National Police Association Podcast with Guest, Christian Maxwell, Entrepreneur & Fighter for the People
Hi, this is Sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have a guest today that I started following on social media because she had some pretty phenomenal things to say. She's from my home state of Illinois, and instead of fleeing it like I did, she's actually trying to save it. So I wanted to meet her and I thought you needed to meet her too because she has some great views about law enforcement, about the second amendment and citizens rights and I'm really thrilled to be able to talk to her. Christian Maxwell welcome to the show.
Christian Maxwell:Hi thank you so much for having me this is amazing.
Betsy Smith:I know I'm so excited to talk to you. So you live in my native state of Illinois, you live in Chicago. I do. And you decided that you needed to really step in and step up, not only to try and save Chicago and affect what happens in Chicago, but also in the state of Illinois. And I know that a lot of people know intimately what Illinoisans go through and what they're dealing with, but it really is one of the most taxed, most restricted states in the union and Chicago in particular has one of the highest crime rates in this nation.
Betsy Smith:So first of all, gotta ask you, what made you look in the mirror and say, I think I'll run for congress?
Christian Maxwell:So it was definitely nothing that I ever imagined myself doing. I'm not a person who sat in my room, you know, telling amping myself up like, hey. I should be a congresswoman. I actually declined hundreds of people asking me to do it for a while on social media. And I told all of them, I'm like, you know what, guys?
Christian Maxwell:I'm actually probably a little bit too honest to do something of this nature, and I'm I'm I'm much too much of a straight shooter to ever, you know, pander and kind of, like, tiptoe around inside of something like politics. But when I really had to come to terms with the fact that Illinois is the state that my family is rooted in, my husband's entire family lives here, and my family lives here. So this is the state that I will be residing in for the the future as far as I'm concerned. So sitting back and letting it rot just simply wasn't an answer. It wasn't a solution anymore.
Christian Maxwell:So I had to decide, was I going to just sit back and hope somebody else step to the plate to empower and, you know, improve things, or was I gonna be a part of change? One thing I tell people all the time now, though, is that even if I don't win this election, I'm not going to stop advocating. I'm not gonna stop holding these people accountable and raising awareness about the perverted politics that literally just, I mean, proliferate inside of this state. There's so much that the politicians do here behind closed doors and then lie to their constituents about. So it's not just hinged on me winning this seat.
Christian Maxwell:I'm not gonna shut up anytime soon. So I do hope that I can win this seat, though, because that would allow me to have access at a higher level to be able to really work to improve the lives of Illinoisans and to advocate for them in a way that they have not been advocated for in a very long time?
Betsy Smith:You know, I don't, again, I don't think that a lot of people really know that, you know, they hear about Chicago and the crime and the gangs and all that, but Chicago is one of the most beautiful cities in the world quite frankly it's got arguably the best food on the planet I miss the food desperately and so I think that it's really worth saving And that's the thing is here's this beautiful city, here's all these amazing people, and yet here we are constantly just talking about the crime and this and that. Now Chicago has a mayor, Brandon Johnson, who in my opinion is really over his head. He doesn't do a real good job advocating for his police department, doesn't do a real good job of dealing with crime. What do you envision that we can do nationally when you get to Congress that will help that whole crime situation in Chicago and around the country?
Christian Maxwell:So I think it's really gonna come down to a congressperson being willing to kind of stand on business as it pertains to the reality of crime. What you see in Chicago and in Illinois is that they really have this, like, utopian view of how people would react if they had better homes and if they had better upbringings and all of these things. But at the end of the day, we're not protecting citizens because we wanna handhold with criminals. I can't sit and say somebody who's already at the point of committing multiple gun gun violence related crimes or breaking and entering and all of those things, I have to focus on the people who are actually law abiding citizens who need to be protected from this environment that literally allows crime to proliferate. So the things that I see here in Chicago right now is that they don't want to really crack down on repeat offenders.
Christian Maxwell:There's really not a lot of, there's not a lot of support for cops to make sure that they can actually get the correct reports written so that they can actually keep these people behind bars once somebody is actually able to charge them. So what you see is that a lot of lawyers have figured out how to find loopholes in CPD reports. So if there's anything that's even a little bit off in the report, they're getting a gun charge thrown out, and they're having you know, get people are getting a couple days of time served, and that's that's all they're being held accountable for, and they're back on the streets to commit the same crime literally again. So those are things that I would wanna work on is making sure that if somebody is doing crimes and they're repeat offenders or if they're a part of kinda like rackets, there's quite a few rackets that are that are going on in the state and definitely in Chicago. You have people who will go and commit multiple retail theft crimes all throughout the city as a part of an organized crime.
Christian Maxwell:Like, they're they're organizing and hitting the state and the city in multiple places and spaces, but nobody's really working to make sure that you can effectively charge all those people and take them all down at the same time. So my my goal would be to make sure that I'm actually working to really clamp down on a lot of the crime that upticked massively as a result of COVID. The pandemic and the way that that impacted the city and allowed for looting and robbing and all of those things, even carjacking. If you have a a Nissan in Chicago, you know exactly how hard easy it is to have your car stolen. So all of those crimes have allowed to become been allowed become a part of the normal society.
Christian Maxwell:Like, that's just normal to have your car stolen or to have a, you know, have a store just be broken into, and everybody comes in, takes all the merch, and just walks out casually. Those are things that need to be cracked down on much more aggressively. So making sure that I'm supporting the attorney general, making sure that I'm backing CPD and not having you where, you know, it's all of these different rules and stipulations on, you know, force and things of that nature. I'm not saying that anybody needs to be aggressively harmed above and beyond, but also a police officer is a police officer. And I'm not really clear on why we think that they should be treated like mall cops.
Christian Maxwell:They're not mall cops. They're police officers. There are there are levels to, you know, how the society is kept safe and how, you know, how these people are trained to be able to keep us safe as civilians. So I'm definitely not on the side of treating police officers like mall cops because they're not. So when it comes down to them being able to do their job and do it effectively and efficiently, I wanna make sure that I'm advocating for training, training as much as possible, but not on just things like on how to be more warm and fuzzy, but training on things that can really make them more efficient at identifying like, hey.
Christian Maxwell:Here's how you can can we advocate for better reports where when the DA or whoever gets this report, they're actually able to take everything inside of it and say, here's the charges, and here's how we make them stick. You know, it just can't we can't have all these loopholes inside of the system where these criminals and repeat offenders are just getting out over and over again. So, obviously, it's gonna take a lot of a lot of research, a lot of conversations. I think that not enough conversations happen in Illinois. People stay in silos.
Christian Maxwell:Nobody wants to talk to anybody. You have mayor Johnson who doesn't like CPD, and you have all these, you know, representatives and senators who think that you don't really need cops and defund the police. You you need cops. You need the police funding. They need equipment.
Christian Maxwell:They need training. They need all the things they need to be able to do their job well, and that's what'll allow them to to really just, like I said, prosper in the state. But I would be 101% be on the side of making sure that all the conversations are happening and we're not existing in silos so we can address the needs of the community because people are fed up with the crime. Like, this that's the reality. I don't care what mayor Johnson says or Pritzker.
Christian Maxwell:People are fed up with crime, and they're exhausted with feeling like they're literally trapped inside of their homes and living in a state that's rotting at the core. So that just can't continue to be the case.
Betsy Smith:You know, that is so well said, and I I'm so glad you brought up police training because that Yeah. It's not just about community policing and and this and that. And very very often, Chicago Police Officers are outgunned. They're definitely outmanned. And then you brought up a really important point that I don't think we talk about enough.
Betsy Smith:Courtroom preparation.
Christian Maxwell:Yes.
Betsy Smith:That is so big because when that case goes to the state's attorney, to the prosecutor, it needs to be absolutely airtight Chicago Police Officers are so short staffed that I think you're absolutely right. They don't often get the chance to really prepare. Plus they're dealing with so many homicides, shootings, armed robberies, really, really violent crime. And you also brought up another really good point that I don't think people focus on enough. Most people in Chicago, like most people in most big cities are not criminals.
Betsy Smith:No. It's a very tiny percentage of people that are committing all of these crimes, and instead of giving them more programs and hugging them and all of this, if we would incarcerate them and punish aberrant behavior, I think that we would all be much better off. What say you?
Christian Maxwell:Oh, I totally agree. I 100% agree. And it would really allow for people to invigorate the economy. When people feel safe, they go out and enjoy their community. They go invigorate the economy.
Christian Maxwell:They go hang out with their neighbors. They take walks. They do so many different things that improve their quality of life. And right now, you have crime happening in schools. It's happening in in areas you never thought would happen on the Gold Coast.
Christian Maxwell:People getting shot in the Gold Coast. Like, these are not things that used to happen. Like, the crime is not just staying where it once stayed. So anybody who has the mindset of, oh, I just won't go to that side of the city, there is no side of the city where crime happens now. It happens everywhere.
Christian Maxwell:So you can't just sit back and keep allowing it.
Betsy Smith:Again, that is such a great point because it used to be back when I was a young police officer, there were very specific parts of the city that you as a citizen just didn't visit, and otherwise you were relatively safe. But really now since 2020, since COVID and the George Floyd riots, there really is no part of the city that is safe, which is really unfortunate. You see a lot of restaurants and businesses have closed, and that's very frustrating. I know that what do small business owners tell you when it comes to your district and what they wanna see?
Christian Maxwell:I've actually been or analyzing what's going wrong with small businesses because right now what you see is an excessive amount of commercial business space not rented and empty and vacant. The things that you currently see for small business owners right now is that they have an additional cost on top of having a small business, which is now they have to pay for security. So you have regular businesses like Potbelly. Why does Potbelly need a security officer? Why does a a grocery store have to have a full security man literally in, like, SWAT gear watching multiple security screens in the front of a grocery store?
Christian Maxwell:That's not normal. That's very dystopian, and it speaks to a high level of dysfunction. So when you add on these additional costs to the the profit margin of a business owner, they can't afford to pay a security guard to just sit there to make sure that nobody comes in and takes every bit of merchandise they have in the store. So it's causing them to just give up the battle of even being a business owner in Illinois, which will then make it where all you have left or are these giant corporations that can't really connect to the actual needs of the consumer. I have no issues with giant corporations, but I love the charm and the attentiveness that small businesses bring into a community.
Christian Maxwell:That is the blood and the excitement and the connection that people need in order to feel like they live in Chicago. To my in my opinion, lately, you haven't really felt like you live in Chicago much. A lot of that charm is literally leaving and bleeding out of the city and also just bleeding out of the state. So small business owners need for crime to be pulled all the way back into, you know, into check because they cannot thrive this way. They're in fear.
Christian Maxwell:Their stores are being destroyed and their merchandise is being stolen.
Betsy Smith:And you know, one of the things that and you and I are like minded on this is because Illinois is such an anti second amendment state, probably arguably one of the absolute worst, probably the worst of the top three of the worst for gun owners, and it continues to get worse every single year. Do you think that, for example, if business owners were able to legally arm themselves and people knew that they could arm themselves legally, that that would help crime, in the city of Chicago and around the state?
Christian Maxwell:I wholeheartedly think it would help. Here's the thing. Like I said, I lived for four years in Texas, and the one story we were chatting about before we started is, like I said, people don't honk their horns that much in Texas. You don't really hear car horns. And there's a reason for that.
Christian Maxwell:It's because people when you have people who understand that they they exist in a society where each man can protect and and take care of themselves, and these people understand how to exist under those laws and those the this this the environment that being armed creates, people have an additional deterrent. There are no real deterrents to crime in Illinois. I mean, people here's the thing. The criminals know that the cops' hands are tied. They know that the civili the citizens' hands are tied, and a lot of citizens tie their own hands for some reason.
Christian Maxwell:But because they know that that the citizen can't really protect themselves and that CPD is gonna have a really slow response time due to being short staffed and that when they even get there, they still have their hands tied because of all the rules and regulations around how they have to interact and all of that. It just makes it where criminals are not even motivated to hustle for a crime anymore. I literally watched I was looking out of a window at my home. I watched three guys break in in break into a container. They had chainsaws and everything, and they took their time.
Christian Maxwell:They were there for fifteen minutes breaking into a construction container on a construction site, and they actually stole. We ended up finding out they stole about $10,000 worth of fridges from a construction site. I called CBD. They never came. And I don't blame CBD for not coming.
Christian Maxwell:I blame the city for not giving them the resources they need in order to be able to actually protect business owners because a construction site is a business owner. Those were homeowners too who had their their materials stolen from their future home. So I blame the city. I blame the city for not arming those those police officers with the manpower they need and then also giving them the the bandwidth they need to do their job well. We all know if your hands are tied, even if you have a title, there's only so much you can do if somebody's literally tied your hands behind your back.
Christian Maxwell:So they're literally taking all the blame, but they have none of the material or real capability that they need to do their job well.
Betsy Smith:And, you know, the local politicians there, the governor Pritzker, the mayor Johnson, and your federal politician as well. All they talk about is money, that we need to we throw more money at this problem. More money. Give people more money. And and and that that really isn't the case, is it?
Christian Maxwell:No. No. No. It's not. We're literally money is being bled out in so many directions here in Illinois.
Christian Maxwell:It's extremely mismanaged, and then it all kind of continues to route back to the crime issue. So when you think about the way that Brandon is trying to fix the finances of Chicago, he thinks that if he keeps taxing and fining the law abiding citizens, that he's gonna make up the budget. Here's the thing. He's actually mismanaging the the business of Chicago. Chicago is such an amazing amazing entity from a business standpoint.
Christian Maxwell:If you are able to monetize it correctly where you're incentivizing events to come back to the city because it's safe, you're incentivizing businesses to come back to the city because it's safe. You're incentivizing citizens to come shop in the city and come hang out in the the city because it's safe. It causes people to then want to infuse the economy here in Chicago. But as of right now, none of those things stand true. Chicago is not safe.
Christian Maxwell:And because it's not safe, Chicago is broke. So it's really it's literally just a catch 22 because he won't fix crime. It's it's just it's destroying so much.
Betsy Smith:You know, you're so right because we, and we say this often, people who don't feel safe aren't free. And you alluded to that earlier, if you don't feel safe enough to go down to the corner store, you don't feel safe enough to take guests from out of town down to the Magnificent Mile or to a restaurant or whatever it is. You're not gonna be financially supporting your community. In fact, you're gonna be sitting in your condo or your house and you're gonna be ordering from Amazon and that's it. And you're gonna go out to the suburbs to do your shopping.
Betsy Smith:Do you think that, again, you came from, you were in Texas, you experienced that. I live in Arizona where we're a completely constitutional carry state. Do you think if Illinois, and I want people to understand the firearm regulations in Illinois, you can't even own a firearm unless you have passed a background check by the Illinois State Police and possess something called a firearm owner's identification card. Then to get a concealed carry permit, which we have only had since 2013 in Illinois, we were the last state to get citizen carry, you have to go through some extraordinary regulations to be able to carry that firearm. If some of that was loosened up, what do you envision for Illinois and for Congressional District 1, where you live, and the city of Chicago?
Christian Maxwell:I think that if you were able to loosen up those regulations and allow for law abiding citizens to be able to protect and to arm themselves, I think you would see a decrease in carjackings. I think you would see a decrease in breaking and entering in people people's homes. I also think you would see a decrease in theft in retail environments. Because if people knew that, if you were in a grocery store and you could reasonably assume that 70% of the people are carrying, I think it changes your mindset towards stealing and things of that nature. Not that somebody's gonna just take it upon themselves to to gun somebody down per se, but also when you know that everybody more than likely, even the mom with her toddler is carrying, it just changes the mindset.
Christian Maxwell:And it makes it where somebody really has to come extremely prepared to do some of these crimes because anybody anybody could then be a part of creating a law a law abiding situation. And it also here's the thing. When you see when citizens know that they're armed, they're more likely to maybe engage with somebody who's trying to rob somebody. They're more likely to stop somebody from doing a crime because they know that they're capable of protecting themselves. Most people who own weapons, they don't just own them, and they're not they're not just lazy about it.
Christian Maxwell:People who own weapons typically will go and practice with their weapons. They're learning about the actual laws that are you know, that surround being a responsible gun owner. They're not just sitting here, you know, having a gun and shooting it in the air. That's not how, you know, concealed carry people operate or people who, you know, want to, you know, really exercise their second amendment right. They actually are responsible citizens for the most part.
Christian Maxwell:Like, it's it's the whole misnomer that people who have concealed carry are more dangerous. Like, that's a 100% false narrative. The here's the thing. All these gun regulations, they do not stop criminals from getting illegal guns. It does not stop them.
Christian Maxwell:They don't go buy them at the normal stores and get them off of the black market. I don't they're not going to Shields or to, you know, any of these large, you know, sports good stores. They're literally going and getting black market guns or getting them from pawn shops and all of that. But law abiding citizens, they need to be able to to take care of themselves because that's their right. It's it's why we have our constitution.
Christian Maxwell:We shouldn't have to keep arguing that.
Betsy Smith:And, you know, we used to hear from Lori Lightfoot that all the illegal guns in Chicago came from Indiana, you know, which was which was, again, another completely false narrative. And the the thing is, and I have seen this for decades as a law enforcement officer and now as a law enforcement trainer, people who do get arrested, especially in Cook County and in Chicago, for illegal firearms, criminals, you said exactly this, they tend to have multiple you know, criminal records. They tend to have lengthy rap sheets, and absolutely nothing happens to them. They might either charges get dropped, they get pled down, they they leave the court they leave gun court. People don't even understand what gun court is in Cook County.
Betsy Smith:But they leave gun court with an ankle monitor on, which they cut off in two weeks, and really nothing ever happens to them. So, this proliferation of illegal firearms is never tamped down and crime just continues.
Christian Maxwell:Yeah. No. There's too many areas of crime in Illinois and especially in Chicago that are just not being addressed all at the same time. And like I said, it's just causing the city to decay. You can't have it where the the moment the sun goes down I live in Woodlawn.
Christian Maxwell:The moment the sun goes down, you start hearing gunshots. You hear sirens. It just sounds like you you're, like, in a third world country.
Betsy Smith:And Woodlawn is a nice neighborhood.
Christian Maxwell:Yeah. It's actually a nice area. Like, there are there's million dollar homes by me. Like, literally, there's a million dollar home right next to me. I'm like, how is it?
Christian Maxwell:How is that okay? It's it's it's couldn't possibly be okay. There are schools over here and everything, and this is the area that people live in and reside in. And you have Brandon Johnson putting signs on the sidewalk talking about he's building back better or something of that nature, whatever his little weird slogan is. I'm like, you're not building anything right now.
Christian Maxwell:You're only destroying.
Betsy Smith:You know, we have had street gangs in Chicago. I mean, of course, we had the mob in the forties and all that, you know, the twenties to the forties. And then really from the seventies on, street gangs in Chicago were infamous for that, What do you envision being able to do again on the federal level because you are running for Congress to be able to help law enforcement finally get a handle on the street gang problem in Chicago and in Illinois?
Christian Maxwell:So my strategy overall is always going to be to really look at it at all of these situations from a common sense perspective. I think that if we had less politicians who are trying to appeal to criminals and more so trying to appeal to, again, law abiding citizens and then the actual people who protect those law abiding citizens, Those two groups will always be my priority because that's who should be any any politician's priority. I'm never going to create any type of legislation that would favor a criminal or make it harder for either police officers to arrest and detain or for actual attorneys and things at the state level to be able to actually convict. I want people to get arrested. I want them to get convicted, and I want them to actually serve the time that they should serve based on the law they the law they broke.
Christian Maxwell:Here's the thing. Most people know that you cannot shoot at a cop. That is a common sense thing. If you decide to shoot at a cop, there is a consequence. And at this given point in time, we've created this environment where people don't ever think that they should suffer consequences.
Christian Maxwell:That is how life works. We need to reintroduce natural consequences. If you do something very bad, there is a very bad consequence. You can choose to never do that again and live a good life after that, but you did a very bad thing, And now you need to serve that very bad consequence. And I would never create any legislation or support or vote for any legislation that would make it harder for that ecosystem to thrive.
Christian Maxwell:So we shouldn't have I think that right now, Cook County isn't even really at capacity. It's like there's more than enough people to be inside of Cook County right now based on the types of crimes that are happening all over the city. So I'm not like I said, I'm never gonna support that. I would never advocate for it. I would never vote for any type of legislation like that, and I would really wanna work to introduce legislation that makes it where it is much easier to convict and to make sure that people are serving time for the crimes they committed.
Christian Maxwell:I want people to be to make sure that people are held accountable to making sure they're being very thorough with their work. I would support that. Be thorough. Make sure that you're actually, you know, not having too many preconceived notions. One thing I will say is that the idea that they don't allow police to what is it?
Christian Maxwell:The phrase that they don't want you to do?
Betsy Smith:The Oh, stop and frisk?
Christian Maxwell:Yeah. Stop and frisk or, you know, doing things where you're just assuming somebody is a criminal.
Betsy Smith:I think
Christian Maxwell:that that's a very I don't agree with, you know, stop and frisk or anything of that nature, but allowing police to be able to say, hey. There is there is a profile. I don't wanna con condone profiling. But if there is a group that you're seeing a bigger high uptick, even if it's, like, an age or if it's in an area where citizens are saying, like, hey. We're we're really having a tough time.
Christian Maxwell:Like, my my catalytic converter got taken on my car and so did three of my neighbors. You know? Like, okay. Let's let's make sure that we're actually able to go into these areas and have a strategy. If you're not allowed to create a a document that says, here is the type of person or here's the type of crime that's happening, how can you then build a strategy?
Betsy Smith:So Right. That's database policing.
Christian Maxwell:Yeah. Thank you. That that let's just call it database policing. That's what I wanna we need to have more of that. Like, if you cannot analyze data and make decisions based off of data and then build strategies off of data, how can you actually address crime?
Christian Maxwell:You can't.
Betsy Smith:Yeah. So Christian Maxwell, we need, like, 50 more of you in congress. And because you're speaking common sense you're speaking it from a perspective of experience, which I think is huge, just as a homeowner, as a mom, as a wife, those are the people that I believe are gonna save this nation. So, we are so grateful that you were able to take some time and spend time with us. And let me just say this, when you're super famous in a couple of months, I'm gonna say I interviewed you first.
Betsy Smith:So, you speak you know, literally truth to power, and and and we're so grateful that you spent some time with us today. Thanks again. Tell people where they can find you on social media, your website, all that.
Christian Maxwell:So my website is Christian Maxwell for Congress dot com, and then my biggest platform is on TikTok. My name on there is the mod pun. It stands for the mod modern pundit. I do a lot of really common sense takes. I share all of my ideas about how America should kinda function, what is common sense as it pertains to crime, education, and a variety of topics.
Christian Maxwell:So if you wanna get to know how I thoroughly feel about that, I have hundreds of videos that you can watch to really get to know me. I don't hold any punches. I tell people all the time that I would rather be not not be elected because you know exactly how I feel about things than to hide how I feel and get elected, and then you're confused because you didn't know my viewpoint. So I'm very transparent. That's just how I function, and you can follow me on the mod pun at TikTok on TikTok to actually get to know me better, and then you'll be able to easily find all my links, from there.
Betsy Smith:Alright. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, you can visit us at nationalpolice.org.
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