This past weekend, Miami Republican Mayor Francis Suarez spoke out to state that the recent no-cash bail policies throughout cities and counties all over the country are contributing to the spiking crime rates.
While speaking as a member of a panel of mayors coming from a number of major cities appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” this past Sunday, Suarez, who also worked as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has stated that bail reform has sparked extreme “lawlessness.” He stated that the very lax policies in regard to punishing criminals have ended up causing climbing crime rates for crimes such as petty theft and have been harming the economy.
“What I’m focusing on is that the no cash bail is creating lawlessness in a lot of our cities,” explained Suarez. “What’s happening is, for example, people get out right away, they’re not even, you know, they don’t even have to post bail. So they’re able to get out right away. And so we’re seeing someone go into like a CVS, for example, and take thousands of dollars worth of merchandise, which is causing a CVSs to close, which hurts the, you know, the rest of the city, but that’s not particularly related to, to the gun violence issue. It’s related more to petty crime, which is creating lawlessness in some of our cities.”
Suarez also chose to laud his policies that have been established in Miami. “We are funding our police,” he stated. “A lot of cities cut into the defunding police movement. And we’re seeing [police funding] as a bipartisan issue.”
This past week, a number of bar and restaurant owners throughout the Houston area have started to sleep inside of their places of business as a means to try and deter criminals from breaking into the stores, pointing to extremely lax bail policies from the city as the reason.
“I have been burglarized 15 times in the last year,” as the owner of the Two-Headed Dog, Lindsey Rae stated as part of a recent city council meeting, as stated in the New York Post. “We’re seeing, if they are getting caught, they’re getting re-released because of the cash bond issues we’re having,” she stated. “They can come back and rob us again.”
A 2021 investigation issued by ABC affiliate KTRK discovered that Houston’s bail policies had allowed a large number of criminals back out into the streets. The outlet discovered that in 2011, just 3.5% of cases filed in a court out in Harris County resulted in the defendant being let go on a felony bond; in 2021, the defendant was let go in close to 20% of cases, close to six times as often as before.
