Alabama's Morning News with JT
Ken Belkin discusses Sacramento City Attorney's Office's warning to a chain retail store and a Colorado woman's $8 million settlement
A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ken Belkin, attorney in New York, check him out at BelkinLaw.com. Always fun to talk with Ken about some crazy stories in our news and a legal look at some of these stories. Ken, good morning. Welcome back in. Good morning, J.T. Thanks for having me. Well, once again, here we go in line with everything going on in California. This is pretty interesting here. Sacramento City Attorney's Office now has warned Target there that it could face a public nuisance charge because they're calling the cops too much. Because people are stealing from their store. I mean, it's so bizarre. It's like, don't bother us with this. What's going on? No, you've got it all wrong. This is the novel way of dealing with that uptick in crime that California is experiencing. Look, if nobody calls the police to report the crime, the crime doesn't exist. So instead of actually punishing criminals and arresting them, and I can't believe I'm saying this. I'm a criminal defense attorney for Christ's sake. But they are punishing Target for calling the cops too many times because of the shoplifting. It's ridiculous. It's why big box businesses like Target, domain, read, all these established brands cannot do business in big cities anymore. They just can't do it. I see it in New York City every day just down the block for me. You know, drugstores like CVS can't even remain open because they cannot deal with the increase in shoplifting. It's outrageous. It's getting to the point now where everybody that's in a city where this is the policy. And there's a lot of them. I mean, you just mentioned New York. There's other cities being run by Democrats who are doing this. It's like shoplifters coming in and these masks, you know, raids on these stores with 15, 20 people coming in with big black trash bags used for putting leaves and grass in them and just loading up their bags like it's Christmas and they're going out to Santa Slade to load up to deliver to kids. I mean, it's ridiculous. The employees will just stand there and well, here they come again. All right. Hey, nice to see you. Hey, good to see you again too. All right. Sure. TV is aisle four. Yeah. Go ahead. Take your time. Whatever. I'm not going to do anything about it. You bring a big enough garbage bag for a TV, sir. Check aisle three. We've got extra large garbage bags. Well, what happens now and you know, I've talked to a number of different people in law enforcement and they said, you know what, the reason this continues and it will get worse is because they're not nipping the smaller client crimes in the bud. This will lead to bigger, more offensive crimes like assaults and ultimately people are going to get killed because of this. I mean, you see the same situation here in Birmingham with our crime rate and our murder rate right now. It's, and I've talked to another chief in the area and he says, your reason this is going on because they don't enforce the smaller crimes. You know, it's not the police department's fault. Yep. We've got prosecutors in the court system who, you know, basically, you know, yeah, we're not going to prosecute those. And that message is just spread throughout the community. So if I can get away with this, let me see if I can get away with that. And it just festers and grows worse. It's these politicians, these feckless politicians, they say, Oh, we're not going to prosecute crimes where the theft is under $1,000. Well, you don't get to decide that actually because the law on the book is any shoplifting is the crime, even if it's a petty larceny, it is a crime that is prosecutable. It's called broken windows policing. Look, we know how to fix the crime problem in this country. We don't have to look far to how to solve it. We did it in New York City back when Rudy Giuliani was mayor and it's all about broken windows policing. Yeah. You've got to nip the small stuff in the butt so that there is not this air of lawlessness. If you let the small stuff go unabated, people feel like there's no law and order and they get away with anything. And look, what's going on in Birmingham is horrible. And what's going on in New York City? I read a statistic last week that rape is skyrocketing through the roof of New York City. Why? This is crazy. Just insanity. Let's switch gears bizarre story out of Colorado. This woman who was handcuffed in the back of a police car when it was hit by a train has now been awarded a settlement in all this $8 million. Good for her. Who left the car on the tracks? What's going on? Yeah, look, this is not one of those egregious two large settlements. This is right on the money. No pun intended. This woman handcuffed in the back of a cop car after a road rage incident. By the way, it's not like trains are just rolling down every street randomly. They only run on train tracks. Move the car 15 feet while you have the arrestee confined in the car. And look, the city, the cops, they're liable for this. They have to. When you arrest someone, you are responsible for their safety and well-being when they're in your custody. And it is what it is. If someone gets attacked in a jail, the city that operates the jail can be liable. If someone gets hurt while in police custody, the police are liable. It is what it is. But come on. This is a low hanging fruit. These cops could have saved their city $8 million by moving the car off the train tracks before putting the perp in the car. I don't know what they were thinking. I mean, I just don't get it to you, I mean, I'm sure somebody's lost their job here. But thank God the woman survived this. I couldn't imagine being in a car your handcuffed and all of a sudden, "Hey, hey, hey, hey!" You know, next thing, you know, boom, outrageous. Well, Ken, always good to catch up with you, buddy. Thank you so much. Have a great Wednesday. Thanks, J.T. An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.