Exclusive — Rep. Ben Cline: Republicans Are ‘Sounding the Alarm’ on Violent Crime

Republicans hope to raise awareness of the violent crime epidemic with the House Judiciary Committee’s “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan” hearing taking place in New York City Monday, Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, emphasizing the three-pronged approach necessary to protect citizens from the lawlessness seen in New York City.

Cline pointed to Monday’s hearing taking place in what he described as the “epicenter of the violent crime epidemic up here in New York City.”

“We’re going to be talking about what these woke liberal D.A.’s and these woke liberal policies, like no cash bail, have done to cities like New York and the safety of American citizens,” he said, previewing the event.

Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow pointed to a stunning statistic showing the number of repeat offenders in New York City, as “327 people made up roughly 6,000 arrests in New York last year.”

“So basically the rule is, if you commit petty crime for sure — but certainly even some larger crimes as well as we document from time to time at Breitbart —  there’s a very good chance you’re just going to get let out to commit more crimes and the city is comfortable with this,” Marlow said.

Cline said addressing crime takes a three-pronged approach, drawing the imagery of “three different legs of a stool.”

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“And if any one of those legs is missing when it comes to fighting crime, you have the situation you have in New York,” he said, pointing to the first leg, which is supporting law enforcement.

“You have to support our police you have to support their efforts to make arrests,” he said, adding that is also necessary to have judges who are willing to convict and prosecutors who are willing to prosecute rather than allow criminals to walk.

“That’s what you have when you have no cash bail. They just rotate through the system,” Cline said, agreeing that New York seems to have the same batch of criminals committing shoplifting crimes in the city, but he also noted that overall crime is worsening, as violent crimes are up 23 percent last year with the exception for murders.

“You have robberies, burglaries, carjackings, rapes — all of these crimes are up double digits, 20 percent or more. And it’s a real scary time in New York, but Virginia has got the same woke prosecutors in Northern Virginia,” Cline said, noting that his district has good prosecutors and that all three legs of the stool — supporting law enforcement and having good judges and prosecutors — are intact in his district currently.

However, he said the woke approach is “creeping out our way and we’ve got to stop it before” it gets there.

That is one of the reasons, Cline explained, Republicans are holding this hearing in New York: to raise awareness and sound the alarm before this crisis worsens and spreads to other areas of the country.

“When your quality of life is affected in your day to day, then that’s when you’re going to take action and wake up, and so people are starting to wake up–  partly because they’re the victims of crime and that’s what we’re going to be hearing from the Judiciary Committee today,” the congressman said, adding that there are negative effects in communities across the country as it is “affecting our ability to recruit and retain officers at every level.”

“The woke left is trying to train the youth, indoctrinate the youth that somehow cops are bad and we need to be anti-police and we need to fight back against that,” Cline said, further emphasizing that the crime hearing is about fundamentally “raising awareness.”

WATCH: House Judiciary Hearing on Violent Crime in New York: