Alan Stock and Annie Black talk about Nevada’s growing frustration with soft-on-crime judges and why lawmakers need to step in when violent offenders keep getting released. They also push back on claims that illegal immigrants commit “less crime,” pointing to real Nevada families hurt by people who shouldn’t be here. Annie then shares a wild DMV experience that shows how broken the system has become, especially for seniors and folks who can’t take endless time off work. She says the Legislature needs to fix all of it.
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Annie black, former Nevada State Assembly Woman and also, of course, a participant in Nevada news and views. This is Nevada news and views. Thursday. You want to find out more, more about a great source of information for local, state and national news. I heartily recommend Nevada news and views.com Chuck booth has done a fabulous job putting it together, and he’s got a great number of people working for him who do a great job putting stuff out. So Annie, good morning, and welcome to Vegas at eight.
Good morning. You’re hilarious. And Nevada news and views is the best.
Alan Stock 0:38
It is. It is the best, absolutely. So let’s get into some of these things. You wrote several. I want to try to cover as much ground as possible. One of the things you write about is Nevada is tired of soft on crime, judges. It’s time for lawmakers to step in. I just want you to know I’ve been saying this for a long, long time. Police, arrest, bad people. They even go to trial, there’s some kind of a negotiation. They may or may not, they can be found guilty of a lesser charge, and they either serve a lesser charge or they serve no time. I have an article here about someone I’ve been holding on to, a judge who allowed someone to get out who committed murder no time served here in Clark County. So you’re saying enough is enough?
Annie Black 1:26
Yeah, enough is enough. These guys need to have the judges need to have some sort of ramifications if they continue to let out these violent offenders who we know are just they’re letting them out, and then they’re going and hurting people again, and that they cannot continue to get away with that
Alan Stock 1:41
so but, but they have been the one I’m referring to. And I’m going to mention this because it really does tick me off. I don’t know, and I know she had a high rating, you know, in the judges poll, in the poll of the lawyers that was in the in the RJ last week, her name was District Judge Carly Kearney, and she gave probation to a boy who had murdered two young boys who were in a collision course. They were both so good and beloved by their family, she says so. One is Gabriel Ayala, 17 found guilty of voluntary manslaughter by jurors in August, he killed another 16 year old in a shooting, and she let him out on probation. In my world, this kid, even though he’s maybe 17, he would wind up in prison, absolutely.
Annie Black 2:34
And you know, there was a legislator in Indiana that proposed a constitutional amendment to be able to allow legislators to impeach judges that keep letting violent criminals out. So there is a way to stop this. It’s just that we’ve chosen not to do anything about it.
Alan Stock 2:50
So if you’re elected to the assembly, what would you do about this?
Annie Black 2:56
I would either pass a bill, a constitutional amendment like that, or we can also have a the ability to have the, oh my gosh, what am I thinking? I can’t remember the name, but the discipline, the judicial, judicial discipline commission could actually have some teeth and then get rid of these judges. So there are multiple options. We just need to pick one and do it so that senseless crimes like these don’t keep happening because we’re letting out violent people that should be in prison.
Alan Stock 3:24
Yeah, when judges don’t follow the law, there was that one gal, I forget her name off and that there was the worst of the worst, and she refused to follow Supreme Court orders. And you know, she remains as a judge, but not, I don’t know if she’s seeing any cases right now, but I mean, people like that who just refuse to follow the law. They refuse to follow the law. They’re collecting a paycheck for doing nothing at all. They should have their rear ends tossed right off out of their job.
Annie Black 3:53
Yeah, and they’re obviously trying to be political in their judgeships. And do, I guess, use their positions to do criminal justice reform, which is not their job. Their job is to decide who should be in prison, who should not be in prison, and if you did a crime, you should be in prison. 100% 100%
Alan Stock 4:13
and with that, let’s also talk about something else you wrote about, and that is the the fact that we’re being told by the politically correct media and heritage media that don’t worry about illegal aliens that much because they commit a lot less crime than, than, as than regular you know citizens do. So let’s just forget about it, and you talk about it from a different perspective.
Annie Black 4:42
Yeah, it’s infuriating. They’re trying to say that, you know, fact checkers in Reno we’re supposed we’re trying to use Cato Institute information to say that illegals commit less crime than anybody else. I guess I don’t really understand what their argument is, because when you think about it, we. One crime against an American citizen by an illegal immigrant is too many. Anybody that’s killed by somebody that shouldn’t be here would be alive if that person was not illegally in our country. So trying to make the argument that they’re less violent is they’re absolutely irrelevant to me, and it’s a slap in the face to the people whose loved ones are getting murdered by these people.
Alan Stock 5:22
So the fact that they are here illegally, and you do have a large number of of illegal aliens who commit crimes, Cato Institute said in 2023 according to the article, you wrote, that 613, illegals were locked up for crimes. And only, yeah, illegal immigrants, 613 locked up. And, you know, those are 613 victims of these crimes that didn’t need to happen
Annie Black 5:54
exactly, exactly i It’s, it’s like they tell you, you know, oh, illegals are half as likely to go to prison, therefore the It’s okay. I mean, I think they make it about, my opinion is they make it about the stats and the numbers so that they can try to distract from the fact that these are not stats and numbers. These are actual human beings that are being murdered by people that shouldn’t be in this country.
Alan Stock 6:18
You know, you actually named some of the names here, and I remember when it was Jasmine Crockett, who actually said something to the effect of, and I’m not, don’t quote it exactly, but it was something effect that, oh, that person that got murdered, or that, that, you know, that she, she kind of sloughed it off in a discussion similar to the one we’re having now, okay, that person got murdered. That person happened to have been, in one case, a 12 year old girl whose parents no longer have that young lady right now. So, I mean, you know, we can’t slough this off. And again, the governor signed a strong bill for crime, and he got it passed. They put a poison pill in there, but he signed it anyway. But it was not strong enough. It was not strong enough. I mean, even you know the smash and grab crimes that were that we had raised at $1,200 what California lowered theirs to $600 and now we’re at 750 I believe. And you know what I mean, in my book, it should be anything over $1 I mean, you know, if you go in and start smashing somebody’s business up and creating havoc and smashing their counters up and their displays, everything like that, you take even a dollars worth of stuff, should be charged with a felony, absolutely.
Annie Black 7:40
And you know, it’s, I know that we do talk about like Lake and Riley and the young lady you mentioned was Jocelyn and Gary, I think. But there was even a police officer that was that was in our community, in the district 19 community, Colton Pulsifer, that was a police officer that was driving from Las Vegas to Logandale, and he was killed by an illegal immigrant going the wrong direction on the interstate who was high and drunk and should not have been in this country. And now that that guy’s gone, he has two or three young kids, and they’re going to be left without a father for the rest of their lives.
Alan Stock 8:13
Unconscionable, unconscionable. And I hope that you get to the assembly, you’ll be fighting for that also I have on you will stay with me, because I do want to talk about the other big one. You talked about the DMV. They need to start making some changes over at the DMV. And I thought that for a long time as well. But we’ll come on back in a moment and continue. We’re talking with Annie black, former Nevada State Assembly Woman, perhaps to run for the assembly in the near future. We’ll find out about that as well, and we’ll continue in just a moment right here on Vegas at eight. Annie, good morning. Great to have you with us on this. Yeah, a big Thursday morning. It’s Nevada news and views Thursday. And this morning we have Annie black on former mesquite a city councilman, former Nevada State Assembly Woman, and perhaps a assembly woman in waiting. Well, we’ll find out in the relatively near future. I appreciate you being with me this morning. I want to talk about the DMV, because you talk about you get very personal about what some people went through one gal in particular, and the DMV has gone more and more toward you have to have appointments. And the people who had appointments and showed up were told the last minute, yeah, we canceled that appointment. And then the people you know, have to come back again and again. And of course, if you have a job, I mean, you know, you’re gonna have to keep taking time off, because the DMV and a whim can decide when, when you can take your tests or when you come in and get your services taken care of, right?
Annie Black 9:53
Well, I was in because I made the sin of buying a new, expensive vehicle, so I had to go in there and register that and. Enough pay my toll to drive my car, which was ridiculous. But as I was there in this tiny room in Mesquite, I was witnessing all kinds of things that were just making my blood boil. The first one was there was a guy that, you know, explained he’d been sitting there for some time, probably over an hour, and he was like, I made an appointment online, which is apparently the only way that you can visit the DMV now is if you make an appointment and then he didn’t confirm the email, which you get two minutes later. And it’s like, he just made an appointment, didn’t confirm the email, so they canceled his appointment. So that happened, there were elderly people walking in that were trying to get DMV services that were befuddled and like, it was very sad, because they didn’t know how to get online and make an appointment, and no one could even take the time to talk to them. So they were just leaving. I don’t know what they did from that point. And then the third thing was, there was this probably 20, late 20s, Gal sitting at the counter, and she’s literally crying, and the room is so small, everyone can hear everything that she’s saying. And she turns out she has epilepsy. She had been going back and forth to the DMV like five different times. She moved here from Utah, and, you know, she she lost her job because of it. She couldn’t visit her kids in Utah because of not having a license. And it was a whole thing. And I saw her and said, Hey, if I run you down to Las Vegas to take you to your neurologist and get you a new form, can we get your license? Can we help you? And so anyway, it turned out that we were able to do that. We got her right down there. She had to go to the doctor for like the third time, go back to DMV. Wait more hours, and they finally gave her her license on Monday. But the moral of the story is, it is it is a it’s terrible, terrible what they’re doing to people. And I don’t I’m glad I don’t have to go there regularly, because it really is just so frustrating.
Alan Stock 11:51
You know, when I moved here, it was in June of 99 I remember walking into the DMV and they serviced me, I mean, almost right away, not because of who I was. I just, it was like they were just servicing people on a regular basis. It was, it was really great. I gave him my license, I surrendered my California license and and they gave me a brand new I took my picture, and I got a new license right then, and there didn’t have to wait for it to come in the mail. And it was great. It was great. And over the years, they have tried to, they’ve tried to fix a problem that didn’t exist, and in doing so, they’ve made things a lot tougher for people, and especially like those people who can at least afford that kind of stress, older people and and people who have issues like this young lady and stuff like that. I mean, this has got to be corrected, and we’ve got to put things back right. Yeah.
Annie Black 12:59
And actually, I sent out an email to a bunch of my friends about my experience with the DMV that day. And I have a friend that moved from Boulder City to Oklahoma, and she said that they go to the DMV and it’s seamless, and they like, they’ll actually call you on your phone if your appointments running ahead of time and so, and it’s not even a private DMV service. This is the actual Oklahoma DMV. And it’s like, there is not it doesn’t have to be this jacked up. It can be right. It’s just a matter of, do we want to make it right or not?
Alan Stock 13:30
Well, we the answer to that last question is, yes, we do want to make it right, but we need people inside of the legislature to address these kinds of issues, not, you know, nice to talk about it on the air, but it’s got to be, you know, we’ve got to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak, you know, really put our self in the situation. We get things passed. So, you know, you’ll let me know. I know you’re thinking about running for the assembly, and I think you would be a great addition to the assembly. You were there once before, did a great job, and we got to get you back in there again.
Annie Black 14:08
I appreciate that, Alan, you’re the best, and I’ll keep you guys posted. I’m going to make a decision soon, and I’ll let you all know.
Alan Stock 14:14
All right, we’ve been talking with Annie black, former mesquite city councilman, former Nevada State Assembly Woman representing Nevada news and views. This is Nevada news and views Thursday. And if you want to find out more about Nevada news and views, and I encourage you to do it, go to Nevada news and views.com Nevada news and views.com one of the best sources for information, local, state and national. Really a great source. I read it every day, and I encourage you to do the same thing. Annie, thanks so much for being with us. We’ll talk to you again very soon.
The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Nevada News & Views. Digital technology was used in the production of this transcript and as such may not be 100% accurate.
