House and Senate Republican media availability | Jan. 9, 2024

well welcome uh everybody I'm uh representative Drew stb from the 31st District in the House minority leader uh good to see everybody in person I don't think we've seen you all uh in person like this since 2020 so uh it has been a while appreciate it um to my right uh I have my Deputy Republican leader Mike steel uh I think for both of us this is the first time we've done uh one of these media availabilities in our new leadership capacity um I'll turn it over to my Senate counterpart Senator Bron and just a second but I just wanted to to highlight one or two things I don't know if anybody uh had a chance to catch my remarks uh yesterday on the first day of session but uh I think they paint a much different picture than the picture that uh Governor Insley tried to paint today um that's understandable it's it is his record that is sort of on trial um I don't think it's a particularly good record uh he said the state of our state is stronger than ever I think the statistics B that uh quite clearly uh we have the fewest police officers per capita we are between number one and number three for violent crime property crime auto theft in the country uh 70% of our K12 students are failing math standards 50% are failing reading standards uh the number of fentanyl deaths last year increased uh in Washington state by more than they increase in any other state according to the CDC we have the fewest uh housing units per household according to Lieutenant Governor's own report um we have between the highest and second or third highest gas prices in the country depending on what day of the week you're measuring uh we have uh 65% of Washington families unable to access child care so by any metric you want to pick uh there is a growing catalog of crises facing the state uh the vast majority of which have gotten significantly worse uh during the last 12 years when Jay Insley was governor so I understand why he would want to reflect away from that but uh I think the facts Bell his arguments today and uh our job as House and Senate Republicans is going to be proposing ideas that will actually fix those problems so my speech yesterday and what I'll be spending the next 59 legislative days working on is uh talking to my colleagues talking to the people of Washington pointed out that uh it's time for a change and it's time to fix Washington so with that I'll hand it over to my colleague Senator Brun well thank you uh thank you everyone for being here John Brun state senator for the 20th Good Fortune to serve as the leader for the Senate uh Republican caucus joined by Senator Judy Warick and Senator Nikki Torres uh I'll also make just a few comments and we'll jump right into questions and they're going to they're going to Echo much of what uh represented stokesbury said you know we're focused on the things that we hear uh from folks in our district and they really haven't changed because we really haven't solve the problem most folks are struggling with it's Public Safety uh and and Drew shared a number of Statistics with you uh we are breaking records but not in a good way we continue to break our homicide record we continue to break records when it comes to property crime retail theft uh automobile theft we're headed in the wrong direction uh and we we get and we know uh that some of the policies put in place over the last couple years by the current majorities are causing that problem uh we can do something about this and we're refusing to do something about but it goes goes beyond uh just just crime we also it's unsafe in the in the presence of drugs we continue to to break records with fentanyl deaths uh we have a homelessness Pro problem that's that's that's growing out of this and and among the worst of the nation so we have a lot of challenges there a lot of work to do to improve it uh the next priority for us is affordability uh and this cuts across many areas the whether it's food or gas housing uh Child Care Health Care these are all increasingly unaffordable for the working Washingtonian uh around the state and and they're getting they're getting worse and and this is in spite of the fact that we've seen significant growth in in wage wages uh over the last few years we're not keeping up with inflation we're not keeping up with the regulatory changes that are making it more expensive here in our state of course the top of mind for most people right now is the climate commitment act because it's very obvious uh most folks uh can't afford electric car when they show up at the gas station they have to pay an extra 50 cents to a dollar per gallon especially if you're in a border Community where you see it so obviously and down in my neck of the woods you can drive across the the bridge to Oregon and find fuel for a dollar less it's it's plain as day and the only difference is the climate commitment act here in Washington uh that is driving fuel up up uh and it's very frustrating to the average Washingtonian uh I understand that we're working on on climate change and we want to address carbon issues but I don't think here in the great state of Washington that we need to do it on the backs of working washingtonians and then finally uh we have a lot of work to do to build a better future future for our children uh we spent the last couple years talking a lot about uh our K12 public education system the learning loss uh that uh many kids suffered during the pandemic H and we know today that while some kids have gotten back on track uh particularly kids who were already uh had some sort had some sort of challenge whether it was economic or academic or social emotional challenge who were already having difficulty before the pandemic they are not responding in particular children of color and children living in poverty are not re are not recovering at the rate I think we would all want them to we have a lot more work to do there but it goes beyond that we're having trouble I mentioned with the cost of child care but also access to child care uh that Drew mentioned uh and and beyond that into our juvenile uh criminal justice system which is failing children who have have you know committed a crime been convicted they have to you know have a a sentence to fulfill but we want to send them out better prepared for a better future and we are absolutely failing to do that today so we have a lot of work to do on on addressing Public Safety and making Washington affordable and really building a better future for the children of the state of Washington so once again thank you for being here and we look forward to your questions no questions okay thank you or two um on interested in the um the Democrats two bills to um do a change in the Constitution to change the 60% on passing school bonds to a simple majority what is your caucus position on it and why and I'm asking you I used to work for a daily paper in Washington Detroit City Herald and um there was a heck of a lot of uh School bonds that passed with they had like 55 to 57% of the the voters were for them and they still couldn't get them P pass so I am asking you from that that perspective do you want Mike is our used to be capital budget lead so I'll let him handle this yeah I would just say as the capital budget lead it's a much more nuanced question than just policy uh you know when we look at our budget Realties in this state we are stra for cash usually when it comes to the capital budget we're working right now inside the capital budget committee to address School Construction in meaningful ways both caucuses uh and as everybody's aware you know we passed the capital budget usually unanimously in both the house and the Senate because it's a compromised budget that works together to solve the problems facing facing all of our communities um you know we just don't have capacity if every school district across Washington decided to run a simple majority or a 55% majority Bond we would be strapped for cash we would nothing but pay for K12 education Construction in the capital budget and we have other obligations in universities State agencies across the state uh that have facility needs and we can't just solely focus on K12 that said we recognize it as a problem both caucuses both both sides of the aisle recognize it as a problem and we need to address it and we're working diligently to do it okay I'll come at you this way uh's love local control that's one of your basic um fundamental values why not just leave it up to the local school districts and whether they want to taex tax themselves well it is up to the local school district it just requires them the Constitution requires them to get a super majority that and that's been that way uh for a long time and the simple answer is we're asking voters to pay for a school bond for 30 you know 20 to 30 years just a long-term commitment it is not unreasonable and certainly not unprecedent to look around the country to ask for a super majority to make sure that everybody is on board one of the most challenging things folks are facing in our communities around the state and it's particularly true in rural rural communities is the cost of property taxes it continues to go up and it's driving the cost of housing whether it's owned housing or rented housing up and up this is so your propos you know when when a bond measure comes up and I might add that most Bond measures do pass with over 60% uh but some don't you're absolutely right some don't just the ones I covered by the way most of the ones that don't are in rural Washington so we're very familiar with the challenge uh but the answer is not to change the standard the answer is to build a better case for the voters make them believe you're going to get if they approve that Bond you're going to do something that will really make a difference I live in the city of just outside the city of Centralia we we failed I think four bonds before they finally passed one but the first when they first did it they did not have a plan on how they're going to do it and the voters paid attention they said we don't understand how you're going to spend this money and how it's going to benefit us over the next three decades once they took the time to understand to educate the voters to build consensus they passed the bond and they they re remodeled and rebuilt three schools so this is absolutely doable on top of that and and um we're doing a lot inside the capital budget we didn't talk about to help schools who are not are still having struggle so there's a lot of things going on here but I don't think the answer is simply to change the rules the answer is to go out you know communicate with the public bu help them understand what your plan is that you will spend their money wisely and then I think you'll get support we and in my in my district we've seen that happen over and over again where bonds have failed and where they slowed down taken their time communicated with the public they've come back and passed them and I'd like to say that same thing um because I represented a rural area too Central Washington we've had the same thing we've had bonds fail but people that we represent people that uh the school board members talk to want to make it difficult to raise taxes and they want to make sure that what they are voting for is exactly what the community needs so I've I've heard that over and over make it difficult to raise taxes and prove the point prove why you need that that uh school bond and as a matter of fact we hold ourselves to the same account at the legislature we don't pass the capital budget without a super majority to pay for the 30-year bonds so we don't have a separate standard we we we require a minority majority coalition to pass the capital budget the the Constitution contains a number of Provisions to avoid uh tyranny of the majority when it comes to taxation especially property taxes uh they are limited to uh a dollar uh to to to 1% essentially uh and property taxes have to be uniform and so with a when a bond passes that is going to go above and beyond the uh 1% limitation in the state constitution so as a matter of fairness and to avoid this tyranny of the majority the Constitution requires a 60% super majority so to Senator Bron point it's not unreasonable to say that um schools need to and districts need to do a better job making the case to voters you're right John there are some districts that you know fail a bond with just over 50% but there's plenty more that fail it well below 50 um my district in Enumclaw failed the bond with uh just less than onethird voting yes they retained their whole Schoolboard but they opposed the bond by nearly a 2 to1 margin um you know it's up to voters to decide these things we have 60,000 students that have left the K12 education system since Co um there is a profound lack of trust uh by a lot of families in their public school system and so I think our job as policy makers and the job of school districts in concert with us is to help better make the case for why those Investments are worthy and if a district can't make the case uh they shouldn't obligate uh taxpayers to 30 years of funding the governor mentioned his hopes for the session the Constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights Democratic Leadership just said we have the BWI we have Bill we have votes but we need bipartisan support any members of your Congress going sorry wrong going to vote for for that well I I heard Senator bik's answer it was a little interesting because I was at a pression Forum with him in Spokan and talking about a different Bill uh he said that we didn't need to waste time on bills that simply repeated existing rights uh so I think it's a little curious that he has a different standard for topics he disagrees with than he does for topics he agrees with um I think we ought to take a little bit more of a consistent approach there um but in my mind I I I think that the the Constitutional amendment is Superfluous um abortion rights aren't under threat in Washington the only people saying they are are Democrats uh who think it's politically advantages for them to do so um I don't have any members of my caucus that are looking to run bills to Crate women's right to choose and I don't anticipate that changing over the next 60 days um constitutional right the right to an abortion has been Ed shed in State Statute since a voter initiative in uh the 1970s they expanded in the early 1990s and there's never been any meaningful effort to curtail them in the past and I don't anticipate one to happen in the future uh there's a reason why we pass bills when we want to do something and not put everything in the Constitution uh so until somebody can demonstrate to me why uh these these rights are somehow under threat I don't think it's a Val valuable use of the legislator's time to con intialize everything that we think is a good idea we would be here forever um I have a question um about re I'm wondering if what the appetite is in your's caucuses uh for a new bill this year I know that there's a proposal that just dropped I think today that would decrease R for properties under 700,000 and then imposing new transfer tax for property over I think around 3 million like that when some of that um new funding would go for affordable housing which you guys have already said is kind of they need this year yeah I would say two things I I I don't think think there's going to be support in our caucus for that for the simple reason that this continues to add you know additional taxes to an already to a population already thinks they're over taxed and you can say well none of us are buying houses greater than 3 million and that's uh certainly true it's also true that almost all the multif family housing uh out there in all of our communities is more than $3 million so every every transfer that happens to those type of properties that cost that increase the cost and is ultimately going to increase the rent so um we don't a don't think there's a need for more Revenue I think most fundamentally but two don't think this is the right way to do it this is one that once again adds cost to to to Working Families uh who are already having trouble making ends meat you can't make housing more affordable by making it more expensive I mean it's as simple as that for for Republicans um and you know to set a bronze Point yes they're there's not a lot of folks who need affordable housing that are buying $3 million single family homes but that will absolutely hit almost every multif family housing complex uh in the state so um and I'll also point out that uh lowering the rate for 700,000 might be great in a lot of parts of the state but uh that won't do you much in King County um my community in South Auburn is full of homes that were two $300,000 8 years ago and are $7 to $800,000 today yeah um listening to your speech yesterday listening to the Publican response today you guys are painting a pretty depressing picture of life in Washington and it feels like in the short session and the elections lying a lot of what you guys do literally trying to scare people to vote out Democrats and vote in ours what is is that a goal is that why is there anything positive in Washington I mean why are you guys so depressing well we're in theity I don't feel that depressed actually so I don't you know not to take that personally but uh hey look we're not we're not painting we're not we're not out we don't wake up in the morning say hey I think I'll go paint a depressing picture of what's going on in Washington what you've heard us talking about is is the stats whether it's the increase in homicides in our state or the increase in property crime or the incre you know the failure of two of three of our children to pass uh reading in arithmetic at grade level these are we're we're simply sharing with the public that we're we're going in the wrong direction and our belief is that we're going on in a wrong direction because of policies put in place uh by the Democratic majorities that's our job as the as the loyal minority is to point out when they got it wrong and we think they've gotten it wrong nearly across the board uh what else would you expect us to do now I want to be clear in most of these cases we're also proposing policies that would make it better we're not just saying hey it's wrong oh too bad we're saying hey it's wrong why don't you try something different so in in every one of these cases I think we could talk about specific policy that says we can make it better for the state of Washington we can make it better for you and your family if you give us a chance well and I can tell you too as someone who has a very unique legislative is probably the most unique District in all of Washington as folks know I represent part of Douglas County Alan County part of King and part of sish County so I'm the only legislative district that crosses the Cascade mountain range and I would just say I over my time in the legislature what we're talking about more often than not is urban versus rural issues and when you look at the issues that we're talking about they disproportionately affect the folks who live in rural Washington more I mean we have to travel farther have have smaller police forces have to think about the cost of just doing basic business every day where your kids are going to go to school whether or not their schools are falling down around them you know those are things that face rural Washington disproportionately more than they do Urban Washington so it's about telling that story and if it sounds Bleak well maybe it is to some communities because we're working really hard to Grapple for what the urban communities already have and I think that's an important point to make that you this this Urban rural divide is real in Washington and all the time we talk about one Washington but we really don't mean it and I can see it very very clearly in my district now when I represent rural parts of King County they feel left out of the rest of King County so it's it's a very real thing and I think it's important that we continue to point that out I I think the statistics that I shared yesterday Jerry I mean they do paint a very sobering picture but as I also pointed out uh those of us who are serving down here wouldn't be serving down here if we didn't think we could help and we didn't think there's a way to fix Washington um if it were if if we thought there was no hope we would pack our bags and move to Idaho if you like the snow and Florida if you like the Sun but we're not doing that we're we're sacrificing time away from our families to come down to Olympia to to try to fix things um and if you if you listen to some of the stuff we've talked about uh almost to a tea every issue where we've been we've been talking about represents areas where Democrats have uh forged ahead and pursued policies on a single party basis we've not really complained very much about the things that have been done on a bipartison basis there's there's lots of good when things happen bipartisanly uh Mike alluded to the capital budget a minute ago uh you know I'm I think I was reasonably pleased by the progress REM made uh in response to the Blake decision uh in the special session Bill last year um Working Families tax cut which is something that Andy big mentioned would not have happened without House Republicans pushing for it so I think there's there's a lot of good that can be had when there's bipartisanship and I pointed that out in my speech yesterday too that um you know we we shouldn't have so much Hubers is to think that only one side only one party has the answer to everything um but the things that I think are really going wrong when it comes to like the high price of gas due to the climate commitment act uh have to do you know those come about when Democrats have passed passed bills um on a single party basis so I I mean I think there's there's plenty of stuff to be hopeful about in Washington and we wouldn't be down here if we didn't think there was a way to do it but uh there is a lot going wrong and and our job as part of the loyal opposition is to propos ideas to fix Washington and that's what we're going to do for the next 59 days I have a question about rent control sounds like that's got some momentum uh your concerns about that bill yeah we continue to think we can um we can undercut the market housing and succeed in this problem and we can't look uh depends on who you ask but regardless of who you ask we put a record amount of money into public housing uh last year uh during the longer session you know whether it's 600 million or I think some folks are saying a billion dollars now it depends on how you count it up but but the reality is uh you can do the simple math if each each house uh and I I granted all of them aren't houses is you know $400,000 you know billion dollars doesn't go very far and it's not all focused on that we can't you know and we're almost 300,000 homes behind we can't get there uh by by the state uh you know buying uh or building and hopefully uh affordable housing the numbers simply don't work to get there we need to build on somewhere on the order of you know 20 30 40 50,000 homes per year to get there to do that you need folks to invest in housing in Washington they won't do that if they have rent control hanging over their heads they simply won't now you can like rent control you don't like grent control but if you want more housing and more housing is what drives the price down down if you want more housing you have to create a regulatory environment that will attract big investment in housing in the state of Washington that's what fixes the problem long term and that's why you know we're not we're not looking for higher rents we're just looking for a problem that will actually play out to the end and result in enough housing for everyone at an affordable price I agree with everything that Senator Bron said I I would just make the analogy that I think rent control is a Band-Aid solution it it might work for a few years but won't do anything to over the long term uh on a permanent basis lower the price of housing that I I think we got to think a lot bigger than that uh and that is that that means building more housing of all types um but we build more housing and that will lower the price we shouldn't we shouldn't think small potatoes and worry about capping the rate at which rent can increase we should think big and figure out ways to incentivize building more housing to actually bring down rents and like Senator Brown pointed out rent control will have the opposite effect of that it will dry up investment capital for housing and you'll be stuck in an endless spiral of never increasing rent prices because we won't ever be able to build the supply we need to get out of being dead last in housing units per household in the state um I had a question on some of the climate policy um you guys mentioned earlier that um it shouldn't be done on the backs of working class Americans and so I was just curious on where you think um the funding for the climate policy should come from like should it come from wealthy people or or where do you anticipate the funding to come for climate change policy well I think there's a couple issues there first of all um I I aggress the regressivity issue and and you saw even when the climate commitment Act passed a couple years ago you saw some I think uh some Democrats who stuck with their principles who voted against it for for that very reason it's a very regressive tax in essence it's a very regressive tax and and folks like to to talk about the regressive nature of the tax system in the state of Washington when you actually look at the studies that have done on that what you what you learn is that gas tax and therefore the climate commitment act which acts as a is essentially a large gas tax is the most regressive thing in our tax system so why would we want to do why would we say hey we want to help the folks in the middle why would we do that and then lay over the top of them a very regressive system so that's that's the first issue that's it's just the wrong answer uh here we are in the state of Washington we like we think we're Innovative we have you know fabulous companies that have innovated and yet our solution is not Innovative at all it's let's let's just take more money uh from folks across Washington percentage wise more from working washingtonians and then we think we can spend it better than them just fundamentally a bad idea the second part of you're asking like where would the money come from I I would disagree that at its premises I'm not I don't think that we need a big p you know pot of money uh is that you know jley or the Democratic majority is in charge of to fix climate change that's a fundamentally false notion we can do this better ways uh we can do this more innovatively we can do this without you know additional government oversight and there's a there's simple examples where you see you know we have 8 million people in our state now and every one of them are making better choices when it comes to how they how they emit carbon I think that's a much much more powerful way to have success than to to to to legislate it uh let let's Empower people to make good decisions about how they live and I believe they will I mean we don't have organic uh cereal in the grocery store or non-GMO uh food in the grocery store because we told them it had to be there it's there because people want it people want to make better decisions about their lives their environment their families Etc let's Empower them to do so let's be Innovative and we have a great example that just happened this last year uh in right here in the legislature bipar as example where we looked at the aviation industry where you know they decided Well today we can't make an electric airplane we can't figure out how to do it let's think of another more Innovative way to make our aviation industry uh carbon neutral so they they build a technology literally the ideaas that captures carbon from different sources builds hydrocarbons builds jet fuel flies you know flies planes that emit carbon captures more carbon so that long term it is carbon neutral and in its scale it is competitive with the current market market and you don't have to put this overwhelming press of taxes and additional cost on people across the state of Washington why aren't we looking for Solutions like that that's a better way that's what we should be doing in the state of Washington the other thing is uh with that I represent a very rural area a lot of Agriculture and while the climate commitment Act was being proposed uh it was promised that the agricultural exemption would stay the tax exemption uh for agricultural products for agricultural users um would stay and it has not so it's cost our Farmers cost our agricultural producers a tremendous amount of money and we in the agricultural field um have more of a a chance of creating uh carbon neutral uh products a a situation plus the the food that Senator Brown was talking about so there was a promise made that has not been kept uh for egg producers so that's uh that's one of the uh again what I hear from my constituents my Farmer constituents why are they doing that to us so Senator desire for Washington to move towards the midd Poli off the governor is opening Regional are there other steps you think could be done to both recruit and retain police officers yeah I mean I I i' I have always been supportive of this idea of of regionales and you know it was great to uh meet somebody in the gallery that that has benefited from that but that is you know barely a Nick in fall in solving the problem um very I mean it's it's it makes things a little bit easier but i' I've yet to meet uh a police chief or Sheriff that said the problem is is only because uh we can't convince folks to spend a few months away uh at a training across state um so that that isn't really getting at the core of the not nice I think uh that we got to help these cities and counties with more money um we gave a lot more money to the state patrol a couple years ago to increase Trooper pay uh because they were suffering from some of these same uh Recruitment and Retention issues uh we need to do the same thing for local government so uh I think there's about three ways I've seen to do it uh Senator hly has a bill and I think representative wall and a Democrat uh has a very similar Bill uh this session that would uh essentially give that money to cities and counties based on a local sales tax credit uh there is a bill that I introduced last session that would just you know say this should be a priority of the state operating budget that has doubled in the past 10 years uh and we should just give grant money to cities and counties to do it uh the third option is one that I think representative Couture for my caucus has proposed a bill on which would uh increase uh Indigent defense funding for counties which they need but tie it to ensuring that they have minimum policing ratios as well uh so a couple different ways you could do it I'd be good with pretty much any of them maybe there's other ways too but I think we got to give cities and counties money to to be able to fund this and make it a priority for them um the harder longer term approach is uh we you know we've got to change the culture surrounding law enforcement in the state um some of the the bills that were passed in 2021 and 2022 uh well-intentioned as they were I think really caused a significant problem not just in terms of Public Safety but also in terms of uh these Police Department's ability to you know have a quality Force um it is really tough to be a police officer it always has been and these laws make it even harder to stay in the profession uh there are countless families that uh are leaving the profession my own uh former seatmate representative Irwin was a Seattle police officer and he quit the legislature because he thought he would rather be a cop than be a legislator he said legislature is the greatest job I've ever had in my life except for being a cop he's now no longer a police officer 3 years later um because that's how hard it is to do this profession and these laws that we have passed make it even harder and even a lot of Democrats understand this too um Alicia rule has a bill that would uh roll back the pursuit law uh so we we need to have a longer term conversation about the uh how how we treat police officers and how how the legislature manages public safety issues and whether or not that's contributing towards uh us being last in the nation and I think it is and I think that's part of part of why uh Folks up here in in our caucuses would support uh changing the the police pursuit law changing some of these other rules that we've passed in the last couple years to um make law enforcement a more desirable profession uh where these the good cops aren't always made out to be bad guys have for one more question let me jump in on that if I may um so and I don't have a lot to add to that that was a very uh comprehensive answer uh very simply it's about training it's about recruiting it's about funding I've been encouraged I heard we heard the governor say today I've heard uh the leaders in the in the house and the Senate on the Democratic side talk about growing our law enforcement out of several events over the last couple weeks so I'm encouraged by that that's something we've been talking about for a couple years you know you mentioned or Senator H's Bill to offer a State Credit against the state sales tax that bill has been out there for two years now this is its third year and just now we're starting to get some some interest so I think when it comes to training the the the regional criminal justice training centers I'm a little bit more positive about that than representative Stokes fairy but either way that's a step in the right direction very bipartisan effort to make that happen uh during the last session I think that the the other side of Iowa is starting to come along with the idea that it's going to take more money and they do I heard the speaker say this earlier I I think she's right you know first we need to fill up the already funded local positions but we need to be prepared uh to add additional positions once those are are filled and um and and then the mo the hardest part the part that we're not there with yet is the recruiting and and the the real challenges the real challenges with getting our best and brightest to choose a career in law enforcement today have to do with uh how we have painted law enforcement as a society over the last few years not particularly positive we you know and and kind of what what how we're going to judge them now nobody disagrees not Republicans not Democrats disagree that we need wellt trained well supervised and accountable law enforcement I don't think there there's I can't I've never I've yet to find the person that doesn't agree with that uh the the the challenge is when you hold them accountable how are you holding them accountable and right now most law enforcement officers who are in the profession don't feel like they're getting a fair shake and in particular the rule you know kind of all the changes that happened in 2020 one one of the ones that was in there was where they changed the standard from a reasonable officer standard to a reasonable person standard and it sounds very reasonable uh no pun intended uh but uh it's not reasonable because what you have is you have officers trained very specifically how they respond in a spe in a dangerous situation they're trained to be very proactive when they think that either themselves their their co-workers or the public are are going to be threatened by someone who might do something they're trained to be proactive and take action to prevent that from happening that's intentional and has been proven to reduce the level of violence the average person doesn't know that they haven't gotten this training so the reasonable person standard that they're now judged by has no idea how they were actually trained that's not a fair way to judge people we don't take doctors and say hey um we know you you went to 12 years of school but we're going to bring in a reasonable patient to tell you whether you did a good job or not that would not be fair wouldn't be fair for attorneys it wouldn't be fair for all kinds of professions who have very specific training we've created an unfair situation for our law enforcement and I understand we want them held accountable nobody disagrees with that but we have to treat them fair if we're going to recruit folks into the law enforcement profession and we desperately need to we're the worst in the country and we don't have to be the top in the country but we at least ought to be in the middle if we're going to recruit folks into that profession we have to give them a fair deal and we're not right now thank you everyone you