Author: Michael Rushford

In a thoughtful OpEd in the Wall Street Journal, John Jay College Professor Barry Latzer discusses some of the factors that are influencing the increase in crime across America.  Latzer notes that the last major crime wave which began in the late 1960s “was driven largely by three factors: large-scale rural-to-urban migration of African-Americans and immigration to big cities of Hispanic populations with high violent-crime rates, massive growth in the youth population, and a weak criminal-justice system. One might throw in a fourth: The crack-cocaine epidemic, which sent crime soaring after it began to ease in the early ’80s. These elements aren’t present today, though attempts to weaken the criminal-justice system are worrisome.”  This time around he cites “the pandemic, along with dubious criminal-justice system reforms, undoubtedly made things worse. Covid made police reluctant to interact with suspects except when making arrests for serious crimes. Wholesale releases from jails like New York’s Rikers Island put offenders back on the streets. Some states adopted bail reforms that kept offenders from jail entirely. It didn’t help that a new crop of progressive prosecutors, in misguided efforts to reduce so-called mass incarceration, declined to prosecute numerous misdemeanors and agreed to light sentences even for some violent felons.

Continue reading . . .

After roughly two years of record-setting homicide rates in many large U.S. cities, progressive politicians and prosecutors are still denying that this is a crises.  As Hans Bader notes in Liberty Unyielding, days after progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner told reporters there was not crisis in his city “Democratic Congressman May Gay Scanlon was carjacked in broad daylight in Philadelphia’s FDR Park….Philadelphia’s murder record was broken in the same week that Indianapolis, Columbus, and Louisville exceeded their records for murders.”

Continue reading . . .

An article in the Washington Examiner:  Homeless and clueless in Oakland and elsewhere in America  criticizing the approach to the problem by liberal politicians in Democrat-controlled cities and states would be unsurprising if the author were Heather MacDonald or Larry Elder.  It is surprising when ultra-liberal former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris pairs up with Mary L.G. Theroux of the conservative Independent Institute to write “The bright side of the bay, as Oakland is known, has followed the same failed game plan as most other cities.  And that’s why the homeless crisis persists.  Unfortunately the Biden administration plans to continue subsidizing the losing strategy.”   For most of his long political life Harris has been advancing the liberal, bureaucratic, big government policies that have helped create today’s homeless crisis.  He is now confronting the endlessly repeated claims of Democrats in California and nationally that the root cause of homelessness is a shortage of affordable housing.  “The change began in 2013 when the Obama administration shifted the focus of federal homelessness funding from programs that provide services to the homeless to their speedy placement into housing.  The approach had the opposite effect from what was intended.”

Continue reading . . .

Doubling down on policies guaranteed to increase crime, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón announced yesterday that he is expanding a program which protects juvenile offenders from prosecution.  Scott Schwebke of the LA Daily News reports that the the expanded REDY program will allow juveniles facing charges for robbery, burglary, arson, sexual battery and assault to be diverted to a “restorative justice” program and avoid prosecution.  The Executive Director of Centinela Youth Services, which will manage the program, told reporters that studies have shown that juveniles participating in her program are 50-70% less likely to be rearrested.  She presented no link to any study so we’ll just have to take her word for it.

Continue reading . . .

In a sharp reversal from their 2020 commitment to defund their “racist” police departments, liberal mayors across the country have discovered unprecedented increases in crime in their cities and are announcing their intent to increase police funding and get tough on criminals.  Last year, riding the national wave of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests over the supposedly racially-motivated death of a black criminal named George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer, liberal politicians demanded that police budgets be sharply cut, and that departments end proactive policing especially in high-crime urban neighborhoods.  The Sun Times reports that last year Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot allowed over 600 officers to be cut from the Chicago PD.  Now after two years of record breaking homicides in her city, she proposes adding $189 million to the police budget.   Responding to the BLM demand, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced plans to cut $120 million from the police department budget last summer. The New York Post now reports she has reversed course, making an emergency request for more funding of the SFPD.  Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf has also reversed course and is now against the cuts to police that she supported last year.  Even Speaker Nancy Pelosi is acknowledging an “absolutely outrageous” crime spike she did not acknowledge last week, last month or last year.

Continue reading . . .

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the chief spokesperson for President Saddam Hussein government was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who held almost daily press conferences denying that the allied forces had swiftly defeated the Iraqi Army and were taking Baghdad.  At his last press conferences he is standing outside telling reporters that Baghdad was secure over the the sounds of nearby artillery and small arms fire, and as news footage shows tanks and soldiers sweeping into the city virtually unopposed.  For this remarkable demonstration of chutzpah he became known worldwide as “Baghdad Bob.”   Last year we decided to give a Baghdad Bob award to a person whose denial of reality rivaled the example set by al-Sahhaf.  The winner was MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi, who gave an on-air report during the May 28, 2020 George Floyd riot in Minneapolis.  Before cameras, as a one of dozens of the city’s buildings set fire by rioters that night was blazing behind him, Velshi told viewers “I want to be clear on how I characterize this. This is mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking unruly. But fires have been started.”

Ali Velshi

Continue reading . . .

Bill Hutchinson of ABC News reports that 12 U.S. Cities have broken annual homicide records this year.  Five of these cities topped the homicide record they set in 2020.  While much media coverage has been focused on New York, with 443 homicides so far this year, and Los Angeles with 352 homicides so far, Philadelphia has beaten them both with 521 people killed as of December 6.  To provide some perspective, Philly has a population of 1.5 million.  New York has 8.4 million and LA has 3.4 million.  The other record breaking cities are Portland, Indianapolis, Toledo, Rochester, Columbus, Baton Rouge,  Louisville, Saint Paul, Tucson, Albuquerque, and Austin.  Although these cities are located in states with varying political leanings, they all have something in common with Los Angeles, New York and other high crime cities like Chicago and DC;  they all have liberal democrat mayors and with the exception of Baton Rouge, democrat-controlled city councils.  The Baton Rouge city council is split 5-5.  All but one, Indianapolis, have progressive, pro-criminal District Attorneys, and the new pro-law enforcement DA in Indy was just elected last year.

Continue reading . . .

In a 2007 interview regarding his push for reducing cash bail for arrestees, Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm told reporters “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill sombody?  You bet. Guaranteed.  It’s guaranteed to happen, but it does not invalidate the overall approach.”  Rebecca Rosenberg and Michael Ruiz of Fox News report that this statement, and Chisholm’s success at implementing what one prosecutor call “the most lenient bail in all of Wisconsin,” has come back to haunt him in the aftermath of massacre at the Waukesha Christmas parade on November 21.  The suspect, habitual violent felon Darrell Brooks, was released in Milwaukee on $1,000 bail two weeks after his November 2nd arrest for running over his ex-girlfriend.  The the woman, the mother of Brooks’ child, was hospitalized with dislocated femur and fractured right ankle.

Continue reading . . .

The progressive dismantling of California’s criminal justice system has been going on for over ten years.  The ballot measures and legislation reducing or eliminating consequences for crimes have enjoyed the support of rich democrats living in and outside of the state.  While one of the primary contributors has been New York billionaire George Soros, dozens of rich California liberals living the in the San Francisco bay area and in the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles County have also contributed millions to elect the legislators and the Governor who passed AB109 (so called Public Safety Realignment)  and ballot measures including Proposition 47 (the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act) and Proposition 57 (the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act).   None of these measures had anything to do with public safety, but with enough campaign contributions the democrats were able to convince an unaware public that they would make them more safe.  When the data started showing that criminals benefiting from these policies were robbing, injuring and killing innocent Californians, the politicians and their allies in the press called it “fear mongering” and dismissed the statistics showing rising crime by noting that most of the state was far safer than it was 30 years ago, during the last statewide crime wave.

Continue reading . . .

A UCLA study examining deaths among LA’s homeless population during the Covid-19 pandemic reports that 1,493 died in shelters and on the streets.  Nicholas Morgan of the International Business Times reports that most of the deaths over the 17 month study period (March 2020 to July 2021) were not attributed to the virus.  Roughly 40% of those who died on the streets and 60% who died in temporary housing were killed by drug or alcohol overdoses.   So while most Americans were sheltering in their homes, limiting their interaction with others, wearing masks for protection, and being vaccinated, the homeless, who did none of these things were overdosing on drugs or drinking themselves to death.   The fact that the rate of dying from these causes was much higher in government-funded housing than for those sleeping on the sidewalks is disturbing.  Maybe housing should not be the main focus of efforts to address the homeless.  Perhaps putting the homeless in a controlled environment focused on detox, mental health treatment along with job and life skills development might reduce deaths and actually restore some to self sufficiency.  The study also reveals the fact that homeless deaths in LA have been steadily increasing every year since 2014 and has been over 1,000 annually since 2018.