of it were horrible. You know, they passed a law that every cop in New York City knows and nobody else does. And it was called the chokehold ban. This is the city council. Well, chokeholds were already illegal in the state. So that part was completely redundant. And then they threw in this part about putting pressure on the diaphragm. And they made that in the course of an arrest. And they made that a crime and it only applies to police officers. Well, that also makes police worry. Well, I mean, every time I arrest someone who's resisting potentially I could be prosecuted for that. And they say, well, you know, we won't really, well, they tried to say, well, we won't really do that. Well, they might, you know, wait, wait for the right video. And then when there was a move to sort of change that absurd, absurd part, like, oh, we didn't, you know, the mayor of the block the other time was saying, oh, we can change that later. And the people in city council said, no, you can't. We wrote it exactly as we wanted. So that abolition movement is dangerous to public safety. It's inequitable and who it affects in terms of criminal victimization. So there does have to be some political pushback. And I think we're starting to see that finally, but it's a lot harder to, you know, put the house back together after you've broken it. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our show, Just Asking Questions. You can watch another clip here or the full episode here. And please subscribe to Reason's YouTube channel and the Just Asking Questions podcast feed for notifications when we post new episodes every Thursday.