Council Candidate John Gross responds to a statement made at the Mayor’s Youth Council Conversation

The Mayor’s Youth Council help a Candidate Forum for Red Oak Mayoral and City Council candidates on Wednesday October 15.  Following the event, Council candidate John Gross responded to an answer he provided during the forum regarding how to deal with the drugs and crime in Red Oak.  KCSI reached out to Mr. Gross for a comment, the answer to the question at the forum as well as his statement are included in the audio clip.

 

 

 

 

Text from the answer during the forum:

I think that’s a good question for your, uh, police department to ask them because, you know, when you read the paper or you look on their arrest records, it, it’s always the same dozen people over and over and over and over, you know. And I hate to say this, but                     is one of them . I went to school with him. I just asked Justin Rhamy the other day, “What would it take… What would you give me if I took him out somewhere and dumped him off? He would never come back?” ‘Cause I’m tired of seeing him in the paper every week.

It’s always… And it’s, it’s, it’s not just drugs. It’s, it’s abuse, him and his girlfriend were beating each other. It’s always in the same area. I mean, it’s… You know, how do you fix that? You don’t. He’s my age, and he’s not gonna change. It doesn’t matter what you try to do. But yeah, you know. And you look into Iowa, what we spend in Iowa a year trying to help people. You know, you can take kids away from parents that are bad.

Then they end up in foster care. Not everybody’s like Tim and his wife, and they’re nice enough to go adopt a set of twins and take them as their own, you know. A lot of kids sit forever in foster. A lot

of kids you can’t get out of foster because, you know, they’ve been in drugs themselves when they’re young because of the parent, you know. And that, that ruins kids, to be in this. But that’s a very sticky situation when you’re talking poverty and drug control and everything else.

 

You know, it’s, it’s one thing to arrest them. It’s another when they go through the court systems. And, you know, they don’t… We don’t have any reform for one. You know, we don’t have a major prison close to us that we can stick everybody in if they keep offending, you know. And then if you do, then you’re talking cost at the city’s expense because we have to pay for a prison to be someplace, you know.

 

So when they transfer from here to there, you know, we pay for that. So that’s another expense that is gonna be just astronomical and just keep growing and growing and growing with, you know, the… I mean, drugs in every town, city, I don’t care where, it’s everywhere, you know. It’s just you see it, and you get to know the people that are on that and do it all the time, you just avoid it. And that’s terrible, but that’s the way it is, you see.