One of the major platform issues of left-wing district attorneys in recent years has been the move towards bail reform. Hearing them discuss the issue, it sounds as though poor people are being singularly targeted for arrest, hit with exorbitant bails, and then left to rot in prison while they lose their jobs and find themselves unable to support their families.
While there are certainly cases in which that has happened, and certainly abuses within the court system that need to be addressed, the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. And a prime example of that is the case of the Waukesha Christmas parade attacker.
Darrell Brooks had already been arrested and charged with trying to run over the mother of one of his children earlier this year. Yet despite the seriousness of that charge, he was let out of prison after posting a mere $1,000 bail. On what planet does attempted murder warrant being let out of prison, let alone on such a paltry bail amount?
There’s a lot of truth in Blackstone’s maxim that it’s better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent be unjustly imprisoned. But today’s leftist district attorneys seem to think that we have to let all the guilty go free. As a result of Brooks’ release, he was free to continue his criminal activity, and six people suffered the ultimate price for the court system’s inability to keep him confined, give him a speedy trial, and serve him with whatever punishment he may have deserved.
Even worse, these DAs know that their lax bail policies are going to cost lives, yet they don’t care. They’re more concerned with kow-towing to George Soros and his ilk than with doing what’s right and making sure that justice is served. They have an ideological desire to allow criminals to run amok, and they’re letting them run amok across the country.
From San Francisco to Chicago to Philadelphia to New York, crime rates are on the rise as criminals have become emboldened by DAs who are just going to give criminals a slap on the wrist. And now that even the rich and famous in California are being targeted by brazen criminals, many Democrats are getting wise to the fact that their feel-good policies that seem to be just fine in theory are ruinous in reality.
The first step is going to have to be throwing the leftist DAs out of office, something that’s no easy task in Democrat-controlled areas. But people may be fed up enough now that the pendulum may swing back the other way. Hopefully it will be enough to put a damper on criminals and keep them from continuing to victimize innocent people.