Billy Cunningham, the Great America.
We've heard from judges now in Hamilton County and also later on. We have the scheduled anyway, Britney Ruby to come on. I talked to her this morning at length. Scheduled to come on about two o'clock today. We also have Supreme Court Justice show deaters coming on. We have everyone coming on, including the junior senator from the great state of Ohio, Senator John Houston, who's busy in Washington,
not too busy with the government shutdown. A senator, I saw you a week ago presiding in the Senate, and I felt particularly proud you were trying to get the government shutdown to conclude, but the Democrats won't do that. Before we talk about the government shutdown, what is your perception of what's happening now in the city of Cincinnati and what role, if any, can the state and or the Feds play in bringing peace to River City.
Well, Bill's great to be with you. It's an unfortunate thing, because I say this about cities. Your number one job when you're the mayor, the chief of police the city council is protect people and their property. If you fail to do that, you fail to do that fundamental thing, then people will not visit your city, people will not invest there, people will leave, people businesses will move out
of your downtown, your area. And it's harming, and it harms the people of your city the most because not only does it make them unsafe, but it also makes it weakened and economically weakens your your city. And the only ex I mean, you tell me what the explanation is to this, but why wouldn't you have a police there all the time, over time showing the presidence and basically saying, no, a heart of our central business district, entertainment district, it will be safe. We invite the world
to come to Cincinnati because it's the safest city. Instead, it's becoming a very dangerous city.
Center of the call that was in effect.
PNG is grossly expanding its footprint in Mason. They're getting prepared to downsize their facilities. You know Macy's has moved out, is not going to become try to become apartment buildings. Most of the large businesses in Cincinnati have their own police department because they can't trust the city. I am told the chief of police THIJI is about to become the fall guy. She's about to get a copy of the home game. Because the mayor's policies don't work. The
mayor did a big news conference. I'm not sure you were there, but the governor was there, the FBI was there, the Department of Treasury was there, the US Marshall was there, County prosecutors there, County sheriff was there, accepting state help that never arrived because the mayor and share along the city manager, it never triggered it by requesting it. And when you look at the memorandum of understanding, it involved
two shifts a month having the state involved. And now after yesterday's news conference, it appears the city they finally have said to the county and to the state, we need help get it done. We can't fix the roads. We have potholes everywhere, Bridges are falling down, and the police force does not listen greatly to the chief of police, order, the mayor, order the city manager. That's another complete different issue. We have car break ins. We have more than twenty
thousand shots fired every year rattling around Cincinnati. We're gonna have about four hundred people shot. We're gona have about one hundred people murdered. We're gonna have about two thousand cars stolen and about fifteen thousand car break ins. And you know, John, excuse me, senator, Cincinnati is like seven miles by eight miles.
It's small.
The public school system has forty six percent of the children are chronically absent, and if you're a black boy, you're chronically absent seventy one percent of the time. On top of all this, we have two thousand kids in foster care. We have a complete meltdown of the institutions, and Corporate America is voting with their moving truck to get out of downtown Cincinnati. What role, if any, could then national Guard play. I know that was a topic and the mayor debate, and you're kind of in charge
of that in a sense. What role does a National Guard play to bring order to our city?
Well, Bill, look, you needn't look very far away. Cleveland, Ohio. The governor just sent a special violent crime reduction unit to Cleveland with the Highway Patrol and in one weekend they captured five eight eight felony arrests, six illegal firearms recovered, okay, and they captured a guy who was part of a mass shooting last year. Okay, and and like literally this was in one weekend when when the city of Cleveland finally relented and said, hey, we're going to accept help
from the Highway Patrol. The governor sent him in and they captured all of these people who've been terrorized in the community. You can do the same thing in Cincinnati. It's just that you need to have a mayor and a chief of police who are will to let it happen. That you can do this with law enforcement. The challenge for the National Guard is that they don't have they don't have the ability to arrest people. They can protect, they can create a presence, but they don't have they
don't have law enforcement powers. That's why sending in the highway Patrol is a better way to do it, because they can arrest people, they can coordinate with law enforcement, and they can clean up the streets. But you've got to have local leaders who will do.
This didn't happen.
We had this big news conference a month ago, it didn't happen. Had another one yesterday and and what's our chief of police looked in the camera and told her officers in uniform what to do. She didn't tell them she told the news media, and she says, if you're committing crime in Cincinnati, we will confront you.
We will confront you.
And I'm thinking confront me, and I want someone to be arrested.
We have I will.
Arrest you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and get you off of our streets, probably to protect businesses and do the thing that we need to keep people safe. That's what she needs to say.
No, we're gonna confront you, and I have, you know, the county corner last meet some markets.
Maybe maybe they could maybe they could have admonished them to.
You're gonna get You're gonna get time out in the corner. I mean, come on, she says, we will confront you. And if I'm a gangbanger with guns and I'm selling drugs, breaking into cars and god knows, burglarizing, I have the chief of police who looks like she belongs on a can of Dutch Boy paint, who's telling me I'm gonna confront you. It's like confront We have open air drug use, marijuana frequently being smoked, and I hope the President doesn't do much with that, by the way, because it's gone
into the children. We have open air drug markets, we have homeless encampments, we have car break ins, we have people getting shot on Fountain Square. And the chief police says, you will be confronted.
What why you got me?
Now?
I'm good, Now, I'm good. I'm good.
Bill. I talked to some Cincinnati officers recently and I asked this question. I said, I said, look what happens when you arrest people, because it's more than just it's more than just the law enforcements. And then you send them to court. Are they putting them away? Are they Are they taking the criminals off the street and putting them in jail? And one officer told me a story that there's a gas station a corner where there's constantly fights,
there's constantly drug deals going on. They arrest, they arrest them, they take them to jail, and when less than twenty four hours, they're back on the streets. So the criminals know that you develop a culture in your city based on whether you're tough on crime or you're weak on crime. And once the criminals know that there are no consequences for committing crimes, guess what they commit the crimes And that's the culture that's being developed that needs to be addressed.
The Shell station on Central Parkway is the site of massive drug sales captured on video on a daily basis, and there are no arrests. When I talked to Ken Cooper of the FOP, they tell me we have the indirect message not to arrest people unless it's required, because Scottie Johnson and others on city council don't want to go hands on with someone. If you go hands on, you might have an incident, you might have a warrant,
you might find out he's got a gun. We don't pull people over for speeding reckless operation because we have speed bumps. The speed bumps take the place more que the speed bumps because the city council doesn't want police to pull somebody over, run their warrants. Okay, you don't have a license, they don't have insurance, their car's not registered, got guns there. They don't want that to happen. So
we have speed bumps instead of cops. And on that point, about an hour ago ahead on Judge Josh Berkowitz, who's the presiding judge in Hamley County Municipal Court, he put the cheese on the Cracker. He said, half the judges in my court believe in restorative justice. So I say to him, Okay, I think I know what is restorative justice. If you're a judge that the fact is, it needs to restore justice to the criminal. A many times the so called black community, the great majority of black kids
have nothing to do with crime. But the face in Cincinnati is a black male face. And so if you come out of the restorative justice movement, you believe in no cash bonds, and you believe that putting a kid in jail for that child is worse than the victim penalty inflicted upon the victim. We have a juvenile court judge, Carrie Bloom, who's given talks on this subject and what she says in juvenile court, I do not want to put black kids in jail. It's reparations, it's about slavery,
it's about affirmative action, it's about DEEO. I don't want to put black kids in jail. And she said, by the way, a white female. But nonetheless she says, half the judges in Amita County do not sentence anyone to jail. We have another good judge, a friend of mine, Alison Hathaway who released some eighteen and a half year old on a gun charge. She reduced it, and then six weeks later he kills sixteen year old on OTR on her watch. And now that kid's going to face life imprisonment.
So what do you do, Senator, If half the judges or more in Hamley County do not want to sentence anybody to jail and don't want to lock them up, They want them all along the streets, what do you say about that one?
They got to go to them out. That's what you gotta do with people to do that. Bill is pretty this is pretty simple. It's not the people. We've got to start emphathizing with the victims and not the criminals. Okay, the victims of these crimes are in many cases, people who live in who live in the city. They're typically not visitors. There are people who call Cincinnati home, and you're not protecting the innocent people of Cincinnati from the
criminals in Cincinnati. And it doesn't take much. You start arresting people for committing crimes and put them in jail, and that will send a message to other people's do not do this. It will act as a deterrent. But right now, if you send the message that if you commit a crime there will be no consequences, that is an incentive. That is that is basically saying, go ahead and commit crimes in Cincinnati. I wish it, I wish it. I wish admonishment and stern warnings were enough in the world.
But they're not confrontations. We're going to confront you. We're going to confront on accountability. And that means that every once in a while. That means that every once in a while somebody is unfortunately going to go to jail and going to go to prison. But that sends the message that that behavior will not be tolerant, tolerated. It becomes a community standard in which people follow it. Community standards are set by your leadership, your leadership and the
law enforcement and your judges. And if they don't set a community standard that crime will not be tolerated, then they will set a community standard by default that crime will be tolerated.
Before we talk about the government shutdown, two different judges have told me that after a peer of all the mayor at these endorsement opportunities for their democratic liberal judges would always ask the question do you believe in restorative justice? Do you believe in no cash bonds? And do you believe in treatment and lieu of incarceration? Unless the judges answer, I believe in all those things. Af ted piroval and the Hamilty County Democratic Party you want not get the endorsement,
and so on the bench. Now we have restorative justice thirty and forty year old, largely females who came out of the movement of jails or a waste of time, that jails hurt inmates more than they assist, and that we believe in restorative justice, and therefore we won't send people to jail.
And the Hamony Counties.
You know, right now, Senator Hamilty County is teetering to becoming Chicago.
Bi sorative justice. I mean, that's a nice thing to say. You know, where you restore justice, you get people off the streets, you give justice to the victims. Okay, first of all, and you know what we do in our prisons. We give people a chance to rehabilitate themselves. It's a department of rehabilitations corrections. And once you're in prison, you
can go still earn credentials to get a job. You can do all these things while you're in prison, but you're off the streets keeping people safe when that's happening. That's how you restore somebody. You say, there's a consequence if you don't behave We'll give you a chance when you get out of here to go to work, because we're going to help you get a job skill. But you're not going to be committing crimes on our street and making victor and we're going to protect the victims.
We're going to protect the standard of what it means. That's that's the way you do restorative justice.
Ultimately, Senator, we have the government we deserve and we don't deserve. If you keep voting for the same individuals anticipating a different result, nothing's going to change. About a minute remaining, can you give us an update on the government shutdown which Chuck Schumer demands to occur. It's happening, Republicans say a clean cr Democrats won one point five trillion dollars, are more spending.
Give us an update on the shutdown.
The Schumer shutdown continues. We're going to vote again today. This will be the ninth time that I will have voted to keep the government open, clean cr keep funding at the current levels. But Chuck Schumer, he really exposed himself last week literally in the sense that he said, well, every day that the government shut down goes on, it's better for us, meaning Democrats. Well, you know what, that really exposes his motivation because it's really about politics to him.
It's not the American people. It's not about whether our military get paid. It's not whether our air traffic controllers get paid. It's not whether our first responders get paid. It's whether Chuck Schumer can score political points and keep his job because he's scared of AOC running against him in the primary in New York. And so we're being run by the radical left here in this nation right now. Because it requires sixty votes in the US Senate to
get the government back open. We've had three Democrats vote with us. We just need five more. But we will not relent. We're not going to give in to him wanting to fund health care for illegal immigrants. We're not going to give in to his massive spending proposals. We're gonna going to do this the right way. We're going to remain strong.
As long as it takes. But I hope things change in Cincinnati. We have an election in two and a half weeks, and if you don't change direction, you'll get more of the same.
Senator John, Yeah.
Go ahead, Bill, just just quickly. If you don't protect people and their property, they're gonna leave. They're gonna leave Cincinnati, businesses will leave, people won't comfort to use your restaurants. And you've got to restore public order and protect the people of Cincinnati.
You know, Senator after a peer of all gives mouth service to that. He always talks. My job one two and three is public safety, and if that's his job one two and three, he needs to be unemployed. So Senator John used to get my best everyone in Washington, and thanks for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show.
Thank you, John, Senator, thanks you, Bill, I thank you. All right, let's continue with more. It's up to you.
The truth will set you free. Voting for the same anticipating different result as the definition of stupidity. Bill Cunningham Radio seven hundred WW