Joining me now is the guy who has been doing this.
It's wild.
What's happening in the twenty third congressional district or not a judicial district?
Wild.
They have laws and they're on the books, and then people come and they break the laws, and then we arrest them. And I say we because I live in the twenty third judicial district, and then this insane thing happens. The district attorney actually prosecutes people and if they commit a bad enough crime, he puts them in jail. It's crazy if you live in Denver, but I don't. I live in the twenty third Congressional district, where my next guest,
George Brockler, is the guy doing those things. George, is it cool to work in a place where other people around you want you to actually enforce the law?
The support is ridiculous, and I I have to believe that some of the other prosecutors in the metro area feel like I do about crime what they want to do, but they are tamped down by the politics.
Of the area.
I mean, if you look at a Rapahoe, jeff Co, Denver Adams, they're all blue, blue, blue counties and they have to navigate things like arm reduction, and what about what do we do with the illegal immigrants? And should we put them in a position that they can be deported and what if they're convicted? And who else can we blame for society's ills? That just isn't us down here. It's very straightforward. It's something.
I live here.
I've been in this county for almost thirty years. I still have two kids under my roof in public school here, so this place matters to me. And we just happen to be in a place where everybody is like right. We think we're freer if we're safer, and we think that olden people accountable for violations and the laws the way to do it.
And I happen to be in agreement with that.
I do too.
I got to tell you I got super mad. I'm going to just share this with you. I am in a large sort of you know, one of those sort of target Walmart variety type stores.
It was neither of those. It was a different store, and.
Two of the clerks behind the car counter were talking about they had watched someone shoplift a lot of stuff and there was nothing they could do.
I said, did you call the police? This is in Douglas County.
She goes, no, we're told by corporate not I said, and let them know in Douglas County they will show up. And that's the difference, right, I mean, because even just enforcing those little things, I will never forget the video, and I think it was Parker PD that was put out of a guy getting arrested for something and as he's getting arrested, he's on body camp footage of saying, God, they don't even they don't even put the cuffs on in Denver, like God, this sucks. This only happens in
Douglas County. And I was like, right on, dudes, spread spread the word to your friends, because ultimately, let's talk about some statistics you guys just talked about earlier this month. One of the statistics that jumped out at me sort of but not really, because I think everyone in Douglas County is nice. Our criminals are not from here, As they say, where are they coming from?
Well, that's a great question. The bulk of the out of town criminals, and I would say that about fifty percent or more of the crime committed down here, of all kinds in Douglas County. It's committed by people who don't call our place home. And the biggest contributor to that number is Denver. They represent twenty five percent of that number. Auroras in second at about nineteen percent. And then you see some of the other cities in Arapahoe County,
the Littleton's, the Inglewoods contributing other lesser numbers. But it's a significant amount of crime that happens down here. And if you look at the property crime in particular, because there are some crimes that are more homegrown, domestic violence, crimes against children, homicides tend to be things that come out of a community, and our numbers are very good
on that the property crimes. People come here to be tourists for sure, and one of the ways we're going to tackle that is I came out and pledged early on. We are going to arrest every single thief. You may spend only one night in jail. That's up to a judge, not to us, because we're going to lock you up and remind you that if you're bound to commit a crime, and I.
Hope you don't, right, you should go do it somewhere else.
And that I absolutely love. There was a little town in Georgia when I was a kid that had a similar situation where they were on an interstate, so people woul kind of stop by, steal stuff, rob things, whatever, And they passed a little ordnance in their town that required everyone to learn how to carry a firearm. And I mean it was a small town, and then they put up big old billboards that said it is a law in this town that everyone is armed, just to
let you know where you're going. Amazingly, crime stopped in the little town on the interstate.
It was just went away.
There was like nothing else happened. And that's where I wanted to have you on the show. And for two reasons. I want to talk to something you said at the beginning of this interview, and that is that you know, district attorneys in other counties don't have the sort of support you have down there because you've got a bunch of sheriffs and and police chiefs and law enforcement officers that are that are that have your back and are
excited that you have their back as well. I have to say, I'm sure you saw the guy in Washington.
D c.
Who hit a Border patrol agent with his subway sandwich after an extended fit of screaming in the face of this guy that he was a fascist in all of this stuff, and then come to find out this dude is a trial attorney for the Department of Justice. If that is not sort of a little window into what you're talking about, I don't.
Know what is.
So how do we get people in these offices, not even like an elected office like you're in. How do you get employees in these offices who are committed to upholding the law?
How does that? How do you change that culture?
That's a great question one.
And I can't take one hundred percent credit for this, because the community sells itself. As you know, you're down here, and I think that people listening in Colorado and beyond au to know the heads of our federal agencies out here, FBI, DEA, ATF those guys in gals and their number two's almost you universally choose Douglas County to live here. So we already have a reputation of being very pro law enforcement
and safe. And so you have that, and then you come in with a guy who's willing to come forward not only answer hard questions, but tackle the mythology about punishment and crime, and pretty soon you start attracting people to apply to your office who are like, I want to be a crime fighter.
I want to be a justice seeker.
I don't want to be in the business of just being a social worker with a law degree, like I want to actually do stuff, and you start to develop that it doesn't mean you can't make mistakes. But when I saw that story, I was like, give me a break. And for anyone out there thinking what would we do here, I don't know the class charge, but there's no question I would support a prosecution of that guy, no question.
I mean it was so outrageous but also incredibly sad.
I mean that guy needs help.
He doesn't need he needs help, and he also needs to face the consequences for his actions. Let me ask you specifically, where have we seen where are our crime rates in Douglas County growing up going down? Where have we seen the biggest increases, the biggest decreases.
Well overall, we're seeing a decrease. And I'll give you a couple examples that you know. Look, I'm not a social scientist, but I noted that I can tell you that in the seven ish eight months here that we're approaching that. We've been doing this sort of approach to law enforcement, which is come down here and victimize us and plan on staying that.
We've seen some good numbers. I'll give you an example motor vehicle theft.
Last year, before I took over, the arrest rate, the incarceration rate for motor vehicle theft was about two thirds, and we still saw a slight decrease about nine percent. This year, it's ae hundred percent incarceration rate, and we've already seen were on pace for a reduction I think of another twenty five percent, so we're seeing crime drop. I reached out to Loan Tree, Parker, Castle Rock if there's any blips up.
There are blips that I don't attribute as much to.
An increase in crime as an increased pursuit of crime.
You brought up the fact that you were in a store we held, and when I say we, I mean the sheriff, all three chiefs of police and me got together like the fifteen to twenty biggest retailers in Douglas County and sat down and had the conversation you talked about, which was, Hey, whatever you were doing in the past, leave it in the past, you call us cops are going to come out, and the cops are going to come out, and when they make an arrest, you're going to get a guy that's going to have his team
prosecute them. And we've already started to see more interaction between some of those like the outlet stores that had been doing nothing and just treating it like it's a cost of business. We've seen more communication from them with Castle Rock PD and so in Loan Tree with Park Meadows than we'd had previously, maybe ever. And so this is actually working and this is why we're seeing our numbers coming down well.
And I want to talk about another experience that I did have at Walmart. This actually did happen at Walmart. I'm coming out of Walmart and there are like five cop cars. They're surrounded this other car where they were loading a bunch they were in the process. Two women are in the process of loading a bunch of laundry detergent, right, so they're stealing the laundry detergent. So the cops are there and everything, and I was like, I walked bo I was like, yeah, I gave them the old you know,
big fist up or whatever. And the cops kind of looked and laughed, you know, over at me. But it was so nice because all of those costs get passed on to all consumers.
Right, we're all paying for that theft.
That's right.
Do you think that because and I was actually told by a different police officer, they believe that those kind of shoplifting situations, those women are part of a much bigger ring of shoplifters. Right, They're not just coming in on their own. So what impact does that have on keeping those rings out of Douglas County? I mean, they don't I want there people to get arrested.
Well, I think the message carries more more weight than we can really quantify. And I say that criminals don't know the exact law, but they know how the law works and where it works. And so you know, the message, in part from the very beginning, has been we are going whether you're a shoplifter of one item or part of a bigger ring, we're here to hold you accountable. We just got and you talked about all the partners that support us. I don't want to leave out the
county commissioners. These are the guys that have the purse strings that allow us to do things like and this is what we've done. We now have a standalone senior prosecutor who does economic crime and elder abuse crime.
How wonderful.
And so we're going.
To start pursuing these rings, working our way up the chain, much like you would with a drug trafficking organization, and we're going to pursue these people.
For things called COCA.
It's if people are listening, it's like our state's version of RICO, like an organized crime statute. And we're going to start tuning these people up. And I don't think we're going to have to do it at the same pace and level for the next four to eight years that I'm here, because after the first couple and the word gets spread out there, people are gonna say, I think I'll just stay in Denver, And that's fine with me.
That's like my mom was a longtime teacher and or the piece of advice she always gave to new teachers is the mean on the first day. You can always get nicer, but you can't get tougher, So you're just being mean on the first day. Teacher George Brockler, not really teacher, District Attorney of the twenty third Judicial District George Brocklers, who's joining me.
I just got a question, and I don't know I'm gonna ask you.
Will you ask George about that stupid TikTok trend where kids are putting their foot into your front door?
What can you do as the homeowner? Do you know what they're talking about?
Basically, like these kids are knocking and then when people open, they shove their foot into the door so you can't close it. Now, if that's me, I'm gonna break somebody's leg off closing that door on. This just never ceases to amaze me how stupid kids can be.
Have you seen this at all?
No?
But my gut tells me once again for reasons we talked about previously off air, and that is we are a vigorous Second Amendment supporting county out here.
I think that's a mistake and I think it's a risk.
I'm not telling you that sticking your foot in the door buys you some sort of gunplay. I'm just telling you that's a reality down here that could happen.
Why would you ever take that risk?
That act in and of itself is a trespass, right, It's a non consensual entrance into that house, even if it's just the foot. Now, we've done a lot to water down our juvenile justice laws in a way that I don't think makes us safer. But it's not like they're nonexistent. It's not like we're just gonna hug it out.
You can be arrested, you can be brought in, and then mom and dad are going to start throwing out money towards attorneys to try to figure out a way to keep you from ruining your life over a stupid joke.
D George Bruckler, you've got your next campaign slogan, George Brockler, We're not going to hug it out.
I think that'll be it. The last question.
I have for you, and it really has to do with crime overall. And I kind of mentioned this earlier in the show, the conversations about what's happening in Washington, DC right now. To me, it is the most distressing part of the entire conversation is that you have Washington, DC, which last year was the most violent city in the country. Murders, carjackings, violent crime, crimes against persons, crimes against property, most violent
city in the country. So you have the president bringing the National Guard, and he says he's going to clean things up. And the argument being made by people against this is, hey, crime is down thirty percent.
What are you doing?
What are you worried about? Crime is down thirty percent? So that means the seventy percent of crime that it's still happening for some reason in some people's heads.
Is okay.
And it's almost like we boiled the frog to make us think that it is okay that seventy percent of that crime is still going to exist as long as it's down thirty percent up to this point. What's your take on that? I mean, should people expect to feel safe in their community?
Oh? One hundred percent?
I mean, listen, government does way too much right now at every level, but one of its core functions is to protect the citizenry, right like public state, and for the federal government at the national level to protect the country.
That's the core competency.
And when you're failing at that at the local level, especially if you're a federal enclave like DC is, you should expect someone to show up and do something. I am taken as you are with the argument that, hey, someone who has cancer throughout their body is told, hey, your hand is cancer free. I mean so, I mean, you know what I mean, you're looking for cancer free everywhere, right, Like,
this argument is nonsense. And now what we're starting to hear is maybe they're cooking the books, right Like you're starting to see these stories about maybe when they were being called out on things that might have been classified as violent crime or something else, they were classified as I don't know, aggressive jaywalking. I don't know what they were doing, but they were changing some of the numbers.
I don't think this could be replicated anywhere else because I don't think the federal government has the ability to deploy the National Guard and certainly not the title ten federal troops anywhere else for this purpose.
But in DC.
Look, when the violent crime capital of your country is the capital of your country, it's.
Not a good look, correct, something that you got to tackle. Well.
I actually think that a lot of people, I think a lot of Democrats are very afraid that it is going to work, because then it sort of dispels the notion that nothing can be done right, that this is just the price of living in a big city. Whenever anything goes south, and I'm going to use Denver as a perfect example of this.
When I moved here.
I've only been here since twenty thirteen, but I feel like I've seen the entire arc.
Right.
I used to tell people how clean Denver was, how friendly everybody was, how safe I felt in Denver. So since then, in twelve years, I've kind of watched it fall apart. And yet Mayor Michael Hancock said it, Mayor Mike Johnston says it, Well, these are the same problems they have in other big cities. I like to remind them other big Democrat run cities, because I think that's an important part.
Of this piece of the puzzle.
But I, for one, am happier down on the twenty third and doing what you're doing, and keep up the good work, and let everybody in your office know. I sure appreciate them coming to support the endeavor as well.
Oh they'll like to hear that thanks for having us on to talk about it.
And we're going to continue.
To have cases that are going to be worth letting folks know about so that they know not to come down here if they're inclined to commit crimes.
So if you're willing to talk about them, so are.
We all right, George. That's George Brockler. We'll talk to you again. Sue, my friend, see it all right, That is George Brockler.