On Friday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) stated that the challenge facing San Francisco isn’t remote work, it’s the struggle to control crime and homelessness, and “we have to do a better job of saying, if you go break into a Walgreens, there have to be consequences.” He also argued that while people shouldn’t be given unduly harsh sentences and have their lives ruined for theft, “the pendulum has swung too far” towards leniency.
Khanna said, “The challenge in my district, candidly, and — or north of my district in San Francisco is we’ve got to get some of the crime under control. We’ve got to get the homelessness under control.”
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin then asked, “But isn’t the crime piece a law piece, a law and order piece that’s missing in your state?”
Khanna responded, “I don’t know if it’s missing in the state, but we have to do a better job of saying, if you go break into a Walgreens, there have to be consequences. Now, I don’t think that means you lock someone up for ten years and destroy their lives. But it also doesn’t mean that you just let them go without consequences. And so, the pendulum has swung too far on one side and we have to have common sense.”
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