Gov. Polis has found the magic bullet to prevent crime — spending your hard-earned tax dollars on programs rather than punishing criminals.
Soft-on-crime Democrats are officially out of ideas, which is especially embarrassing during election season when they face tough-on-crime Republicans.
The FBI reports violent crimes like robberies, assaults and homicides reached a 25-year high in Colorado last year.
So Polis has decided to rally to the occasion by spending more money next year on crime prevention “than in any point since he took office in 2019,” the Denver Post reports.
Which would be impressive if politicians didn’t increase spending on everything every year they are in office.
This story was headed to the dumpster as a big nothing burger until this nugget of WTF fell off the sh*t shovel.
That plan is not official and must go through review by the legislature, but, notably, it presumes that Colorado’s violent crime issues should be solved primarily through interventions that do not necessarily involve more punishment.
Go ahead and preorder your Louis Vuitton handbags at major savings of five-finger discounts as Cherry Creek turns into San Fransisco where shoplifting gangs can steal with impunity.
“The best way to improve public safety is to prevent a crime from occurring before it occurs. And to do that, we have proven models that have been demonstrated both in Colorado and nationally,” Polis said in an interview. “Whenever you’re catching it and you’re prosecuting people, it’s sadly already too late. There’s already a victim. and that victim has lost a great deal, whether it’s physical injury or property or psychological trauma.”
The premise of Polis’s plan: It’s too late to help victims, but it’s not too late to help criminals. So why focus on crime?
Looting stores has become an epidemic in California because it’s not worth the prosecution’s time to punish criminals if they steal less than $1,000 at a time. And the criminals know that.
Campaigning on a platform to spend millions in social programs in the name of crime prevention might be popular with the radicals and extremists in Polis’s left wing base.
But it sends the wrong message to criminals and their sympathizers that less punishment is the Democrat Party’s big solution to preventing crime.
Here’s Polis’s blueprint for stamping out crime with your hard-earned tax dollars:
$10 million to hire 100 people at the Colorado Mental Health Institute.
$32 million for teen residential treatment for kids on drugs or dealing with depression or anxiety.
$36 million for improved lighting, grants for mental health intervention in schools and other so-called community “investment.”
(Memo to the media, stop calling it investment, it’s government spending. When you invest $20,000 remodeling your bathroom to increase the price of your home, it’s an investment. When government spends millions of dollars to hire bureaucrats to create regulations on the flow of water in your toilet and shower, they didn’t invest more money in your house, you did by spending even more money on those newly improved fixtures that won’t let you use your water. So just stop it.)
Republican Heidi Ganahl called Polis’s plan soft on crime and is making bail reform a priority in her campaign to unseat the Democrat in next year’s gubernatorial election.
Ganahl’s comments to the Denver Post in support of bail were printed hours before Darrell Brooks was arrested and charged with killing five people and injuring nearly 50 after he plowed his red SUV into a Wisconsin Christmas parade Sunday.
Brooks was out of jail on a $1,000 bond at the time, accused of running over the mother of his child at a gas station earlier this month.
Brooks was also under a $500 bond for shooting at his nephew last year, and awaiting trial on those charges.
Remember that when Democrats strike up their chorus again this election season to eliminate bail requirements for criminals.