At his town hall event in Cincinnati, Ohio, following the viral downtown brawl, Vivek Ramaswamy took a question from a voter who claimed his 17-year-old stepson got a very lenient sentence for possessing a stolen gun.
00:00We'll come over here after that, all right? To this side of the room. We'll go to this gentleman and then microphones. Let's bring it. Okay, we'll go over there and then bring it around over here.
00:08Not to take a whole lot of time. Great job with Doge and everything you did there. It was good to see what you did there. I had a personal experience in Cincinnati. I had a stepson that was caught at three in the morning and he was a white kid.
00:21He got caught with a loaded, stolen 9mm and $13,000 where he was down there waiting on drugs. And when he got busted, I thought, this is good. He's going to do some time. He's going to be on probation. Things don't want to happen to change this kid's life.
00:40And those judges down there let him out of jail after like 20 days. They damn near gave back the gun. I mean, they gave him back all his money. And then they said, well, you'll give him a felony.
00:54But they put him on probation and he was on probation for a month and a half. I mean, how do you get caught as a 17-year-old kid in a parking garage at 4 a.m. with a stolen gun and $13,000
01:07and two Cincinnati cops roll up one-on-one on a Segway and he's completely done in three and a half months?
01:15Why are we giving these people ankle bracelets? Why are we allowing them? Is it a problem that corporations are running our jails? Is it a problem that we don't have enough jail space?
01:27It's not a black and white issue. This is a crime and judges not holding people accountable.
01:32So I'll take this. It's a very practical. I'll be brief because I want to get into many questions. These are great questions tonight. We want to get to as many of these as possible.
01:47So I met with Cincinnati Police earlier today. We had a very candid conversation and it included the police chief.
01:54And what I will tell you is the number one issue that came up of agreement is that a lot of these judges do need to at least be held accountable through transparency.
02:06So there's been a push in the past to say, if you're a judge, at least we need public record telling you exactly in which cases here was the bond.
02:15In this case, here was the sentencing. In this case, here was the decision.
02:18And yet there's been an objection to even that level of transparency.
02:23My view is you may agree or you may disagree, but as the public, especially with this wave of crime, we have a right to at least know what decisions our judges are actually making.
02:32And I will tell you, that is one priority for me as governor to make sure you as the public get that level of transparency from these judges that if they're letting people back on the streets,
02:41at least you ought to be able to know it to be able to vote them out and actually hold them accountable.
