1. United States
2. Mo.
3. Letter

Josh Hawley had me going. When I first saw his tweet Wednesday after two sheriff’s deputies were murdered near Springfield, Missouri, I thought we were in for another attack on the horrors of the political Left. Here’s what Hawley said: “Two heroic deputies in my home state of Missouri were senselessly murdered by a thug with a long history of violence toward law enforcement. We need accountability for these soft-on-crime policies destroying our communities.” Then, a few questions popped to mind. What soft-on-crime policies? Whose policies? And who’s getting held accountable by whom? In case you haven’t been following Missouri politics, it’s quite the red, pro-MAGA state. Christian County, where this tragedy occurred, voted 76 percent in 2024 for Donald Trump. Hawley had a stint in 2017-18 as the state’s drive-by attorney general as he climbed the political ladder to his current seat in the U.S. Senate. That begs the question of who owns the soft-on-crime policies alleged, without provocation, by Hawley. Today, the shattered community of Christian County will pay a richly deserved tribute to fallen heroes, Gabriel Ramirez and Michael Hislope, who were murdered protecting the people there. Both were murdered by Richard Dean Bird, a decades-long criminal who was killed in a standoff with law enforcement. You won’t be hearing much about Bird, which is fine: He doesn’t deserve the attention. But if he hadn’t fit the most common profile of murderers in the U.S.—white, poor, male—you better believe that Hawley and others of his ilk would have made him a household name by now. Can you imagine, in this environment, had Richard Dean Bird been an undocumented immigrant? Or worse yet, from Somalia or Latin America? Instead, the main interest in Bird is why he was released from custody just last week on $50,000 bond after having been arrested on charges of second-degree burglary, unlawful possession of a firearm, and stealing. This is a man who had a miles-long rap sheet of convictions dating back to 2003 and had served seven years in Kansas state prison for battery against a law enforcement officer and fleeing police after firing a rifle at a deputy in 2014 in the Johnson County suburb of Kansas City. Bird was granted bond by Judge Eric Chavez, a Republican who was elected to the Stone County bench in 2022. From all appearances, Chavez is a veteran of the local legal community who was likely following the bond laws as shaped by statutes passed by the Republican-led General Assembly and interpreted by the Missouri Supreme in 2019. Chavez hasn’t been excoriated personally as “soft on crime” by Hawley or other Republicans, nor should he be. But what do you suppose the story would have been if Chavez were a Democrat? In that event, Hawley would have made certain that liberal Democrats owned the deputies’ deaths. And he would have laid the bond rules that allowed for Bird’s release at their doorsteps as well. Inconveniently, those revised bond procedures were a matter of interest in the period Hawley was attorney general. Months after he left office, the state Supreme Court finalized Rule 33.01, which established release conditions that apparently made the granting of bond to Bird legally defensible. That’s above my pay grade, but this isn’t: If those rules are now “soft,” Hawley had the loudest law-enforcement microphone in the state while they were being considered. Good luck finding a record of any tough-on-crime position he staked out at the time. (Then again, Hawley apparently doesn’t have the sharpest recollection of Missouri these days. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Fox Digital reported that Hawley described Christian County as “my home county” in a statement. Christian County is a 3-hour drive to Lafayette County, where Hawley grew up in Lexington.) The murders of Ramirez and Hislope should bridge any partisan divide as a tragedy that turns all stomachs. But Hawley chose the moment to make a cheap political point with his irrational “soft on crime” reference. It’s of no solace that, in so doing, Hawley executed a remarkable self-own by calling out “policies” from his own watch—and administered by his own political party. If Hawley wants accountability, he should start with a mirror. -Ray Hartmann