FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Rep. Allen Treadaway - Jeff Poor Show - Monday 7-22-24
Hey, I was country. I was in tune. Yeah, I was country from my at-down to all my food. I still am and look the same. Welcome back to the Jeff Port shoulder for talk. One of those six five nature stay with us on this Monday morning. A real quick programming note. I didn't bitch this in the last segment as I typically do tomorrow's program. John Wall, our Madam Republican Party Chairman will be with us in a couple of guests to be named later. So please, by all means, make sure you tune in tomorrow. But joining us now, a guy got to watch the Statehouse a lot. One of the heroes of the whole crusade against gambling in the house, even though they were a little outmatched downstairs. But he is the former deputy police chief at Birmingham and knows a thing or two about sort of the inner workings of police departments. But I'd like to welcome to the program state representative Alan Treadaway representative. Good morning. How are you? Good morning. Doing great. Hey, thanks for coming on. Do appreciate it. So I got to imagine we put a lot of focus on what's going on in Montgomery and these sort of anecdotally, some of these things are going on. I don't think people are really accustomed to, you know, something to miss. I don't think Birmingham's immune to it. And my suspicion representative is people have kind of lost hope that, you know, the municipal level is able to really figure out how to get their control of these crime ways in these cities. So they're, I guess, are looking to state officials. I mean, is that sort of what's going on here? Yeah, that's correct. I mean, listen, let's look at you got shootings going up homicide drop and folks are dying and some of these elected officials are pointing fingers down at state house. And that's not sitting well. It's not saying well, legislators who have worked very hard to pass legislation after request to some of these mayors. But we have police to four police forces that are now approaching 40, 50% staffing levels down from just a few years ago. You know, a lot of people we talk, let me point out one other thing you're not talking about is the solvability rate. So these crimes are not being solved at the rate they used to. So well over 50% and I think AM.com pointed out Birmingham last year, 32.8% of the crime of the homicides were solved. Well, folks better wake up. That's nearly 70% of homicides going unsolved. So what is that doing? So you've got no closure for the family and the victims and you've got a criminal that's been emboldened. He's out on the street. And if you go back and just go back a few years and look at all the unsolved crimes, whether it be property crimes or violent crimes, those numbers are alarming. And why is that? The staffing levels. It's very clear. So something has to be done. The policies that are in place haven't worked. And you sort of see legislators stepped up around the state saying, hey, not only cost them lives, it's cost them dollars to the state and economic development. Who wants to locate? What is the first thing a corporation looks at? Crime. Then schools. But crime is a major issue why you cannot attract the type of corporations in the Johnson County area around Birmingham or the Montgomery County or around Montgomery. And you look at it. I mean, like, I mean, just a history of the big mules of this state. Birmingham is kind of the center of power. We tend to think of Montgomery, but there's a lot that goes on at that level in Birmingham. And I don't think the people who, I don't want to say they run the state. I mean, that's maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's a very prominent place in Alabama and sort of the power structure. I don't want to think they want to see like the city there collapse underneath them. And, you know, that it's one thing to go on and I don't know, name a number, any place like Selma or whatever. When it starts kind of getting worse and worse and worse in Birmingham, I think all of a sudden a lot of people are even better. Like the RSA buildings in Montgomery where you see it, you saw the bullet hole and these cities are unable to get hold of control of that situation. I think that that really puts an emphasis on you guys maybe look at it some, some kind of proposals or whatever it may be. I mean, that's correct. I mean, you know, Birmingham area up here in Jefferson County or in the Economic Engine from the state. And this crime that we're seeing is this is not rocket science, we're dealing with. Okay, support your police officer. There's been a demonization of the profession for at least a decade now. Get off of that. Get off the second amendment. Deal with crime in your city. I mean, you've got a mayor in Montgomery that responded to one of my office and said, well, the legislature would let him pass. I'm the very people who have at least poured it an occupational tax that would have put two people for two officers that ever patrol car. Well, you're almost 50% down. How about trying to get one? How about trying to get one in every car you got available? So this is the type of dialogue I know it makes people uncomfortable. But, you know, as chairman of public safety for the state of Alabama and my conversations with the speaker and other legislators, we've got to do something about violent crime in urban Alabama. So that's why you're seeing this step up. Something's got to be done. You cannot run a force that just a few short years ago had several more hundred officers and think they're going to get a positive outcome out of that. So let's stop it. But then everybody said at the table, let's put some officers on the street. You don't have to raise taxes. You've got millions of and unused excess salary money for positions that are budgeted at the beginning of a budget year that never go into those positions. Why isn't that money going into technology? Why isn't that money going into a real world plus recruitment and retention situation? Why are folks not wanting to come into this profession? You know, so to me, it's getting personal to a lot of folks. It's hitting home in areas that haven't hit before. And we're looking at this and the cost of it not only the lives. So I think you're going to see coming in the upcoming session a number of pieces of legislation to try to deal with this. I'm also looking at some who's got a revolving door of police chiefs and deputy chiefs. Things like, you know, you hire one, you bring one in, they give a great crime fighting strategy plan, and then you say they don't fulfill it. Well, they don't fulfill it because you didn't fund it and you didn't give them the authority to implement it. So we're going to start calling these things out as we see these problems are not happening in other cities that are well funded and well staffed. So, you know, I think you're going to see more of it. Well, let's talk about this. Now, the one size fits all approach. What you do is we take where the state of Alabama takes this on. And the speaker and I had a conversation about this. He was on the show 4th of July. We take the interview, but like, you don't have the same needs in where I'm sitting here in Fair Hope or where I was sitting at the time of an hamburger. As you do in Montgomery and Birmingham, I mean, how do you do something that is it doesn't wind up being necessarily punitive to the rest of the state, but really is targeted where you need it. Say, Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Prichard, places that have been traditional hotspots. And, you know, that discussion is going on. That's easily done. You can look at the staffing, look at the crime rates and fashion legislation to target certain size cities. Of course, cities that basically have defunded their police department without ever saying that. I mean, one only has to look and see over the last decade where you were, where you were seven years ago, five years ago, three years ago. There are many folks that are now believed that two major cities have defunded their departments because they feel like there's no other explanation with no real plans or aggressive plans in place to stop the free fall of officers. So, you know, what do you get? You've got a detective working way more homicides than he should be. I don't think anybody would deny that neither one of the cities. They're working violent crimes at a level that you need many more detectives, so they're not getting the detention. They should. And that reflects the fact that they're not being solved anymore. So, yeah, you can address it. There's ways to address it. And, you know, well, I think every avenue is being looked at. We've got a way before the legislation starts. But I can tell you that if we don't see some turnaround, something happening, you're probably going to see the legislature get involved. And I somewhat agree with you. These areas, maybe we shouldn't, but there are legislators that feel like we're being pulled in because of what we're seeing year after year after year. I don't think there's been a net gain in staffing in some of these cities in years. And so, hey, let's look at it. Why is that happening? If you don't want to state your business, then I think we need to address these issues or call some people in life. And that's where this is coming from. It's not coming from an area that we want to get involved, but may need to. The other, like, just intellectually vapid argument these guys have, and you mentioned it, making it about the Second Amendment. And the Constitutional Carry Law, I mean, you could have your quibbles with that and whether people should have gun permits or not. But the problems that Montgomery and Birmingham are not a product of any of that. Now, I guess if we did away with the Second Amendment, which is never going to happen in America, but if we did, then maybe you wouldn't have to gun problems at all if you just cracked down guns. But that's not a, that is to me, at least, is not a valid response to any of it because people are, you know, you ever write the bare arms and people, maybe they misuse them or whatever, but just taking that away. This is a reality you have to deal with. And trying to blame the legislature for not being more strict on guns and not, I mean, that also is to be very, very, very hollow. Yeah, you know, that is the deflect response, the ability or the failure of the policies of individuals who use that, that the problem with crime in many of these areas has nothing to do with that. I spent 31 years on the streets and I was raised in an interstate in Chicago. So, I'm going to tell you something. Criminals will get their hands on firearms. It's not your law by accident. It's just that you have to legislate your past constitutional care. It's our constitutional second amendment, right? Not with that said, why are other cities that are, well, staff not having these problems? So, the only state, and by the way, over half of America now has time to carry, which is simply removing the requirement for a law by a citizen to have to pay to carry a weapon. But let's look at that for a minute. What did Alabama do? Certain persons forbidden to carry, we've got, we're the first in the nation that has a database that tracks these folks and when a law enforcement officer runs them and they're not supposed to have it, they've got a protection order, they've been adjudicated, the mental defect, the list goes on and on, convicted of a misdemeanor to domestic. Anything for a victim to have a firearms now goes into the database, not a law by a citizen person saying, but the people who shouldn't have them. What we had before was an antiquated permitting system that did not track any of that. And as we looked at that, before we passed criminalist carry, before we did that, we made sure we had something in place that replaced the old system that wasn't working. And I'm sitting here telling you, I know for a fact, there are cities not even utilizing it, but yet they'll sit there and blame criminalist carry on their crime, which is the number one thing you do when your policies are failing, and that's getting old. I mean, that's just an excuse for failed policies. So, yeah, no, we've got a system that's in place that's getting better each day. I think we're going to look at merging anybody with an ankle bracelet be monitored by the court that they're dumped into the system. So, if you're convicted, or you get a protection order, or convicted of a domestic where you're at, by one of the 440-something municipalities that's got a court system in Alabama, it's not captured up here in Jackson County. So, we had an individual with a protection order from a different county. He comes up here, he gets stopped. He's after his estranged wife. True story happened to my district. He gets stopped by the sheriff. He has a weapon. They're alarm for some reason, but they have to let him go because he has a paper permit. Well, what happened was, Jefferson County and the system, we never captured that protection order from several counties over. And on Christmas day, he went to his estranged wife and killed her, and I believe her father, in the front yard. That now in the new system, and I'm trying to tell all these departments what we have that worked, that did work before, and it's what you want. You want the criminals, the people, or the people who shouldn't be in there, are learning to police that they shouldn't be carrying a gun right now. And so, what gets me with some of these mayors, they haven't even implemented this process. The ones who have that I've talked to, it's what Grace says, and they're given feedback on what we should do and how we tweak it. So, the legislation has been out there helping, and we'll continue. One more question, Representative, and we're not to wrap it up on this. Darryl Bailey, who's the D.A. data Montgomery, says what he thinks would be, at least maybe it would be a deterrent, is to raise the penalty on crimes involving a firearm or a gun, and making that the deterrent, not necessarily cracking down on guns, period, but saying, look, if you commit a crime, but on top of that, it evolves a gun, then there's going to be steeper penalties, more consequences. Now, look, I don't know what you do with all these people, what you convict them, and I know the backlogs are just out of control, but what do you say to that as a possible solution? You know, it isn't something that when I was in law enforcement, we use, you use a weapon. Commit a crime, a violent crime, it's called enhancement, and you have a weapon that you committed that crime, but there's an enhancement of three years, five years, or whatever that may be. And that works in the federal system, where it's almost day for day. What we've got to do is not only look at that, but we've got to look at not allowing that individual to use the firearm and a violent crime, we've got to look at not allowing them to roll. We've got one of the more lenient systems, I think it's like 75 days for, you know, every 30 days you serve, you're getting good times, things like that. So, yeah, all of that to look at, he's got some good ideals in that area. I spoke with him, and I've seen that, and I expect to see some of these individuals that are using weapons to see an enhancement in there, but also not an, we've not eligible for an early release if you do. And it's a fact, if you've got, listen, if you're arresting folks and you're charging them and you're putting them away and punishing them, it works. In Birmingham, AC Rofer was a police chief, not too long ago. Homicides, we had more population in the last decade, and homicides were in the '50s. Why? Well, I went back and looked, we had 850 so officers on the street. So, you've got good leadership, you're well staffed, and you fund these initiatives, you're going to see success. It's not rocket science. Representative, we've got to leave it there, but it's a very good segment. Thanks for coming on and making time for us this morning. Yes, sir. State Representative Allen, tread away there. We've got to get a break in here, we will return. This is Jeff Porchola from Talk1065.