Sen. Jim Banks Joins

**Nigel** (0:02)
You're listening to The Hammer and Nigel Show. Yeah, my name is Nigel Jason Hammer right over there.
Go straight to the hotline and bring on Indiana Senator Jim Banks. Senator, thanks for coming back on the show. Take us to the Senate floor earlier this week. You talked about the murder of the young man in the parking garage downtown on his way to meet his family at the Indians game. Just maybe take us through your message to your constituents about the crime in Indy earlier this week.

**Jim Banks** (0:30)
Well, you guys know I live in a small town near Fort Wayne in northern Indiana, but what goes on in our capital city matters to the whole state. My wife is from Indianapolis, by the way, and I served in the state legislature. I spent a lot of time in downtown Indianapolis. Indy is a great city, and people from all over the country, all over the world come to downtown Indianapolis for conventions, for major sporting events. You have great American businesses like Eli Lilly in downtown Fort Wayne, the downtown Indianapolis, the NCAA headquarters there. It's a great city, but guys, you guys tear it as much as I do. People are fleeing downtown Indy because of crime, and because you guys have a prosecutor in Marion County, who does not enforce law and order.
When violent criminals are arrested by our brave heroes in blue, the Indianapolis Police Department, they're released because Ryan Mears doesn't prosecute violent crime. And if you create an environment like that, where you ignore crime and where you let these criminals lose and give them a slap on the wrist when they do something wrong, then you're just, you're incentivizing it. And this story last week about this young man, Brett Scroggum, this guy is a great young man. I've heard so many good things about him. Just graduated Kelly School of Business at IU.
A great Christian young man. I loved his family. All of his neighbors and friends say such great things about him. You read about this story, and by the way, we still don't have a murder suspect, at least as of the last time I checked, they haven't arrested anybody yet. But we can speculate that this is a product of a lawless community. By the way, the mayor completely turns a blind eye to all of this too. I know a lot of people blame the prosecutor, but the mayor put out a statement on Monday. I just got back to Washington on Monday. I was reading the mayor's statement. He doesn't even mention Brett's name, which is why I quickly went down to the floor of the United States Senate. As soon as I got back in town and gave a speech about Brett, what he meant to so many people, but also about what happens when you don't enforce the law, when you don't throw criminals behind bars, when there are no consequences for violent crime, then obviously you're going to see more violent crime. And that concerns me as a Hoosier.
I hear from so many people who live in Indy who are concerned about this. Mayor Sue Finkham, she's been screaming about this until she's blue in the face because Carmel and Hamilton County and all the Donut County communities, they see the result of violent crime coming out of Indianapolis because nobody's doing anything about it, and then they're going to deal with it in Carmel. So that's why I gave the speech that I did, and I back our blue, I support our law enforcement officers, our police officers, especially the Indianapolis police officers, who I hear from all the time, who are saying we're doing our job, but the prosecutor is not doing his job, and it's demoralizing for them. So I want to speak out on this more and talk about what's going on in Indianapolis, which is a great city, a great American city, but these guys are ruining it.

**Hammer** (4:11)
Right. And Senator, I'm so glad to hear you say that at a national stage, like on the floor at the US. Senate, because you're right, we, on this program, have been talking about this. What's frustrating is, number one, it feels like this is what Marion County votes for, unfortunately. It's so blue. People will just go and vote straight ticket, and that's how you keep getting stuck with Joe Hogsett and Ryan Mears. So my question to you is, what can be done for people like myself, my wife, my kids that live here in Marion County? We want this to be a safer community. Is it legislation that has to circumvent some of these woke lunatics? What can we do?