Even though the Biden administration denies that a fearsome crime wave is sweeping across America, crime statistics tell a different story.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rafael Mangual, research chief for the Manhattan Institute's Policing and Public Safety Initiative, reports that "the U.S. experienced its largest-ever single year homicide spike in 2020, and crime now polls as one of the top voter concerns" as we head into next year's midterm elections. Meanwhile, he added, the Biden administration and its media allies "scramble to convince Americans that things aren't really so bad, no matter what the data say." But we're not buying what they're selling.
"The claim that crime isn't as bad as it was in the 1990s is no longer true for a long list of American cities," including Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Denver and Portland, Mangual continued. "Seattle would have to go back 25 years to see homicide tallies comparable to what they're seeing now."
Another Manhattan Institute scholar, columnist Jason Reilly, wrote that "murder rose by nearly 30 percent last year, and Americans have been making it clear as can be that they want more and better policing. The incoming mayors of Atlanta, New York and Seattle ran campaigns that prioritized public safety.
"A ballot initiative in Minneapolis that would have dismantled the police department was defeated soundly," Riley continued, "and some of the strongest opposition came from low-income black communities," where black-on-black crime is out of control. "Thanks to the left's indulgence of Black Lives Matter activism, cities are having trouble retaining and recruiting cops… and the job has become more dangerous.”
Reilly pointed out that "the man charged with driving his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last month, killing six (including "Dancing Grannies"), had been released five days earlier on $1,000 bail in another violent felony case. The man charged last week in the fatal shooting of a music producer's 81-year-old wife in her Beverly Hills home is a career criminal who was out on parole." And on and on it goes.
Former Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker wrote that President Biden "has identified a suspect in the smash-and-grab shoplifting spree that has besieged California retailers and terrorized residents: Coronavirus." He quoted a fictitious smash-and-grabber: "It was the virus that made me do it, your honor. I was an honest, law-abiding citizen... when all of a sudden I developed a high fever and lost my sense of smell. Next thing I knew I was pulling $25,000 Louis Vuitton purses out of display cases." Do you think Baker is kidding?
We can thank prosecutors who won't prosecute, like those in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and judges who give light sentences to violent offenders for this dangerous and sad state of affairs in many U.S. cities. Many of those "progressive" prosecutors and judges received generous campaign contributions from left wing financier/hero George Soros.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is the son of Weather Underground parents who were imprisoned in a 1981 Brink's armored car robbery and Los Angeles DA George Gascon wants to empty out California's jails and prisons. The good news is that recall petitions are circulating against both Boudin and Gascon.
Fortunately, here in Carson City, we have a mayor with a law enforcement background, a sheriff who arrests criminals, a district attorney who prosecutes them and judges who mete out appropriate sentences including jail time when warranted. So here's a shout out to those who keep us safe here in Nevada's capital city. God bless 'em.
Merry Christmas!
Guy W. Farmer was a Nevada Gaming Commission peace officer in the 1960s.
