The “Defund the Police” movement, which really took off with the 2020 “Summer of Love” and its two billion+ in damages, seems to have peaked and with the second advent of Donald Trump is on the downslope to sanity, but the damage wrought may never entirely be repaired.
It’s a vicious cycle. Cops know they can only do their jobs if they have the respect and willing compliance of the public. The thin blue line of civilization has proved to be thinner than anyone suspected. They also know if their superiors won’t give them the benefit of the doubt, or can’t because their ruling politicians won’t let them, their options are few and all bad.
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Graphic: Twitter Screenshot
Take away cop’s legitimate, constitutional tools like stop and frisk and criminals delightedly start carrying concealed handguns and using them with abandon. Drug dealing increases exponentially, which fueled by unrestricted illegal immigration costs hundreds of thousands of lives. Crime rates skyrocket, which causes crime rate gaslighting to skyrocket. Democrats/socialists/communists (D/s/cs) claim crime rates are declining, and you have them to thank. Who you gonna believe, them or your own lyin’ eyes and criminal-beaten bodies?
Every problem caused by “Defund the Police” mania is exacerbated in blue states and cities, many of which, apart from hamstringing their police, have decriminalized crime. In Illinois, for example, the police aren’t allowed, in virtually all cases, to chase fleeing crooks. Add Soros prosecutors whose primary motivation is prosecuting cops for legally doing their jobs while refusing to prosecute criminals, and the consequences are foreseeable.
Cops close to retirement retire. Cops who can leave for places that allow them to do their jobs leave. Those that remain—people who have unbreakable ties to their communities or who aren’t very good at their jobs and know they can’t be hired elsewhere—settle into non-work. They do as little as possible and absolutely avoid contact with criminals, particularly black criminals who commit crimes at rates far beyond their population density. As a result, poorer, largely black communities suffer most.
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Graphic: Twitter Screenshot
Police forces are chronically short-handed and the quality of applicants is so poor they dramatically reduce entry requirements, hiring the obese, unhealthy, mentally ill, stupid and criminal. It’s going to take a very long time, particularly in blue cities, for qualified, competent people to want to be police officers again. The invaluable John R. Lott surveys the damage:
FBI data shows arrest rates plummeted over the last few years, starting in 2020. For cities with over 1 million people, the arrest rate for reported violent crime averaged 41% in the 24 years from 1996 to 2019, but it dropped to 20.3% in 2022 – a 50% drop. The lowest arrest rate in the preceding 24 years before COVID-19 was 32.6%. That is still 61% higher than the rate in 2022.
That’s one of the few things the FBI has more or less accurately reported in recent years. Blue cities and states, desperate to hide their out-of-control crime, don’t report it.
The arrest rate for murder fell by 37%, rape by 58%, robbery by 50%, and aggravated assault by 54%.
The collapse in the arrest rate for property crime is even more dramatic. The average arrest rate for reported property crime fell from an average of 13% in the 25 years from 1996 to 2021 to 4.5% – a 64% drop. The lowest arrest rate in the preceding 24 years between 1996 and 2019 was 12%. The arrest rate in 2022 was still 61% lower than the previous low rate. The drop in reported larceny theft, the largest property crime category, is dramatic. It declines from an average arrest rate of 14.6% to just 3.8% – a 75% drop.
If you look at arrests as a percentage of all crime (reported and unreported), in these large cities only 8% of all violent crime and 1% of all property crime results in an arrest.
Those are apocalyptic levels of arrests. Unlike the criminal masterminds of TV and movie cop dramas, most crooks aren’t particularly bright, but their feral intelligence tells them if there’s little chance of being caught, go for it. Shortly after New York Governor Kathy Hochul did a PR stunt on a NYC subway train, a homeless woman was burned alive, and subway murders have doubled.
I’ve always maintained we get the police—and politicians—we deserve. To be sure, vote fraud is rampant in D/s/c-ruled hellhole cities, but the very people so beaten down by the criminal coddling policies of D/s/cs vote in even worse politicians, replacing Lori Lightfoot with Brandon Johnson in Chicago.
D/s/cs make the mistake of relying on political messiahs to provide them with everything they need. Republicans and other Normal Americans tend not to make the same mistake. Donald Trump can accomplish much. He can reestablish the conditions necessary for prosperity and safety, but he can’t fix states and cities determined to destroy themselves. They will fall or rise on their own expectations and votes.
As Pogo said: “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Unless blue cities and states set out to vanquish that enemy by upholding the law and prosecuting criminals instead of cops, the enemy is going to win.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
