Off The Hook
Off The Hook
Transforming Local Justice: A Conversation with Jason Smith
Ever wondered how local District Attorney elections can shape the safety of your community? Join us as Jason Smith, candidate for District Attorney of New Hanover and Pender County, shares his bold vision for a more efficient and proactive justice system. Smith is passionate about forming a dedicated homicide team to fast-track high-level cases, delivering swift justice to victims' families and defendants, and potentially deterring future crimes. His insights will leave you pondering the real impact of local elections on your day-to-day life.
Our conversation doesn't stop at high-level cases. Smith delves into a range of pressing issues, from prosecuting violent offenders and drug traffickers to tackling youth crimes involving firearms and the alarming rise of fentanyl. Listen as he outlines the role of the District Attorney in setting prosecution priorities and underscores the importance of internet safety education for protecting our children. His approach to crime prevention is holistic and community-focused, addressing the root causes and creating a safer environment for all.
We also touch on systemic challenges, such as the bail bond system. Jason Smith shares his firsthand experiences with the opioid epidemic, detailing the complexities of prosecuting drug dealers and the societal impacts of drug trafficking. Throughout the episode, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how local leadership, community engagement, and voter turnout are vital to tackling these multifaceted issues. Don't miss this opportunity to hear from a candidate who is dedicated to transforming our local justice system for the better.
When people are released from jail, they have the responsibility to appear in court, but some of these people choose to go on the run.
Speaker 2:They go back home to mommy.
Speaker 1:And that is when these guys come into the picture. So sit back and listen to the Off the Hook podcast with Chad and Rob.
Speaker 3:Very fine people on both sides.
Speaker 1:These are real stories, but the names have been changed.
Speaker 4:What's going on everybody. I'm Rob and I'm Chad, and we have a special guest.
Speaker 2:Before I introduce him, though, I got something special for him um that I did, so let's do it right now ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to our next district attorney, mr Jason Smith, for the New Hanover and Pender County districts thank you, little Alice in Chains action.
Speaker 3:I like it, it you like it. Did you like it?
Speaker 2:I like it. Okay, cool, we did good. Then that's all I wanted to hear. I was going to make sure we're doing good, so this is a real special episode. It's not every day that we get somebody like this in here, and it's election year, so we're doing everything we can to help this man. He's got some good things to tell us and that's why we invited him in. And because you know the current election Chad. You know all the elections across the board. Everybody votes because it's either you're either Democrat or Republican, and they don't look at the issues at hand.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:And that's why we have him here, so he can tell us what he's going to do and what he's going to help the community. And so, mr Smith, thank you for coming, thanks. So we're just going to jump right into it, because it's a little different episode for us.
Speaker 4:So, let me, yeah, you tell us.
Speaker 3:You said, everybody's concerned about whether they are Republican, democrat. We're going to vote that way. What I've been going out and telling people is this when we're talking about, I deal with, law and order, I deal with and you guys too, right, and who's making sure our streets are safe here in our local area? Who is it? It's the DA. The police, the bondsmen have a part in that right and people think, oh, okay, if I just vote in the federal election, we'll be fine. Yeah, but I can tell you, you guys know it starts.
Speaker 2:It starts here it starts here.
Speaker 3:The feds, while they help us, in some aspects they're not.
Speaker 2:They're not, it's not their job to police our area yeah, and it's it's very, very important that we take care of the small potatoes here, right, because this is where we live. This is where we live and I have, I think, my personal belief. I think Mr Smith is the best man for the job. Thank you, I've talked with him. We've actually have gone against each other in court last summer. Yeah, and one of my questions I'll get to that in a minute shortly, so, all right, I'm going to start out. So this is kind of a broad question what do you plan to do differently? That's been going? You know, not saying everything that's going on now is bad, but what do you plan on doing differently to make it better All?
Speaker 3:right. So I was asked the same question here earlier. I've already done a news interview earlier today and the same question came up. I've been with the DA's office for the last 14 years, all right, and so I've seen how we've progressed and regressed. In some things we do a good job. Our crime right now, our violent crimes, going down at least this year it's gone down. It could go straight back up next year, right, right. But when we look at cases in our pipeline because that's what we look at is law enforcement arrests they bring the cases to us, we prosecute and they either can be dismissed, they can be pled, they can be tried, but there's a, there's a pipeline that comes to our office and it can stay there for a long time. So when we talk about what would I do different is on those bigger cases, the ones you guys work on, murder cases, right, and sometimes it takes what upwards three, five years to try to get those to trial.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's too long. It's too long for victims' families to sit there for three to five years wondering what's going to happen with my son or daughter's case. Right so my— Speedy trial. Speedy trial, not just for the defendant, but really for victims' families. Right so, my speedy trial, speedy trial, not just for the defendant, but really for victims' families. They're suffering for the next three to five years. What's happening? What's happening In limbo, got to be more efficient in our office with either creating a homicide team, where we have a few or a handful of people looking at them and working them from the investigative the night or the day of the murder to the time that they're tried right.
Speaker 3:So if you have a small group of people, that that's all they do. I think we can get more efficient in moving those cases. That's one thing. Now, the public may not see it, unless you're a victim's family or a defendant's family.
Speaker 3:I think, though, when you start talking about swift justice versus slow justice, there's some deterrence factor in that If a defendant goes, all right, I'm committing this crime and holy cow, within the year, I could be. You know, I'm committing this crime and holy cow, and the next, within the year, I could be in prison. Hopefully it would. They would stop and think maybe that's not what I want to do, right, maybe not, but for the at least the victims, we have to bring swifter justice for those high, high level cases. Now we do it for our small cases. We have an H&I court, that you have these low level feloniesies and they come in and they get charged one day and within a couple of weeks they're in court and they can plead that case out easily. So there's a lot more volume to that and they can move them faster. But I'm talking about the high-level cases where your sex offenses, your murders, your big drug traffickers. They're complex cases. However, if we can get more specialized in those types of cases, I think what we can do is move them faster.
Speaker 2:All right, chad next one's on you, buddy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we were talking a little bit earlier about a case that just was in the news a couple days ago here locally in Brunswick County on a illegal immigrant that had been ruled on that had hit someone, killed them. We've had a few of these cases, one in New Hanover back in March. Wanted to get your aspect of how you would handle these cases where the person's not legally here, they have no driver's license, they have no insurance and they just killed someone. What happens next? What do you do?
Speaker 3:Well, let me tell you that, no matter if you're illegal or not illegal, you're going to get equal protection under the laws. Right, You're not above the law, you're not below the law, so we don't treat them any differently on how we resolve the case, right, and in that case I believe and I'm not familiar with it as much there was a hit and run resulting in death or something to that effect. Right, Right, and we see those all the time here with illegal immigrants to legal immigrants or legal citizens, and we've got a problem with it. We do. We have a problem with people hitting and killing and then leaving, whether they're leaving because they're impaired, they're leaving because they don't have a driver's license, Maybe their citizenship isn't legal, they leave for whatever reason and we can't let those linger. But we have to look again. We're going back to the victims. You now have somebody that's dead, Right, and we're talking about charging the appropriate charges, whatever that may look like hit and run resulting in death, felony death by motor vehicle if they're impaired, if we can prove that. But we've got to get justice for these, and a lot of times it's all right. How severe is that justice going to look?
Speaker 3:Now let's talk about your illegal immigrants? And what do we? What do I worry about, Just personally? Here's what I worry about we have a lot of people here that either can't get a driver's license because of their immigration status, they're driving while license revoked and they're illegal. They still guess what? They can't get insurance. So if you don't have a driver's license and you don't have insurance, or you're driving illegally because it's revoked in some way and you don't have insurance, that affects the public more than you could ever imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, insurance premiums go up and we have to pay to pay for it, right somebody has to pay for it and it's, it's who's getting hit.
Speaker 3:If it's just a fender bender, guess what somebody's somebody's uh insurance is going to pay for it. Rates go up. It affects them economically. So we've got to make sure a if they're coming through the our court system, we have a little bit of teeth to to it to try to force them to get insurance.
Speaker 2:You know what I've seen a lot doing bonds and you know had multiple charges on the bond Right. I see driving while license revoked, not impaired, or impaired revocation a lot All the time, All the time.
Speaker 3:All the time. So my next question is do you have any plans or any ideas to make the New Hanover and Pender jurisdictions safer? Yeah, first of all, we start with what does the DA do? Da sets the priorities of what gets prosecuted in his district. Number one Police, don't Police. They arrest based upon the laws. They hand the case to us. We decide what gets prosecuted.
Speaker 3:So first of all, we've got to prosecute the cases. We have to follow the law. We've got to enforce the law. Number one and we're doing a good job of it now. But I'm telling you as somebody who's running and we see it in other counties in North Carolina, we see it in other states and cities throughout the United States you have DAs that don't enforce the laws. I'm telling you we're going to enforce the laws. Now, that's number one. Number two is we've got to prioritize.
Speaker 3:Who are we taking off the streets and putting in prison? The worst people that do the worst things right Murders, child rapists, adult rapists, drug traffickers, armed and violent offenders. But here's another, because people always ask well, what are you going to do to the people that are breaking into vehicles and cars or, excuse me, vehicles and houses and such? Look, we have structured sentencing here and we're kind of limited by what we can do. But when we talk about the worst people that do the worst thing, the career criminals you can be a nonviolent career criminal, and we see it people who continue to break into places over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:We've bonded out of using them.
Speaker 3:Right. So we've got to make sure that we're filtering those people through the system and we're making sure that they justice for those victims. And at some point, if you continue to do the behavior after being given grace sometimes grace doesn't get given the next time right? So that's ways, if you're looking at it, focus on our violent offenders, Focus on our drugs. And when we talk about drugs, drug trafficking We'll talk about fentanyl later. You and I talked about it beforehand, right, we talk about those things that hurt people, those substances that hurt people, People that hurt people, substances that hurt people. And then we talk about those career criminals that you know what, no matter what you do, no matter what grace you give, they're continuing to do what they, what they do, and then they get put away.
Speaker 2:So Well, good Chad.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, it made me think of something that's not on my list here. But what? What's currently? What's the something on the rise that you're seeing right now, as far as cases that you're trying that normally you haven't seen in the past? I'm just curious if you've got one in mind.
Speaker 3:Well, I've got a couple in mind. So we're seeing a lot more. Let me start with youth. We're seeing a lot more youth crimes and here's what we're seeing. Okay, we're seeing youth with guns right A lot of them, youth with guns right A lot of them. I believe and don't quote me on the stat, but I believe in the last few months we've pulled 60 guns off of 60 kids.
Speaker 2:Wow, how many of them have been in schools?
Speaker 3:That I don't know. I don't have the stat on that.
Speaker 2:If you get it with me that I would Well. School just started.
Speaker 3:So those stats probably wouldn't have been in school, but we're seeing a lot more. A lot of them are juveniles, right? So we've got that's an uptick, and I talked to Chief Williams about this and that's a concern of his. He's aired it in the press and everywhere else. It's kids with guns and it's kids with guns doing nefarious things, and so that's an uptick. Okay, all right, uptick. Obviously. Our fentanyl, our cocaine, our meth. We are seeing just an uptick in traffickers. I'm not talking just people with a little bit of drugs in their pocket, I'm talking traffickers. Wait, wait, wait, and let me talk this Crimes against children. Now I prosecuted an impender for the last almost nine years and that was uptick in crimes against children. Some hands on a lot of it, not hands on a lot of it's. Solicitation of kids online.
Speaker 4:So I go to talk yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to bring that up.
Speaker 3:So I go talk to schools and I go talk to parents and I go talk to children and and kids from elementary school, middle school and high school. Middle school and high school and high school kids don't listen to you, but hopefully we can get them young enough in elementary and middle school, where the playground has changed from a physical playground outside to internet. You'll see a lot more kids on the internet, right, and they're interacting with people. And it's not parents necessarily fault they some of them may not be, uh, you know, they don't know the technology, they don't know hey, it can know the dangers behind it. So that's why I go out and talk to people. But you see these, these kids getting on online and talking to people and you don't know who you're talking to.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny you're saying that because I think me and you had a conversation not too long ago where my son was a victim in that, but he stopped it real quick because he knows what's up.
Speaker 3:But a lot of kids don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, and I hate that. It scares me because Lord I know how I am with my child and if somebody comes after somebody else's child, I mean. I think, you don't want my personal opinion on what I think we need to do with these people. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, and I think that's it. No, it's you, chad Well yeah, I kind of veered off. It's okay, go ahead yeah.
Speaker 4:We can have lots of questions, but we only got him for so long. Your overall view of us as bondsmen not people, but of the bail bonding profession what are your views?
Speaker 3:on us. Well first of all, defendants have rights. We know that by statute they have a right to a bond unless it's capital case, unless and there's others drug trafficking. If you've been caught with a gun and you've got you know your history's horrible. We can hold you without a bond. But for the most part, 95% of people have a right to a bond Right and it's not cash bond. You can do a cash bond but a lot of them use sureties like you guys.
Speaker 4:Correct, that's yeah. But you know what that's good and here's why it's good you let somebody out on a cash bond. Nobody's watching them, Nobody's making sure they come to court. Our dime to get people Right. So I'll usually show our clients that when they come in, so well one to let them know we're not afraid to travel to find you. Right, but two to show that we're not getting any money from the taxpayer.
Speaker 3:Right, it's all on us Well you wouldn't have those, or we wouldn't have those if we didn't have Bell Bondsman going to find them. Right, Right. And again it's about justice for victims. Well, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you one thing that a good friend of mine, david grows, told me. He said it's the one thing in a criminal justice system that actually works that's not funded by the taxpayer. That is correct and I couldn't agree more with it and with the higher-ups trying to take away bail bonding and use taxpayer monies for pretrial services.
Speaker 4:I don't think it's right to pay for someone that you don't know to be released. There has to be skin in the game for someone to return. If we had a crystal ball, we'd all know whether or not they were going to come back, right, but there's been many cases where I'm like this is a great bond, nope.
Speaker 2:Nope, and he goes to California. Correct, remember that one.
Speaker 4:Yes, california, the one up there, but I mean, you never know Well pretrial.
Speaker 3:Look, we use pretrial release all the time. P release all the time. Pender, we didn't have pre-trial release, but here in New Hanover we do. It works for some people, some people it doesn't. But guess what? Bell bondsmen work for people too Exactly. They know if they leave, pre-trial's not going to get them, if they leave and go out of county or out of state.
Speaker 2:Really, Right, and I'm kind of going to get off topic a little bit here too, because I've found out that, you know, when somebody does take off, north Carolina doesn't like putting people into NCIC, because that I've been told this because of extradition calls yeah, we have trouble with NCIC and getting people put in that um would be nice.
Speaker 4:I don't know what the holdup is with that or what the. I know it has to be a felony charge, but other than that I don't understand why there's a um. It's so hard to have someone put an NCIC.
Speaker 3:Above my pay grade. We deal with a lot. That is what we don't deal with.
Speaker 2:So that kind of answered our next question that Chad was going to ask too. Um well, here's one. Have you seen an increase in the faith to appear since the Pretrial Integrity Act of 2023?
Speaker 3:It's hard to look. We saw people not coming to court before. We see people not coming to court now. So either way, I mean no matter what you do, people are not going to come to court. So, okay, I mean, it's not look, people do and don't, Right, right right.
Speaker 4:Well, okay, that rolls into. The next question that I had was the bond C rule You're familiar with. No, okay, so on the paperwork, when we go to bond someone out, on the back there is a excuse me, it's on the front, it's on the midway down of the conditions of release. One of them is this is the defendant's second or subsequent failure to appear. In this case, when that box is checked, that's them giving us the jail, giving us notice that this is the second time they've missed court. Now, if we come and write that bond and let's say the person oversleeps the day of court their alarm clock, they get a flat tire. Whatever they want, the full amount of the bond from us. The school board attorney does. So obviously we're not going to write them because we have no recourse. We have 150 days after someone misses. But in this case they just say, nope, give us the full amount of the bond. That's's what they want. So we're not going to do them.
Speaker 4:Now think about this how many people are sitting in jail in new hanover county because we won't bond them out, because they've missed twice or more? Multiply that times 100, you know. So I mean, you want to, you want to think about the figures of housing, feeding, medic, medicating all these people and how many of those people there are across the state. That's a statewide thing, right? So I don't know. I know you don't have control of the Bond C situation we do not but I just wanted to air that out to you to let you know that was a situation.
Speaker 2:Is that something that we can bring to the judges here and say, look, can we take the bond C?
Speaker 4:off. It's a state matter?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think so, because I can tell you this Just like I said, I don't know what a C bond is. Somebody was in court going hey, I got a C bond and the judge was like I don't know what that is Now, you know.
Speaker 2:Paid to appear more than twice on the same charge.
Speaker 3:There you go. Well, let me tell you that's something we've got to do. Well, we do a good job at first appearances. When they come in and they tell you to appear, we're like judge, need a higher bond? You know we do, because they don't come to court.
Speaker 2:Well, I got one question and then I got a clip I'm going to play for you guys so you guys can see it. But I got a clip I'm going to play for you guys so you guys can see it. But this one it's not a bail bonding question, it's more of a PI thing. I'm going to have to do this a little bit to you. What will you have? Are you going to have a policy on body cams? Because you remember last summer when we tried that trial up there in Pender? Yes, I remember that. Just say it.
Speaker 3:Just say it Part of what we do. I'm not going to say it, but here's what a part of what we do is. Our constitutional duty is this as a prosecutor or as a DA Prosecute cases, advise law enforcement, all right. So part of my advice to law enforcement is, if you're and they don't know this yet I guess I need to sit down before I do a podcast and sit down with agencies. But here's my thoughts.
Speaker 1:Here's my thoughts.
Speaker 3:And Ed and Donnie may yell at me later. If you are apprehending somebody, search warrant or they've got an outstanding warrant, you know you're apprehending. Put your body cam on and a lot of uniforms do they do?
Speaker 2:A lot of uniforms?
Speaker 3:do they do Plain clothes? Do not in some agencies. Put your body cam on. It helps everybody, right, right, keep your body cam on. Keep the audio right, right, keep your body cam on. Keep the audio on, exactly, because it helps everybody. Yes, and look, keep your body cam on.
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted to touch on that I know, I know.
Speaker 1:Because, it's an issue.
Speaker 2:It is an issue, but it's not your issue. Like I said, it's the department.
Speaker 3:It becomes my issue right because it talks it. It gets into the integrity of an investigation. If you're muting your body cam and look it may be, it may be innocent. You're just having a conversation about what your wife's going to cook you that night, but maybe that's not one we have on a crime scene. Maybe that's not a conversation. We have now crime scenes. You can be out there for hours on special and homicides but while we're doing during the investigative phase, keep your body cam on. It helps everybody. It helps my case, it helps your investigation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because when I was looking at Discovery I was going. I had to go back a few times and make sure my computer wasn't messed up or something. No, everybody at home. We're going to take a one-minute break. I'm going to let you watch this real quick. Hang on one second, let's get it going.
Speaker 3:It's in our beautiful community. It's inexcusable. As prosecutors, we focus on holding dealers directly accountable for these overdoses. As partners with proactiveactive Policing, we have to aggressively stop these traffickers and directly dismantle their pipelines. Drugs and drug trafficking are growing in popularity. We see firsthand that the number one cause is fentanyl. In our two counties, drug trafficking and drug use are leading to increased deaths, violence and other crimes New Hanover and Pender counties. Users and dealers are frequently involved in robberies and homicides, both as victims and as perpetrators. This is unacceptable. For the last 14 years, my mission has been to protect New Hanover and Pender counties. I will use my leadership and experience as your district attorney to continue this fight.
Speaker 4:Good job. Who did your video by?
Speaker 2:the way they made you look really good.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he does a good job. My first one, he was like no, we got to do something different.
Speaker 2:He had you looking out the window. He was good. He's really good, yeah, professional to do something different.
Speaker 3:He had you looking out the window. Yeah, he was good. He's really good yeah professional Put together well. He is a genius when it comes to.
Speaker 2:We might have to get his number before you leave here. There you go. So yeah, that's his YouTube ad campaign.
Speaker 3:It's on Facebook, it's on Instagram. Obviously, you found it on YouTube.
Speaker 2:So I put that in there to lead us to our next question, the big fentanyl issue, and it's kind of a broad question what's your view on cases involving mental health and drug treatment and what's a good plan that you have for it?
Speaker 3:I'm glad you asked it. It's going to be a long answer. Go ahead, yeah, sit and get relaxed, all right, so let me talk to you. I've been doing this for a while 14 years. I've watched different epidemics, right the pill epidemic, oxycodone, oxycontin. I watched it move to heroin and now we're watching it move to fentanyl. It becomes deadlier each time.
Speaker 2:It's affected everybody's family, everybody.
Speaker 3:I go out and I talk to a bunch of people every week and you get, I've talked to people in landfall and I've talked to people downtown and I've talked to people you know down at the beaches up in Pender in the country, and I asked everybody who's been affected by the opioid epidemic. And at least one to five people raise their hand. So it hits everybody. It goes beyond all socioeconomic boundaries, goes beyond all boundaries of race, creed, religion, right. So I was one of the I don't know if you know this I was one of the first people I don't know, I don't know if it's in the state, or at least in this area, in our office to prosecute a drug dealer for distributing an opiate and somebody died and that was before the death by distribution statutes. So we charged this female with distributing one time release pill to a young man. He had just graduated high school and it was one pill and he died from one pill and we charged her with involuntary manslaughter, cause at the time we couldn't prove, you know, second degree murder or anything like that. It wasn't. You know, she was a dealer. So we prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter. She was convicted, she went to prison and we've had the good thing about it is we had now the laws change in our favor where we can prosecute people for overdose deaths. Now it's tough, it's, it's, it's, it is.
Speaker 3:Those are some of the most complex cases that you will get, because you're you're having to trace that one baggie, maybe, of fentanyl, or that one pill, or that half a pill back to a specific drug dealer that you can, that you can charge, and we've done it, and I've got a few cases. A colleague of mine has a few cases. So if we look at that and say, all right, what are we doing? What is our vision? When I say we're going after the worst people that do the worst things outside of putting a gun to somebody's head and shooting them, I mean distributing a known dangerous substance to somebody, knowing that A they're vulnerable, they're addicts, they're vulnerable, knowing that you just don't care. All you're caring about is the profits you make from this. You don't care if they die, live or whatever. So we prosecute that. So if we can't find the dealer who resulted in the death, we're still going after dealers.
Speaker 3:So this is going to go to your other question, which was what do we do with users? Right, right, Because we see a whole lot of users everywhere and people are like you can't put users in prison I agree with that Unless they become back and back and back and back and back. Right, at some point you're trying to help them and they don't want to help themselves and they're continuing to use and at times, deal, because we see a lot of users deal too, so, and they're not drug traffickers, they're just dealing to sustain their habit. So we have drug treatment courts Right. Right to sustain their habit. So we have drug treatment courts, right. We have probation for a lot of these people and they go through rehab facilities, whether inpatient or outpatient. Mental health, because mental health is a lot of triggering.
Speaker 2:It triggers addiction. Mental health is one of the biggest, one of the biggest issues in America. That it's not been, it's not being handled.
Speaker 3:Right. I mean, look, it's hard for a prosecuting office or probation office, the criminal justice system, to fix mental health. We try, we try, we do it. You know our probation officers work their tails off trying to find the best places and the best treatment for their probationers, and a lot of them are drug addicts and so they're doing a good job. I mean they are doing a good job. If you look at it, the demand is so high, the demand for these drugs because these opiates are so addictive, and the demand is high and you're seeing a lot more people using them.
Speaker 2:Well, Chad, what you got next.
Speaker 4:I was going to ask about pretrial services and if you see a rise in more of that coming. We just heard that Mr Josh Stein is involved in some services to increase that across the state if he's elected.
Speaker 3:So I'm just wondering if you had heard, I think, the pulse of pre-trial confinement even across the country and we see it change Like. We see it go to the very extreme of, oh, we don't have. You know, nobody should have a bond and everybody should be released on some sort of pre-trial to a hybrid which we have, and I think people are looking at how to what's the alternative, the least restrictive alternative for holding people pretrial, and I think it's going to be a conversation that's going to continue. Now, look, that's set really by general statutes, so it's your General Assembly that's going to say all right, they're going to change. I mean, because right now you know we have it talks about bail bonds, it talks about pretrial.
Speaker 3:Now, look, we have local pretrial monitoring, we have local pretrial programs and that set by usually, um, the chief district court judge in conjunction with the da's and the in the public defenders and such. I mean I. I guess the short answer to that is it's going to continue. I mean that's that's sort of the pulse of of the country is making sure that the worst people stay in pretrial and the people that can, that you know. A local addict is not staying in pretrial because you know they say it's patently unfair if we're incarcerating addicts, right, look, it's. Here's the test for any type of bond and the amount of a bond. Will they appear in court? Are they a danger to themselves or to the community? And that's what we argue. And we look at their history, we look at the offense, we look at all sorts of things Ties to the community.
Speaker 3:Right ties to the community. Are they an act of use? Because we have some that, especially with fentanyl, I've argued keep them in, clean them up, because the next day we've had some, you know, I'll have somebody come to me and say they've overdosed. You know, three times I've had moms come to me and say keep them in because man, I've had to narc hand him out many times.
Speaker 2:We have a very special bond that she was a friend of mine before she started using and she kept getting in trouble, kept getting in trouble, overdosed a couple times, and so I bonded her out because she was a friend of mine before. I ain't seen her in a while, so I get her out and when she gets out and she's doing everything she's supposed to and then she disappears, so then me andad here have to go pick her up at the methadone clinic oh yeah, I'm gonna go get her but when she now since she's gotten out well, when I put her back in I made phone calls to every bondsman that I can call.
Speaker 2:Tell them to leave her in there, talk to the family. I said, look, she needs to dry out. And so she stayed in there for four months, right at four months. And and when she got out she came to me. She said thanks for helping me, can you help us get him to get a job? So we got to help her get a job. Five years later I get an invitation.
Speaker 4:She's doing great To a wedding. Yep, she's doing great, that small.
Speaker 2:And that, and so Bill Bosman you story.
Speaker 3:If we could help one person out of all the years we've been doing, this is worth it, right? Yeah, so I mean welcome to a tough job that we we, we deal with. I mean it is. I mean it's about saving lives, and how do we?
Speaker 4:do it. Sometimes you save a life by leaving men hard love. Yeah, lots of parents call and say you know they'll call and say I just want to call and say will you please not bond my child out? Yeah, okay, I've had them come to first appearances and say leave. You know they'll call and say I just want to call and say will you please not bond my child out? Yeah, okay, I've had them come to first appearances and say leave them in.
Speaker 3:Leave them in, Please don't, Please don't give them an unsecured bond because or increase the bond because they have friends that will bond them out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I want them to live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've heard that one too, yeah, so we're all hearing the same thing.
Speaker 3:But that's what our society is right now and it's fueled with these drugs, these dangerous drugs. Now the feds could help us on that by securing borders and helping the pipeline from out of the country to here.
Speaker 2:Right, but I mean again we've got to deal with it locally. I mean, sheriff McMahon just busted one this morning, was it last night?
Speaker 4:That was a ring of three Venezuelans. No Colombians Colombians, I heard about that. Yes.
Speaker 2:That was kind of a shocker reading that one Chad. I think we've already answered that next question, the jail population.
Speaker 4:Last time that yeah, last time we had a meeting with Mr David a few years ago and it was some groups that basically wanted to have a secret meeting with him about us and how they didn't need us. And we found out and we went and he was glad we showed up. But anyway he broke it down to the jail population was half of it was holding for other places the inventory of the jail, people in the jail, half of it. At that time I don't know what it is now, this has been a few years ago that he told us that that was the way it broke down. So half the people could not even be bonded out that were sitting there.
Speaker 3:Well, not bonded out, maybe if they're being held for another county.
Speaker 2:I think they're serving time or being held by the feds, because this is a federal holding facility, right.
Speaker 3:So you have federal holding facility, you have. They hold inmates for other counties, Pender's one of them. We have a small jail. They're building a new one that hopefully we'll be able to to help them. But yeah, I mean, look, it costs one hundred dollars a day to house somebody in our jail and that's funded by taxpayers. That's funded by taxpayers and not, look, you'll have to talk to a sheriff McMahon on other things, aspects of the economics of his jail but it costs a hundred dollars a day. Yeah, and not saying that, oh, we release everybody, we just we have to be cognizant of how many are in our jail. I mean, that's every. Every County needs to be aware of how many are in the jail.
Speaker 2:Well, it kind of leads me to my next question is Pender County. You know I live there, chad lives there and you live there. I guess I'm the newest one out of the bunch. I've noticed in Pender County there's not a whole lot of deputies.
Speaker 3:They do. It's a big county, though it's a smaller agency. It's not, it's a small agency.
Speaker 2:They do it's a big county, though it's a smaller agency, it's a small agency. It's a small agency. And with the growth, though, with the beaches and Hampstead and—.
Speaker 3:What do they have? 60,000 people now. They had 40—don't quote me on numbers. They had 40 like 10 years ago. I mean they've grown a lot. Sheriff Cutler is doing a good job of growing it up there, but it's a big a, it's a big County B, it's growing. And you still got to fund a bigger sheriff's office, right, true, so he's got a challenge there. He's doing a good job. I mean, I prosecuted up there for almost a decade and they get it done when they have to get it done. And but you're right, you're not seeing. You may not see a sheriff's deputy at every corner, but again, it's a large.
Speaker 2:it is a large county Drive it from the East Coast or from Surf City all the way. Just get on 40 and go from New Henry County line up to the Samson-Duplin line.
Speaker 3:That's short, though. Go from Surf City all the way to the western side. Yeah, it's a long and it's a lot of back roads and everything else. So they're doing what they can and they're doing a good job.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's. Do you have anything else? Chad, I mean.
Speaker 4:I guess not. I mean, you answered a lot of our questions and we really appreciate you coming in and giving us your time.
Speaker 2:It's been awesome.
Speaker 4:Do you have any kind of events or anything that you're going to be at? People can meet you and shake your hands and get a sense of who you are.
Speaker 3:Kiss babies, kiss babies. Let me tell you if I knew, what I knew now, oh my goodness. Look, I'm not a politician, I'm a prosecutor. But part of that is going out and educating the public about what we do. I spent a lot of time. I mean I'm talking educated. People are like what does the DA do and what's his role in anything? Because we haven't had a contested DA's election in 20 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a while so they don't have to pay attention to that. And you're like, well, what does the DA do? Why? Well, what does the DA do? Why does your election matter? And it's because we spearhead crime fighting in this area and we kind of set the tone right. So I have to explain that to them. So I go and speak. I spoke last night, I'm speaking tomorrow night. They can come to the GOP headquarters. They're having a town hall tomorrow night. They can come tomorrow night.
Speaker 4:New Hanover.
Speaker 3:New Hanover Okay, it's off of. Come to the gop headquarters. They're having a town hall tomorrow night. They can come tomorrow night. New hanover's it's on off occur um 6 30 and I think they're having speakers at seven. Then we're having a big um, a big event at the aquarium on september 5th open to all.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, they're going to have a fort fisher, yes, fort fisher aquarium aquarium. It's the most Southern tip of new Hanover County.
Speaker 3:You can go to a beautiful aquarium beautiful aquarium, so I don't know how many speakers are going to be there. I'll be there Wingshake hands, people can ask me about my thoughts and desires and everything else. It's hard, I don't. I'm trying to think of my next speaking gig. I do it a lot. Sometimes it's like I get a day's notice and they're like, hey, can you come here and speak?
Speaker 4:how about a website? You got a website wwwelectjasonwsmithcom.
Speaker 3:Better go to it. Facebook is the best way, because we're posting our videos and some of our stuff prior speaking engagements on Facebook. So it's jason smith for district attorney. Um, then instagram, jason smith for da awesome is there?
Speaker 2:is there anything I can do personally?
Speaker 3:like you know what? We've again people getting people to understand that voting in their local election, I want you to vote for me but getting people to the voting booths and saying, hey, we care about our local elections and vote for your local elections, Educate, Educate and then just spread the word Again. We haven't had a contested DA's race in 20 years and people are like well, what do you mean? You running against Ben? No, Ben's retiring next week, so it's an open seat. So they've got to care and they've got to come to the voting.
Speaker 2:Well, you sure have a long, long ride until November 60-something days, 70 days. And it'll go by fast and you know well we have to give it up for him. I'll give one big clap for Mr Smith. Thank you, mr Smith, for being on today.
Speaker 1:That's it's been. Thank you, it's been awesome.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thanks, man.
Speaker 2:Man, I can't thank you enough. It's good, I'm hoping everybody at home watching and listening Get out, educate yourself, Come meet this man, this man you know he's great to talk to and you know he's great to see in the courtroom too. So maybe we'll see each other soon, You're new in Hanover right. Yeah, I may have something coming up in it. I know I've got one in Pender coming up.
Speaker 3:I've got a couple in Pender too.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, I definitely will see him. Uh, awesome, well, cool, Uh, anything else you want to say, chad?
Speaker 4:No man, it's been great. And, um you know, check this man's social media out and, uh, learn about for him. All right, guys. Thanks, fellas.
Speaker 2:You can check us out on YouTube. It's Off the Hook Podcast on YouTube. We're on TikTok. We're on all streaming platforms Spotify, apple Podcasts Check us out. Comment, like If you got any questions, send them on. We'll get them to Jason and until then, we love you, mean it. See you next time. You.
Speaker 1:Until then, we love you, mean it, we'll see you next time you've been listening to off the hook with Chad and Rob. We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and review, and be sure to follow us for notifications for another exciting episode. But in the meantime, you can go to our website at wwwoffthehookbillcom to see more. So until next time, stay out of trouble, or it'll be you that needs to get off the hook. See you soon.