The Total Breakdown of Law and Order

If you read major U.S. newspapers or watch the network news lately you have been informed that while homicides increased in some American cities over the past two years, overall crime is down.  This Associated Press story by David Klepper and Gary Fields is a typical example of this narrative.  Nationally homicides last year increased by 25% with roughly 20,000 people killed.  Preliminary data from police departments suggests that the homicide spikes were much higher in urban centers last year and will increase even more this year.  We have also been told that these increases have occurred in some places that did not defund their police, so we can’t blame the anti-police progressives or politicians like President Biden who, last year labeled police as racists.  The problem with this narrative is that it is false.  Two years of double-digit increases in murder is evidence of a serious breakdown in law enforcement.  In urban centers the homicide increases are much higher than national numbers reflect.  Murders in Los Angeles County are up by 95% over last year’s decade high.   In Chicago murders were up 22%, in Minneapolis 56% and in Portland an astounding 800% according to the AP article.  Other crimes went up as well.

Accompanying the homicides are major increases in carjackings, auto theft, aggravated assaults and grand larceny.  There were also 93,000 fatal drug overdoses last year, the most ever recorded.  Most of the drugs causing these overdoses were smuggled by criminal gangs across American’s southern border and sold to the victims by drug dealers.  Just for context, auto theft is up by 22% in Los Angeles, felony assault in NYC is up 20.5%, carjackings are up 70% in Chicago and 115% in Oakland.

But the real evidence of the breakdown is the brazen, almost daily murders, robberies and assaults in public places that even the national news broadcasts cannot ignore.   Video from CBS affilliate KPIX shows the 2 pm robbery of two women on a crowded street in Oakland’s Chinatown and the shooting of a young man who attempted to stop it.  After grabbing the women’s purses, and shooting the young man, the attackers jumped in a car and drove off.   Last week 82-year-old former Senator Barbara Boxer was assaulted and robbed of her cellphone while walking down an Oakland street.   On August 4, in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of New York City, ABC News video shows a woman double park on a crowded street, walk up to women talking on a porch and shoot one of them in the back of the head, then shoot her again as she lay bleeding on the ground.  The attacker then calmly walks back to her car and drives away.   These were not gang assaults.  These were unprovoked attacks on law abiding people in there own neighborhoods minding there own business.

While there are several reasons that this is happening, it is not because of the pandemic lockdowns, unemployment and racism.  The pandemic hit Europe much harder than the U.S. but there has been no comparable surge of crime and violence there.  Today, there are more jobs available in the United States than people willing to take them, yet the shootings, robberies and carjackings continue to rise.

In many parts of the country, especially in populous states with liberal/progressive leaders, the penalties for crimes have been reduced or eliminated, especially for gateway crimes such as drug dealing and theft.  Several states no longer hold suspects on bail.  Add to this the widely-publicized charges by liberal politicians from the President down to the Mayor of Seattle, that the police are racists,  which encouraged activists to arm themselves and riot in scores of cities for most of last year in the righteous cause of racial justice.  The thousands of criminals set free via executive order to protect them from Covid-19 and the thousands more not charged or held after arrest, are thriving in this environment.

The public is catching on.  New York’s pro-criminal anti-police Mayor Bill de Blasio is being replaced by a former cop.  California’s posturing, soft-on-crime governor is facing a recall.  Chicago’s racist, cop-hating Mayor Lori Lightfoot hinted last month that she may not seek re-election.  Democrats and Republicans in Los Angeles and San Francisco are signing petitions to recall their progressive district attorneys.

The movement to restore law and order is very real and picking up steam.  Those in the media and government downplaying the crime epidemic and its obvious causes are complicit and should be called out and fired.