Sheriff Rips Buttigieg's Proposed Drug Policies: 'He Is Guaranteeing More Drug Addicts'
A Florida sheriff has denounced Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s call for ending incarceration for drug possession arrests.
Grady Judd, the sheriff of Polk County, said the proposal from the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would make crime in America even worse.
“He is guaranteeing more drug addicts, he’s guaranteeing more crime and he’s guaranteeing less help because we don’t have enough services for those who are addicted to crimes now, and he’s going to create more addiction,” Judd said Friday on the Fox News morning program “Fox & Friends.”
Buttigieg spoke about his drug policy last week during an interview with The Des Moines Register’s editorial board.
“Incarceration should not even be a response to drug possession,” Buttigieg said.
“What I’ve seen is that while there continued to be all kinds of harms associated with drug possession and use, it’s also the case that we have created in an effort to deal with a public health problem, we have created an even bigger problem — a justice problem, and its own form of a health problem if you think about the adverse impact on a child,” he said.
Buttigieg said he is basing his policy on what he has seen as mayor of South Bend.
“We have kids in South Bend who have grown up with the incarceration of a parent as one of their first experiences. That makes them dramatically more likely to wind up themselves having an encounter with the criminal legal system,” he said. “So I’ve always been skeptical of mass incarceration, but now I believe more than ever that we need to take really significant steps like ending incarceration as a response to simple possession.”
Executive Editor Carol Hunter then asked, “Is that across the board? So if it’s meth or coke or ecstasy, any drugs if it’s possession, incarceration isn’t—”
“That’s right,” Buttigieg responded.
Buttigieg has also said that if elected, drug offenses and misdemeanors committed by illegal immigrants would not result in deportation, and that he would sign an executive order making this policy retroactive, according to Fox News.
Many on Twitter said Buttigieg has it wrong:
Democrats aren’t too radical, extreme & insane, are they? Keep in mind media claims Mayor Pete is the “moderate one.”https://t.co/fa6gyEdCQo
— Wayne Allyn Root (@RealWayneRoot) December 26, 2019
LIBERALISM IS NUTS – Buttigieg: No Jail Time for Possession of Any Drug — Including Meth, Cocaine | Breitbart https://t.co/gVGPlpC3pt
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) December 26, 2019
Pete Buttigieg is proposing NO JAIL TIME for possession of any drug.
Including meth and cocaine.
Democrats fight harder for the votes of felons and illegals than the law-abiding American people!
— Julio Gonzalez (@TaxReformExpert) December 27, 2019
Judd said that the real message Buttigieg is sending is much darker.
“What he’s telling the people of Iowa and the United States is, ‘Hey, I’m going to guarantee that crime is going to go up, I’m going to guarantee that people are going to steal more of your stuff, I’m going to guarantee to you that more people are going to become addicted to crime,'” Judd said.
Judd said a lack of laws and a lack of enforcement allows “people to do whatever they want to do.”
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