Politics

‘This Is A Radical Assault On Our Criminal Justice System’: Horace Cooper Blasts The Bail Project

Fox News

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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Author Horace Cooper said Friday that The Bail Project is “a radical assault on our criminal justice system” that assumes poverty forces people to commit crimes.

The organization’s website promotes the group as “a critical tool to prevent incarceration and to prevent racial disparities in the bail system.”

“This is a radical assault assault on our criminal justice system,” Cooper told Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“It is apparently predicated on the theory that if you are poor, if you are a minority, you have no choice and no control and you are forced to engage in many of these acts of wanton and violent crime. The problem of that is the data shows exactly the opposite,” he continued. (RELATED: ‘They Have An Agenda’: Detroit Police Chief Says ‘Necessary’ Force Used When Protesters Aren’t Peaceful)

“Just because you are poor — and there millions of people who are poor — just because you are black or brown — there are millions of who are — they manage to walk every day past the 7-Eleven, past grandma with her purse hanging down: they don’t snatch it, they don’t break into the 7-Eleven,” Cooper stated. “In fact, millions of people every day manage to be law-abiding.”

Cooper noted that it just “a few people” who decide to commit crimes and that “the rules don’t apply to them” while The Bail Project and other like organizations look to assist those charged with committing crimes and not those who are victims of crime.

The Project 21 co-chairman said with riots continuing to occur across America, it is an especially inopportune time for easy bail and that some cities that allowed crime to “run rampant” in the past are still trying to recover from the effects of lawlessness.

“Too many of our cities right now … are suffering. These groups are a cancer on American society and that is something that if we had a working, trustworthy media, they would be giving a lot more attention to.” (RELATED: Here Are Three People Accused Of Violent Crimes Bailed Out Of Jail By Fund Kamala Harris Supported)

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris and at least 13 of presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign staff members supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund — a group formed to provide bail money to those charged during riots and looting following the death of George Floyd after his arrest by Minneapolis police.

When asked why the people who donate to groups like The Bail Project don’t provide financial assistance to help the poor find gainful employment, Cooper said that is precisely the point.

Chicago Police lined the sidewalks during a demonstration on September 23, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. Across the country, protesters have taken to the streets after the grand jury’s decision to only charge one Louisville Metro Police officer in the raid in which Taylor was killed. Officer Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, was charged three counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into neighboring apartments. Bond was set at $15,000 for Hankison. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was killed in her home during a no-knock raid on March 13, 2020. (Photo by Natasha Moustache/Getty Images)

Chicago Police lined the sidewalks during a demonstration on September 23, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Natasha Moustache/Getty Images)

“It proves the goal here is not to improve the community. The goal here is not to make sure that people can become independent. The goal is actually to attack directly the very criminal justice system that makes it possible for the rest of us to carry out our lives.”

The author noted that the belief that poverty is the foundation of all criminal activity is not a new idea and that “we forget … that in the early 1950s, many of these radical ideas were pushed and they went into effect in the 1960s.”