Blaming the Pandemic for Crime

A July 20 New York Times piece by Tim Arango reports on a survey of 30 large U.S. cities by the Council on Criminal Justice which found that homicides over the first six months of 2023 have declined by 9.4% compared to last year.  If the trend continues, Arango suggests it could be the largest one-year drop in homicides ever recorded.  Noting that there were 202 fewer homicides among the surveyed cities, which included New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver, they remain 24% higher than over the same period in 2019.   Other serious crimes including aggravated assault, robbery, commercial and residential burglary declined by 5% or less, while motor vehicle theft increased by over 33%.  The survey also noted a stunning 39% decline in drug offenses.  The Times reported that many experts agree that “the disruptions of the pandemic–the social isolation, the closure of schools and jobs lost — likely led to an increase in crime.”   While “an unproven theory cited by some experts amid the social unrest that followed the murder of Mr. Floyd, officers in some places pulled back from enforcement…”

The Times article also suggests that police may not matter; “Notably, violent crime has fallen at a time when many police departments are smaller than they were before the pandemic. While the defund the police movement, which grew out of the Floyd protests, lost momentum as crime rose, police staffing levels declined in many cities as officers retired or quit and as many departments struggled to recruit new officers in a competitive U.S. job market. The result for some major cities has been an unintended experiment in what a smaller police department looks like.”

A look at the larger picture raises questions about these assertions.  Many of the cities surveyed had been, over the years prior to 2020, reducing the consequences for so-called non-serious crimes such as commercial burglary, drug dealing, strong-armed robbery, grand theft and simple assault.  In places like Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles the District Attorneys often declined to even prosecute these crimes.  While the progressive leaders of these cities were consistently blaming the availability of guns for violent crimes, the illegal possession of firearms was also not being prosecuted or charged as an enhancement for other crimes.  When the George Floyd riots played out for weeks during the summer of 2020 in over 500 cities,  thousands of police officers were attacked by rioters, and city leaders joined Black Lives Matter in labeling the police racists, ordered them to back off of enforcement, and cut police department budgets.   The head of the San Francisco Police Officers Association told Fox News, ” “What did they think was going to happen?  Criminals were just going to stop what they were doing? They weren’t going to go out and commit crimes anymore?”

Add to this perfect storm, the fact that thousands of criminals in prisons and jails, and arrestees charged with serious crimes, particularly in large blue state cities were released early or without bail to protect them from getting Covid-19.  Is it possible that they took advantage of this opportunity to commit additional crimes?

The suggestion that drug crimes were down 39% is preposterous.  Since President Biden took office in January of 2021, the United States has, for all practical purposes, had an open southern border.  Mexican Drug cartels have been free to bring tons of dangerous drugs in to the U.S. to a cartel- managed network of violent gangs distributing deadly fentanyl into every community in the country.  Much of the fentanyl is in the form of pills which resemble prescription drugs.  State laws decriminalizing drug use and trafficking have eliminated arrests for these crimes while overdose deaths last year reached 100,000,  the most in U.S. history.

In an environment where drug and property criminals are no longer arrested or prosecuted, The New York Times and other legacy media are reporting that these crimes are down, while law enforcement professionals, retailers in large cities and, according to polls, a growing majority of Americans know that the opposite is true.