The Professional Bondsmen of Texas- Blog

by Paul Vallas To refer to Chicago as a haven for criminals is an understatement. Today, despite Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pious announcements to the contrary, Chicago remains one of the most dangerous cities in America. While there are underlying causes of crime — such as failing schools, underinvestment, and weak economic possibilities — that the city has failed to address, the undeniable truth is that there are fewer and fewer consequences for increasingly serious crimes. Meanwhile, a powerful "Criminal Industrial Complex" profits from this system — one that makes Chicagoans and visitors less safe every day. Chicago is the crime capital of the nation, leading all U.S. cities in both murders and mass  shootings year after year. If Chicago were a state, it would rank second only to California in  mass shootings. In 2023, 76 school-age children (17 years and younger) were  urdered in Chicago — more  than in any other city. Chicago also leads the nation in murders ...

New York City judges are allowing violent offenders back on the streets at an alarming rate, according to an analysis by the New York Post. Queens Criminal Court Judge Wanda Licitra, who was appointed by former mayor Bill DeBlasio, released 29 out of 34 (85%) of alleged violent felons between January to June 2024, according to the analysis, which examined 96 judges who handled at least 25 cases over the six-month window. Licitra, a former Legal Aid Society attorney who took the bench in 2021, has reportedly garnered a reputation for letting violent criminals walk free. In February 2022, she released Frank Abrokwa, who was accused of shoving his own excrement into a Bronx female subway rider’s face. Abrokwa was freed without bail even after wailing "f--k you bitch" at the judge in a courtroom tirade. To see more CLICK HERE .

  New Hampsire- Gov. Kelly Ayotte and leaders from across the state are pushing for a bail reform bill that lawmakers are voting on Thursday. According to the governor, the bill will make changes to the 2018 bail law that has been criticized for  letting too many violent and re-offending criminals back on the streets. “This has brought everyone together, unfortunately, because we have seen and I've heard so much about the issues we've had with bail creating a revolving door that is putting our law enforcement in danger, that is putting average citizens  who are just trying to live their lives in this amazing state in danger,” Ayotte said. To see more CLICK HERE .

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot attributed her election loss to racism and sexism in comments to reporters Tuesday night, glossing over the impact of violent crime, which surged in the windy city during her tenure. “I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly, according to the New York Post. Lightfoot neglected to mention that Johnson is also black. Lightfoot is the first black woman and the first openly gay person to lead the nation’s third-largest city. She has been heavily criticized for the rampant crime in Chicago and the demonization of the police. While Lightfoot initially supported cutting the city’s police budget, she has since pivoted. Violent crime in the city increased by 40 percent since she was elected in 2019 on a promise to bring down crime rates, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. To see more CLICK HERE . Commentary-  Question:  When we elect someone based upon identity politics, do the voters ever ...

  Bail Reform is based upon an assumption that we hear all the time that people do not need a private surety bondsman because they will appear for court anyway.   A new study demonstrates that this is simply not true. Zero-dollar bail: It's a controversial topic. Last year, a local study from the Yolo County DA's office found 70% of suspects released on zero-dollar bail, reoffended. But were they "more likely" to re-offend? An updated study indicates the answer is yes.  A progressive district attorney conducted a study indicating that people are more likely to commit additional crime if they were simply released.  The original study was criticized because there was no data for individuals released on surety bonds for a comparison.  Now this data has been compiled and the study has been updated.  The new study compared the rearrest rate of suspects who were released without posting bail in Yolo County, to those who had to post surety bail. The data...

Equal Justice hosted another debate on the National Issue of Bail Reform.  The guests included Steve Mulroy who is the newly elected district attorney for Sheby County, Tennessee.  Mr. Mulroy would be described as a Soros' supported and funded district attorney who seeks to reform the criminal justice system within.   D.A. Mulroy made the argument in his opening statement that he wondered if bail or bondsmen were even needed anymore. To set out the opposing position, PBT's own Ken W. Good appeared and argued that bail was an integral part of the success of the criminal justice system.  Mr. Good argued that the private industry had the lowest failure to appear rate of any release mechanism by far and it allowed cases to get resolved more quickly.  Without the private industry the delays in resolving cases, either intentionally or unintentionally, placed pressure on the system to dismiss more and more cases which was already present before Mulroy took office ...

  The most memorable moment of Tuesday’s fiery debate between New York governor Kathy Hochul and her Republican challenger, Lee Zeldin, centred on crime. After Zeldin hammered Hochul on bail-reform laws that put criminals back on the streets, one of the main themes of his campaign, Hochul seemed to admit more than she might have wished. ‘I don’t know why that’s so important to you’, she responded. With Democrats like Hochul wondering aloud why anyone cares about repeat offenders roaming the streets, perhaps it is no surprise that the Republicans are seen by voters as the party that cares more about crime and has a better chance of tackling it. High-profile Democrats and progressives have repeatedly dismissed voters’ concerns about crime, casting the fears of regular Americans as a reflection of conservative fear-mongering. You have to wonder, is it really wise to gaslight voters in this way? Is it wise to tell them they are wrong to care about what they are telling you they care ab...

  Why are Democrats expected to lose in the Nov. 8 elections? When the dust clears, people may look back at the answer Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) gave on crime during her debate against her Republican opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin. "Halfway through the debate," Zeldin complained, "she still hasn't talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes." Hochul, who as governor has the power to remove the many New York district attorneys currently refusing to enforce the law and causing crime to spike (in New York City especially), responded by simply dismissing the issue out of hand. She asserted that there is no crime problem and that the system is working fine, and then she added, "I don't know why that's so important to you." This answer encapsulates everything that is wrong and out of touch about today's Democratic Party. It explains why Hochul is on the edge of losing a seemingly unlosable election and also why Democrats across the nation are ...

  by Ken W. Good Published October 19, 2022 Attorney at Law Magazine Crime is bad in Harris County, Texas. I mean, really bad. So bad, in fact, that even neighboring counties recognize it. On the highway between Harris County and neighboring Montgomery County there is a billboard that proclaims, “Criminals: This is Montgomery County. We Fund Law Enforcement. We Prosecute.” They mean it, too. This month in Montgomery County, two individuals were observed stealing catalytic converters from a vehicle. The suspects fled the scene and were pursued by police officers after they were confronted. Following their apprehension, it was learned that both had extensive criminal histories in the Harris County area and were driving a stolen vehicle. Upon their arrest, both suspects asked the officers if they were in Harris County, where prosecutions almost never happen. They were told, “Not today.” The two thieves’ luck had run out because they had crossed over into law-and-order Montgomery Count...

  Our gravest concerns, though, involve Hidalgo’s failure to respond with urgency to Harris County’s crime wave. In a county where more than two-thirds of likely voters list public safety as the most important issue in this race, it weighed heavily on our decision. Even for those of us whose neighborhoods aren’t aglow in flashing police lights, the seemingly infinite ticker tape of suspect mug shots on the 10 o’clock news has us looking over our shoulders and praying that the next road rage incident won’t target our families. While Harris County is far from the most dangerous place in the country, as Republican hyperbole would have it, it has seen a surge in violent crime and particularly in homicides, which totaled 632 last year. The county jail is in crisis, overflowing with more than 10,000 inmates, with frequent spasms of violence, reported deaths, rapes and other assaults leaving inmates and jail staff alike fearing for their lives. Mercifully, violent crime is currently...

PBT members Cindy Hammons-Kinder (Board member) and Deborah   K. Farmer (former board member) attended the 100th Annual County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas Conference. They are helping to get the word out about BAD bail reform. Harris County is a prime example of revolving doors, repeat offenders getting out on free bonds with a revolving door at the jail and committing even worse crimes. The crime rate in Houston is out of control. If you do would  like more information go to www.harriscountycourtwatch.org and see the real statistics.

  Right on Crime is a national campaign of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in partnerhsip with the American Conservative Union Foundation and Prison Fellowship, that supports conservative solutions for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders and lowering taxpayer costs.  The movement was born in Texas in 2007. TPPF is a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas.  The organization was founded in 1989.   The stated mission of TPPF is "to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach." TPPF does a lot of good work in Texas outside the area of pretrial criminal justice reform where the group created a nationwide project called "Right on Crime."  The Professional Bondsmen of Texas has been writing a series of articles highlighting the many failures of Right on Crime and ...

"It's flat out ridiculous that we're allowing this to happen in Harris County, and we're not going to hold anyone accountable anymore," said Doug Griffith, President of the Houston Police Officers Union. Miranda O'Donnel, a woman with a laundry list of misdemeanor charges and mug shots, is the reason a federal judge mandated no cash bonds for Harris County residents charged with misdemeanors. District Attorney Kim Ogg and the Houston Police Union compiled data showing a lot of defendants weren't even showing up for court. The Professional Bondsmen of Texas took an even deeper dive into court records covering the period from January 1, 2021, through August 2022 "The average failure to appear rate in misdemeanor courts, all 16 of them, is over 80%," said Ken W. Good, member of the Professional Bondsmen of Texas. Good says many misdemeanor courts take no action against those who fail to appear. He says the data shows 71% of all misdemeanor cases are...

California has been the epicenter of the Criminal Justice Reform/Bail Reform movement.  Our guest is Bill Armstrong who is the President of the California Bail Agents Association.  California has seen several attempts to reform and get rid of the bail industry.  These changes can be traced back to when the State changed many felony offenses and made them misdemeanor offenses and then prosecutors in several urban areas decided that they would no longer prosecute these crimes.  This proposition and decisions of prosecutors started the slide of the state of California into chaos.  Now businesses are closing because either they cannot withstand wholesale shoplifting to the tune of $25,000.00 a day or the employers cannot provide a safe place for their employees to work. Since then California's legislature has attempted to go even further. But the voters have refused to go along.    California attempted to adopt the New Jersey Plan, but voters said no. ...

  A former Democrat sheriff blamed anti-police rhetoric Wednesday for the crime surge in Asheville, North Carolina, as rising crime has hit the popular tourist destination in recent years. Former Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan, who left the Democratic Party, joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss what led to the crime surge in recent years as fears surrounding public safety loom.  "Even though we were making good strides in the community and reducing the crime rate, we still saw ourselves coming in as a negative in the community and in the eyes of some of the leftist politicians that were… getting elected at that time," Duncan told co-host Todd Piro. * * * "We have a very large homeless population here in Asheville, and what we've seen with the dismissal rates for panhandling, for loitering, for those type things that really … makes it tough for them to operate here in Asheville," Duncan said. "When you see those kinds of dismissal rates,...

  A couple of days ago, PBT released the 19th episode of its podcast, The Bail Post.  No press release was issued, it was just the normal podcast.  PBT has other episodes covering this issue.  Episode No. 11 covered the release of the report by the Houston Police Officers' Uniton.  You can see the episode by CLICKING HERE .  Episode No. 11 involved a report that addressed a one week period of time. In Episode No. 18, PBT announced a release of episode number 18 which addressed a new website that reviewed and downloaded the county's data and organized on a interactive website.  The podcast can be found by CLICKING HERE .  The video version of the podcast can be found on youtube by CLICKING HERE . You can see the video on Facebook by CLICKING HERE . You can go to the website by CLICKING HERE . The county is now saying that they do not know where PBT got its data, but it is not accurate.  They support this argument on the grounds that February 4...