All of our rights as Americans depend on being safe.  We must be safe in our streets, safe in our homes, safe in our churches and safe in our businesses.  The rising wave of crime threatens that basic social contract.  I’m a former prosecutor and I’ve convicted hundreds of criminals.  As a nation, we cannot go back to incredible murder rates and lawlessness of the 1980s and 1990s.  The Democratic Party has consistently put forward a defund-the-police, soft-on-crime message, and even some in the Republican Party have forgotten the hard lessons of the last three decades, that deterrence works.  I will always advocate for police, who truly are the thin blue line between law-abiding citizens and dangerous criminals.  These are some of the specific actions I’ve taken to fight for the right of every American to live in a safe community:

• Introduced the BRICKS Act of 2021, H.R. 687, to increase the penalties for rioting. 
• Introduced H.Res. 387, which expresses support for the police. 
• Introduced the PROTECT Act, with Senator Hawley, which would toughen penalties for child sex predators. 
• Cosponsored H. Res. 530, which expresses that the Department of Homeland Security and all its law enforcement agencies conduct critical operations to keep the United States safe and secure. 
• Cosponsored H. Res. 1026, which says that any Member of the House who makes a public statement advocating for defunding the police should not get private police protection. 
   

I’ve also led two letters on crime issues that I consider of absolute importance:

• A letter to Attorney General Garland urging him to do more to combat the mass shoplifting we see in many urban areas. 
• A letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee urging them to review Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s (the Democratic Supreme Court nominee) troubling record of leniency in sentencing child pornography cases.