Rep. Travis Couture blasts majority Democrats for failing to prioritize public safety

thank you madam speaker I I represent one of the most rural areas in Washington and uh the 35th the great 35th district and we have the lowest per capita police in all of Washington state in my district the least amount of police on the roads the least amount of coverage and a lot of territory my district Madam speaker is the size of Rhode Island and what hurts is that the neighboring urban communities can do more to pay police officers and get above more closer to that uh lowest per capita police line but my community is rural and poor it cannot this funding is absolutely necessary for communities like mine and not only that it crushes morale of our law enforcement there's many other reasons their morale has been crushed over the years but not having that critical backup when you go on that scary call I mean they're still human beings and they got to go down the dark alley or into the dark woods all by themselves because there is no backup having only five deputies On Any Given shift to cover a th000 square miles and answer calls sometimes it could take him 20 minutes to get to a call and Madam speaker it I really briefly wanted to talk about our Transit our mass transit and what's going on there I was watching one of our local news reports during the interim and they interviewed a man who who go tries to ride the the transit line every day to and from work he he pays for a pass to ride the transit line and he stopped and he doesn't want to pay for it anymore more because it's not safe there was a record amount of assaults on Sound Transit lines and when you look at some of the pictures there's like blood on the walls in the seats it's nasty and it's scary and the man and the interviewer says to him Madam speaker what would you what would it take for you to ride the bus again what would it take for you to ride the transit again and he says armed police and clean this thing up because UD dub Madam speaker does a study also over the interim and they find that like 99% of our our um mass transit has you know fentanyl residue or other drug residue on on the lines that's not safe earlier we passed a bill um you know a classy felony for election workers because some lunatic had put fentanyl powder into a ballot and sent it in but we accept that powder and that residue in our mass transit it doesn't make any sense to me Madam speaker when you have uh somebody's car stolen and somebody smokes fentanyl or methan in it they don't just clean it up and give you the car back the cost for the cleanup is so severe for the car they total the car they total the car and cut you a check so you can go get a new car hopefully not a Kia or a Hyundai and here's the deal man speaker we want if we're going to invest a lot of money into our mass transit we want to uh exud to people that you are going to be safe when you ride Transit it is going to be clean when you ride Transit so let's put some armed security some Transit officers on the bus lines on the transit lines and let's clean this thing up so that people feel safe and also clean when they ride it now Madam speaker let me talk to you really quickly about the encampments already Portland and Los Angeles have done what this amendment seeks to do near our daycares our schools everywhere else that this amendment talks about we want to basically make sure that uh the speaker having trouble hearing would urge people to take their conversations to the wings please proceed thank you madam speaker I lost my train of thought there um the encampments already Portland and La have done what this amendment is doing so by investing in this we can do what already Progressive cities on the west coast are already starting to realize already the state of Oregon is going back on on their very LAX policies on drugs and and and they're starting to realize this Madam speaker me and you need to realize this as well and we could do that starting with this amendment now we do have funds in the budget for Public Safety but when our crime CRI rates are as high as they are our Larsen thefts our Auto thefts our homicides our assaults property theft being in the top five retail theft by the way the insurance companies are starting to uh think about leaving our state because of that high retail theft crime we're not investing enough we just had a press conference yesterday Madam speaker it was great it was a bipartisan press conference about stopping the scourge of fentanyl we should should do more to put these funds into our drug task forces our narcotics task forces so we can put the people who are dealing Mass dealing and distributing death garbage and junk like fentanyl into our streets we should throw the book at them and we should throw them in prison so they never see the light of day again because every time they deal one of those pills it will kill somebody please vote Yes Madam speaker