Oh, the proponents of "Bail Reform," how righteous they think they are. "Defenders of the little guy." "Evening the scales of justice for the poor." "Making sure the poor don't rot in a jail cell while the rich get to sit comfortably at home."
This, of course, is complete and absolute rubbish. Yet that does not matter to them, and it is us who will pay for their carelessness.
The truth is that we need to be making bail harder to get for everyone, not making it equally easy. This point was driven home to me last month when a driver, who was high on drugs, while carrying between 200-400 grams of that drug in her car, with a long rap sheet for drugs, literally drove a car over the curb and into my house and car.
Why did I not say, "her car?" Good catch, because it was not her car. In fact, she did not even have a license after getting out of jail for the same offenses once before. It was her boyfriend's car, and she was not even on the insurance which has created a nightmare for my family.
Now, to make matters worse, we are stuck in the middle of a fight between the police department, the Bexar County District Attorney, and the Attorney General. Somewhere there is a movie writer out there who can turn this in to a comedy of errors movie, if you do, just make sure I get some royalties off of it.
If you did not know already, the Bexar County District Attorney is one of those "Cash Bail Is Evil" people, and he believes that it unfairly targets the poor and minority groups. Nevermind that they are more likely to skip trial when they have little to nothing on the line for it, but I digress...
You see, the DA knows that taking bail reform head on in Texas is a losing proposition, even in a liberal city like San Antonio. He would likely get voted out by the rest of the county and so he has attempted to hide his bail reforms with internal policy maneuvers that he believes the public will never see. Hopefully articles like this will prove him wrong.
In 2020, when he took office, the DA changed the county's policy towards drug offenses. Instead of charging them with the drug offenses and then letting those offenses be removed if they are found to be false, he has decided that his office will simply not process them until the lab reports come back conclusively that they are what the police believed them to be.
Yet I can hear people saying, "so what." Well, I'll tell you what, it means that those charges cannot be considered when rendering a bail amount. Yep, the drug charges cannot be considered as part of the bail.
So this person who hit my home got out, in less than 48 hours, with a cash bail of $3,000 of which she had to pay $300 to a bail bond company. So, for only $300, she is back out on the street and ready to take more drugs, possibly get in another vehicle, and do this all over again.
I asked an overly frustrated police lieutenant whether it was going to require someone dying in order to make the charges against her sick. His reply, "That's about the only thing I can think of."
Wow, just, wow.
Had the judge been presented with all of the charges for consideration, instead of just DUI second offense, the bail would have been set much higher, and she likely would still be in a cell right now and not roaming around our city like a loose cannon waiting to possibly kill somebody.
Yet the DA does not care, in fact I am confident that he believes that what was done here is justice.
Oh, and the fact that the decision he made makes his charged crimes statistics look better... well, that is just an irrelevant bonus.
And the fact that it might increase his conviction rate on charges brought? Again, that has nothing to do with it at all. It is all about "righting the scales of justice," and "don't you forget it."
Yeah right, and my uncle was the Queen of Sheba.
To add insult to injury, because of this nonsense from the DA, the police report is still pending twenty-one (21) days after the incident. Yep, it has taken almost a month so far with no signs of resolving to get the document that we need in order to be able to get the insurance companies to get off their tuchasis and take care of us.
Yet that same DA would tell you that this is just the cost of, "doing the right thing."
If the police write the report including the drug charges, the DA will refuse to approve it and pass it to the state for final approval before it goes to the insurance company. If they do leave the drug charges off, the state will not approve it because they are asking where the charges are that should accompany the writing in the report.
So, until they fix all of this, we sit with a hole in our home, a totaled family vehicle, a kid who cringes when cars go around the corner, and a lot of animosity towards a system that appears to feel that criminals have more rights than the law abiding people that they victimize.
But I am sure the DA feels good about himself, after all, he believes his cause is righteous. So who cares if good law abiding citizens like me have to pay the price for it anyway. You cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, right?
Such is the cost of bringing "true justice" to the people.
Yeah, well, they can take their version of justice and go retire.
We do not need it, because that is not justice, it is nothing more than criminal amnesty.
The sad part is that this is happening all over the country, and dangerous people are among us who should not be. Yet these DAs cannot say that, they might get "canceled" by the people who elected them.
Well, hopefully they end up canceled by those who did not.
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