BUCK: We’ve been discussing with you now for many months the huge rise in violence in this country. Specifically, right now we know there’s a rise in violence and murder of police officers. Here in New York City — just blocks from where I’m currently sitting doing this show — you have a massive funeral procession underway at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for fallen NYPD officer Jason Rivera, and he was killed.

You have another police officer along with him who was killed in the same incident. He will also be given the hero’s funeral that he certainly deserves. But I was seeing here the headline that seven cops have been shot in the U.S. in the last 48 hours? You’ve had cops shot in D.C., cops in Milwaukee, cops in New York. I can’t even keep up with all these instances of violence against law enforcement, and this is where we have to be very clear about something.

Let me just tell you, for our Houston listeners, I was shocked to see this. Houston right now has had more murders — to give you a sense of where violent crime is — than Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York. All larger cities. So Houston is going through a violent crime wave too. But on the police-violence issue specifically, Clay, they’re trying to make this about something other than what I think is really the primary issue. The fixation on guns is what New York City’s new mayor Eric Adams wants to talk about, and it’s not about guns. It’s about a lot more. We’ll talk about it.

ADAMS: I am disappointed because it’s talking about this on the campaign trail. I saw what was happening in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta. Our fixation with guns in our country is destroying our children. And when you look at it, I say this over and over again, “We have a sea of violence in our city and country, and there are many rivers that are feeding that sea. We must dam each one.”

BUCK: The problem, Clay — as you and I know — is undermining of cops and the lawlessness the Democrat Party has adopted for ideological reasons.

CLAY: No doubt, Buck. And, by the way, Houston in particular. Last night I saw this. You’re talking about the war on police. Three Houston police officers were shot last night, in addition to all of the other cities that are dealing with violence against police officers. This is part and parcel of the world that we have created when police became demonized, when the mainstream media created the idea that police were the enemy. This didn’t get hardly my attention, Buck.

But in 2021 we set, as a country, an awful marker, a 20-year high for murdered police officers, the highest number since 9/11, when many New York Police Department members lost their lives trying to save people in that terror attack. A 20-year high. How many of you out there listening to us right now knew that? How many news media organizations that have tried to trump up division between police and the people that they try and protect — how many of them — actually took the time, Buck, to even remotely acknowledge it?

I barely even saw a headline that we had set a 20-year high for murdered police officers in this country, and when you see what’s happening just right outside your studio on 5th Avenue with all of these police showing up in force to support, unfortunately, the families that have lost their loved ones, this is the direct result of defund the police. Every politician, every media figure, every individual out there that argued to defund the police has caused thousands of additional deaths both for civilians but also for police officers. And it has to stop, and it has to stop right now. I mean, it really does.

BUCK: This is now an issue of life and death, as you’re saying, Clay. And that’s why it’s important to identify what the real problem is here. The problem is not guns, okay?

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: Meaning the possession of firearms legally by individuals is not the issue. If it was, there’d be drive-bys in Burlington, Vermont, all the time, okay? There are states with really high levels of gun ownership and relatively unrestrictive gun laws. Wyoming. Idaho. Not a lot of shots getting shot in Idaho right now. I understand people say those aren’t really big cities, but the point is it’s not just the presence of guns in a community.

And, if anything, what we know is that concealed carry — based on the actual data — makes people safer because criminals are less likely to think that they’re able to prey on a defenseless population. But even beyond just the gun issue, which the Democrats — ’cause that’s what their base wants to hear. We saw a massive campaign by the Democrat Party to undermine law enforcement and with it the rule of law, to pander to the left-wing base, to drive particular anti-police sentiment in order to push voter turnout among minority communities, among leftist activists.

That’s what they did in 2020, and just like the acceleration of covid fear porn — just like the way they’ve abused that — they can’t really turn it off, and we’re all still dealing with the long-term consequences of this. It was politically expedient when there was that moral panic after the George Floyd killing in Minnesota for Democrats and corporate America and everyone to do the “We’re now having our final moment where we’re grappling with racism and police.”

That’s not what happened. What happened was a lot of anti-cop marches where they called police pigs and racist murderers, and there was a lot of rioting and excuse-making made for this. I’m sorry, but we all also see what the Democrat Party now does. It’s almost hard to believe when you see it and hear it, Clay. But people will go in, and they’ll steal a whole lot of stuff or they’ll commit an armed robbery.

Or they’ll, you know, throw a rock at a cop’s face or whatever. And instead of saying, “This is a person who needs to be punished and who is a threat to society,” in many cases, they say, “We don’t want to make things too hard on them. We don’t want to make it hard for them getting a job later.” I think getting a job later for a lot of these individuals is not really the concern we need to have.

CLAY: Also, I think there’s a lot of parental failure — and let me explain what I mean by that. I tell my boys who are young and probably will do dumb things as they become teenagers, as all teenage boys do, if a police officers asks you to do something, do it immediately. Imagine how much difference we would see if instead of attacking police officers, if people said, “Hey, police officers are not going to be perfect.” This is what I tell my boys.

I say, “I’m a lawyer. If somebody tries to get you to do something that you are not legally required to do — a police officer, person in position of authority — we can raise that as an issue later.” But if you look at every single violent interaction, Buck, between police — and I know we got a ton of police that are listening to us right now all over the country, and thank you for what you guys are doing.

We may need to open up phone lines and allow you guys at some point to vent here on Friday over the way that you’re being treated and how it compares to the last 20 and 30 years. Because when I talk to police officers, Buck, they say they’ve never seen anything like this, the disrespect that they get out there in the streets. But think about this. If every single person just complied with the initial request of a police officer, there would be almost zero violent interactions that accelerate, right?

BUCK: Right.

CLAY: Just listen to what police say and do it, and it takes all of that ability to accelerate — almost immediately — and it disappears.

BUCK: On the other end of this — you’re talking about how we could avoid violent — almost all violent incidents with police are where there’s escalation. But what we’re seeing, we’re talking about people that are killing cops. We’re talking about here in New York, NYPD, two cops shot. Domestic disturbance. They just walked in, and a career criminal — long rap sheet, multiple felonies — just opened up and started shooting on these two officers out of nowhere.

Just… By the way, it doesn’t matter how much training you have or how situational awareness. If you walk in a situation — every cop knows — like that and someone gets the drop on you, they ambush you in what isn’t even a violent situation. They weren’t trying to arrest this guy at the time. They just showed up to see what was going on and he comes out, guns blasting.

CLAY: His mom called police to have them help her, right? That’s why they were there. They were called in for a domestic dispute between a son and a mom. They went there to try to protect that woman and got murdered, that mom.

BUCK: Here’s what happened because of the approach — and it is a widespread. This is an ideology thing. That’s why we’re not just talking about the numbers and, “Oh, this is a dangerous world and things happen.” It’s gotten a lot more dangerous because it became fashionable among the wokesters and among the left-wing apparatus of power and control in the media and the Democrat Party to undermine cops, to go with this complete lie that there’s a systemic murdering of unarmed black men by police officers that goes unpunished.

“It happens all the time! It’s a national crisis right away.” That’s just not true. It’s actually very rare. You’ve got Officer Chauvin — former Officer Chauvin — obviously spending decades in prison, but they created this very toxic narrative. At the same time, you had Soros back progressive prosecutors in major cities all across the country saying, “I don’t want to punish people that break the law. Even if they’re preying on their fellow Americans, even if they’re preying on their fellow human beings, I don’t want to punish them too harshly.”

You have undermining and defunding of police. You have “we’re not gonna enforce the law” mentality from the libs and an attitude sometimes of “this is social justice” means reappropriation through people stealing in huge numbers from stores and places all across the country, lawlessness, utter lawlessness. This is all about the Democrat mentality, it is all about they’re soft-on-crime obsession, and it’s hurting people. It is hurting people right now day after day. People are losing their lives over it.

CLAY: BLM and its resulting protests have led to thousands of people being dead today that would otherwise be alive because when you demonize police and kept them from doing their job, you created a recipe, unfortunately, for lawlessness, which is transferred all over the country and has led directly to thousands of deaths. And, Buck, this is another place where the way we cover public policy as a country fails. When you have young, innocent black kids being shot in drive-by by other people who are black — which is the overwhelming majority of people who are being killed in cities today — it gets almost zero coverage, right?

You hear all of these moms coming out and saying, “Why is this not a story? Why is there no justice for my children?” It’s because it’s an inconvenient story to cover that doesn’t allow the media to try and demonize police and also racism and lawlessness when the reality is the danger that is being borne is by all inner-city residents.

BUCK: I see this, I read about it, and I even occasionally will talk to leftists, Clay, to understand their mentality. Here’s the way the modern Democrat views a situation where let’s say there’s a drive-by shooting in Chicago and a young black man is killed. Let’s just look at that situation. You and I see that, and our audience sees that, and they say, first of all, of course, horrible tragedy. But if we’re talking about on a policy level what needs to be done, we look at is this a career criminal who is shooting this individual?

Why wasn’t he locked up longer? Do we have the police resources to try to get someone like that off the street? Were we able to get up a rapid arrest? Is the district attorney going to prosecute thoroughly? That’s how we think of it. You know how left-wing activists think about it? “This is a failure of insufficient investment in the community. We need more money for community activists, and we need more police anti-racism training,” and you say — and, by the way, I’m being completely serious.

CLAY: Yes. No, you’re right.

BUCK: That is what they will say, and we have people being shot, and they’re saying, “You know, we need funding for diversity and inclusion training in the city workforce, and we need cops to stop being racist.” The cops aren’t the one shooting people!

CLAY: Also, they’ll say, “This is a gun issue, not a people issue.”

BUCK: Correct. Critical point. “Gun issue, not a people issue,” which Chicago is effectively a gun-free zone for legal gun ownership, not for illegal gun ownership. Obviously. You can tell look we’re fired up about this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We started off the show talking about the scene in New York as there is a mass gathering of police officers to support the family that lost loved ones in a recent violent attack upon officers trying to protect a mom who had called for support — and this is gonna be tough for you guys to listen to, but I wanted to play it because I was listening to this earlier today.

I know some of you may have heard this. One of the police officers’ widows. Listen to her voice here talking about the fact that they are not safe in New York because of the way that the district attorney and other leaders are forcing police to not be able to do their job. Just listen to this. This is, again, a wrenching and difficult 35 seconds here of her eulogy for her husband, who has been murdered.

LUZURIAGA: The system continues to fail us. (chokes up) We are not safe anymore. (chokes up) Not even the members of the service. I know you are tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. (deep breath) I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now.

CROWD: (sustained applause)

BUCK: Clay, it’s really… It’s heartfelt. It’s also so heartbreaking just to hear it.