Austin Collette should never have been out on bond and free to commit the murder-suicide that ended the life of his girlfriend. He had already been convicted of a 2019 murder and had committed other crimes as well. But a leftist judge in Harris County released him as he awaited sentencing.
“Court records show Collette pleaded guilty in December 2024 to the 2019 murder of a man during a botched drug deal,” ABC 13 in Houston reported. “He was placed under house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor, and was supposed to be sentenced in a few weeks.”
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Instead, he instigated a hostage standoff with SWAT and killed his girlfriend and himself. This wasn’t an isolated incident.
Since 2021, at least 162 people in Harris County have been murdered, allegedly by suspects who are out on bond. According to the mayor of Houston, the county’s largest city, more than 900 accused murderers are walking the streets in the Bayou City.
As we see in blue cities all across the nation, Democrats are dead wrong on crime.
But Texans will go to the polls in November to decide a constitutional amendment that would keep the worst offenders — those accused of murder, rape, and human trafficking — behind bars if the state can show the defendant is a threat to public safety.
Contrast this with the approach of progressive socialist darling Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner for mayor of New York City, who says he wants to stop prosecuting misdemeanor crimes.
“Police have a critical role to play, but right now we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net, which is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” Mamdani has posted.
Hugs for thugs hasn’t made blue cities safe.
Meanwhile, crime in Washington, D.C., has dropped significantly, all while Democrats continue to protest President Donald Trump’s federal intervention. Washington residents, however, are noticeably absent from these protests.
Politico senior editor Michael Schaffer just can’t seem to understand why it’s not a George Floyd moment.
“In the late summer of 2025, following an unprecedented Trump administration takeover of local law enforcement, the best local critics have done so far is a relatively small procession from Dupont Circle around the White House demanding that ‘Donald Trump must go,’” he writes. “It was a well-organized, energetic demonstration, but all in all, there were only a few hundred marchers. Where’s the rest of this famously progressive city?”
NPR edged closer to the truth when it reported that “Trump’s return to law-and-order highlights a sore spot for Dems: Crime policy.”
NPR reporter Elena Moore noted that a “majority in a Gallup poll last fall described crime as an extremely or very serious problem. Republicans have long capitalized on that feeling, using it to paint Democrats as weak on crime.”
She even acknowledged that “defund the police” proved to be an unpopular idea.
“That was the movement in 2020, and it led some city leaders to reduce police budgets and put that money towards other services,” she said.
NPR went as far as quoting a tough-on-crime Democrat from North Dakota who said the party must do more than simply tell voters to trust their doctored crime stats instead of their own eyes.
“That’s insulting to the people who don’t feel safe,” said former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. “Quit calling it a perception. Start saying, these are real concerns and real problems, and we need to have a discussion about what works and what doesn’t work.”
It’s not complicated. Letting murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals roam the streets makes for a more dangerous city. The Texas response is to address the legal loopholes that allow activist judges to release these miscreants.
Are the Democrats at least wising up to their mistakes on crime? John McMillian in Compact magazine says they must.
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He calls on Democrats to “stop gaslighting Americans about the pervasiveness of crime. There is simply no gainsaying that in recent years, particularly in Democrat-led cities, violent crime and disorder have become a national disgrace.”
Recent history shows this is unlikely. Meanwhile, states like Texas will continue to lead the way on public safety measures, such as the bail reform vote.
The Honorable Robert Henneke is the executive director and general counsel at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.