The year 2021 is shaping up to be quite the boon for criminal activity across the United States. Homicides are up in the Big Apple 45% and shootings 78%. In Chicago, the murder rate has risen 16% and shootings 25%. In Washington, D.C., police data reveal a 16-year high, with a 43% rise in homicides. What, pray tell, could be the reason for such a drastic crime rate increase?
Conservative commentator Dan Bongino put it plainly on Fox & Friends when he said, "Liberals will never digest the concept of incentives." He went on to explain:
"When you incentivize criminals to commit more crime because you engage in things like bail reform where you let them out, the average criminal says to himself, 'Well, if I can make a couple thousand dollars a day slinging drugs on the corner and I'm only going to have to spend 15 minutes in jail before I get out no one's ever going to come get me on the warrant anyway.' They say to themselves it's pretty profitable to do criminal activity."
The corollary, according to Bongino, is just as true:
"When you disincentivize cops to stop criminals, and you tell them, 'You're public enemy number one – the cops, and by the way, if you ever lay a hand in a use of force situation, justified or not, you're going to become infamous on social media and liberals are going to pile on' – here's a shocker – when you disincentivize enforcement of the law you get less enforcement of the law. Again, this is only hard for the stupid people. Sane people get this."
Thus, it is not difficult to comprehend that when society makes police the bad guys and then lets the criminals go with a slap on the wrist, one should expect crime to go up. In an article in USA Today, contributor Jason Johnson noted, "Cities that cut (or threaten to) police budgets often saw the largest drops in active policing and the increases in homicide." According to Johnson, early data from the FBI for 2020 show "the largest single year increase since the agency began publishing uniform data in 1960."
The numbers also reveal a serious decline in police activity for the last half of 2020 through the first quarter of this year. Bottom line: A demoralized law enforcement community makes the streets less safe for law-abiding citizens. In New York City, the NYPD reports that 45,000 fewer people were arrested for the second half of 2020. Axiomatically, the city experienced a 58% increase in crime during that same period.
Is This Really So Hard to Understand?
So, criminals don't face serious punishment for their unlawful activities. Couple that with the police pullback on arrests due to outspoken leftist opinion, and you get a higher crime rate. This maxim is true for those living in high- and low-crime communities.
Colorado is one state considering "sweeping crime reform" legislation. Meanwhile, the reporting for 2020 illustrated "an escalating crime rate" in the Centennial State. According to CPR News, Colorado experienced “crime increases in virtually every category." In Denver, the number of murders jumped by 50% from 2019 to 2020.
The owner of Art Mark in Boulder, CO, told CPR News, "They now steal right smack in front of us. They look us in the eye, pick up the item and walk out of the store. The situations are so frequent now that we know these perpetrators by name, and they're becoming increasingly violent."
‘Tis a tangled web when a civil society demoralizes its law enforcement community. The results are plain as day that this type of attitude drives up crime, and citizens are less safe. The math is straightforward: defunding the police – even when it is only proposed, much less enforced – only serves to rachet up the violence in cities across America.
The impecunious in the inner cities don't want this; neither do those in the suburbs. So why is the country hard at work to make our communities less safe? Could it be that Mr. Bongino is correct: "This is only hard for the stupid people. Sane people get this"? Such as it is, perhaps it's time to stop the insanity before more Americans become crime statistics.
~
Read more from Leesa K. Donner.
