Burgeoning Crime Wave Swamps Big Cities

America's big cities are wrestling with an unprecedented surge in crime.  No one can claim the rolling swell of crime is a shock in the wake of the nationwide clamor to defund police departments.  City officials bowed to rioting mobs demands, cleaving police budgets and trimming cops on the street.

The impact was predictable.  A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) preliminary report shows murders and non-negligent manslaughter offenses increased 14.8% after years of decline.  Aggravated assaults climbed 4.6%.  Arson skyrocketed 19.2%. The reporting period covers January to June 2020.

The final FBI report for last year won't be released until this September.  However, In the last three months of 2020, the crime wave evolved into a tsunami.  Homicides spiraled 32.2% in cities with a population of at least one million, according to data in the FBI Quarterly Uniform Report. 

After the George Floyd death, riots and looting erupted in many major cities.  As the lawlessness continued night after night, weak kneed, mostly Democrat city officials surrendered to Black Lives Matter and Antifa by rushing to defund their police departments with little or no public debate. 

Cities including New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Atlanta ordered deep budget cuts that impacted manpower.  Departments were forced to slice payrolls and decrease police presence, which slowed response time.

Cuts ranged from $1 billion in New York City to $29 million in Oakland.  The result was devastating for the most vulnerable residents of these major cities.  Deadly crimes spiked in neighborhoods with mostly African-American and Hispanic majorities.  

In Minneapolis, scene of the Floyd death, murders jumped 46% between December of last year and March 28 of this year.  In New York City, murders shot up 11.8% as of March 21 year-over-year.  Shootings spiked 40.1% in just the first quarter of this year.

Los Angeles reported a 38% increase in murders in 2020, despite the Coronavirus  mandates that kept most residents sheltered in their homes and apartments.  After Austin sliced its police budget by $43 million, arsons soared 73%, aggravated assaults rose 26%.  

Portland, scene of some of the worst rioting, experienced a 1,600% increase in murders in just the first two months of this year.  From July 2020 to February, the homicide rate escalated 270.6%.  Once peaceful, laid back Portland was transformed into a war zone by anarchists. 

These depressing statistics prompted an outcry from citizen groups in these cities, pressuring city councils and mayors to backtrack in the face of withering criticism.  New York reinstated $92 million in its police budget, Baltimore proposed a $27 million increase after chopping $22 million in 2020.

Other cities followed suit, including Oakland, Minneapolis, Houston, San Diego and others.  After being drowned out for months by the anarchists, ordinary citizens and many business said: Enough!  But restoring budgets may be too late for many cities caught up in anti-police media and protests frenzy.

Police are leaving in droves in the cities that refused to back the blue.  New York City Police Department resignations and retirements are up 75% from the previous year.  More than 5,300 uniformed officers have left the force.  When cities defund police, it's a clear signal policing is no longer a priority.

In Minneapolis, more than 200 officers left between last July and this March.  That is a 49% increase from the previous year. The Police Department union blames the lack of city council support and the city's refusal to back officers during the worst of the riots.  

The story is the same in other crime plagued cities.  Seattle and Portland have both reported the biggest wave of  police departures in recent memory. Staffing shortages are exacerbating the out-of-control rise in violent crime in these cities and others.  Cutting police budgets has deadly consequences.

The head of the Police Union in Portland had harsh criticism for City Commissioner Joe Ann Hardesty, who spearheaded the defund the police movement in the city,  "Roving gangs of black clad rioters do not speak for the hundreds of thousands of residents and business owners, who want a safe and clean city. Yet local politicians supported them."

Some concerned law enforcement officials are speculating the defund the police movement has a broader agenda than just addressing the law enforcement shooting of African-Americans. Former Arizona police officer Brandon Tatum, author of an upcoming book on the subject, has a plausible theory.

"I believe it's an agenda to completely destroy and dismantle local police departments so that the (federal) government can have control of law enforcement in this country and push a nationwide agenda," Tatum said in an interview. 

Tatum has a point.  If law enforcement is federalized, then the government in Washington can enforce mandates and restrictions that support its progressive agenda.  Imagine a federal cops seizing guns from legal owners, forcing citizens to get COVID vaccines or policing public speech.

That would be a dangerous development that would infringe on Constitutional rights.  However, if the Washington progressives pass laws, then what better way to force compliance than having a federal police force to do its bidding?  It's a sobering thesis that should worry every American.

Police Shootings: Data Rebukes False Narrative

Another police killing.  A male viciously beaten to death.  But this murder went unreported by the media.  That's because the victim was a white police officer.  The alleged assailant is African-American. Skin color should not matter, however, in today's politically-charged environment race is paramount.

Delaware Police Officer Corporal Keith Heacook responded last week to a call for help in the assault of an elderly couple.  After he arrived on the scene, he was brutally beaten and left unconscious. You couldn't find ten Americans who know Heacook's name.  

You can bet most American recognize the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and Rayshard Brooks.  The shootings of these African-Americans have become symbols of the narrative of racist police killings.  There are no excuses for the horrific murders of these victims. 

However, the actions of a few policeman cannot justify demonizing and condemning all law enforcement officers. The false narrative, perpetuated by the media and politicians, portrays an African-American community under siege by racist police officers deliberately gunning for blacks.

President Biden joined the chorus after police officer Derek Chauvin's conviction, contending the verdict "ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see systemic racism" of police.  A specious claim since the prosecution in the case never introduced a scintilla of evidence Chauvin was a racist.

Chauvin was guilty, but not of personal racism. He made an indefensible decision to use excessive force.

Biden is not alone in race-baiting.  NBA basketball player LeBron James, the self-appointed, unofficial African-American spokesman for the league, tweeted the following after the recent murder of Ahmoud Arbery in Georgia.  The alleged killers were two white males.  

"We're literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes! Can't even go for a damn jog man! Like WTF man are you kidding me?!?!?!?!?!

In light of such prejudicial rhetoric, it is time to set the record straight.  It is a rarity for a police officer to shoot anyone.  White or black.  

In fact, a black male is more likely to be struck by lightning than to be shot by a police officer.  The latest data from 2019 shows that police shot and killed 1,003 people in the United States.  Of those, 405 were white and 250 were African-American.  Fifty-five were unarmed suspects: 25 whites, 14 blacks.

Since 2015, law enforcement officers have shot and killed 6,211 people: 46% of them (2,883) were white, while 24% (1,496) were black.  According to the most recent Census data African-Americans constitute 13.4% of the population, while whites make up 60.1%.  

One of the stubborn myths about police shootings is the fact officers shoot unarmed black men at an alarming rate, compared to whites. There have been about 7,300 black homicide victims a year.  The 14 unarmed victims in fatal police shootings would comprise 0.2% of that total.            

Since 2015, the data finds 91% of black males killed by police officers were armed: 75% were armed with a gun or knife; the remainder used other weapons, including automobiles.  

The data cited above is from The Washington Post's Fatal Force database. That is significant because The Post is certainly not conservative or a pro-police news outlet.  Often politicians and the media falsely claim law enforcement under reports shootings of victims, especially African-Americans.

The FBI compiles data from reports voluntarily sent to its offices from police departments.  Since all police departments are not compelled to provide the figures, there is cynicism about the FBI data. The Post uses news accounts, social media postings and police reports to build its database.  

Scientific studies have proven that racial bias is not a factor in the disparity between whites and blacks killed by police.  A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 found "no significant evidence of a racial disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police."

For perspective, blacks accounted for 53% of the murder and non-negligent manslaughter arrests in 2018 according to FBI data.  Blacks represented 54% of all robbery arrests and 37% of all violent crime arrests versus whites' percentages of 44%, 43%, and 59%, respectively, for those same categories.

In other words, police are more likely to encounter a black person in investigating violent crimes. More than 1.8 million blacks were arrested in 2019 for all crimes, the FBI reports.  Based 2019 FBI data, a minuscule 0.0099% of the 10.08 million people arrested by police were shot and killed by an officer. 

African-Americans made up 27.4% of the police arrests in the latest data.  That means one out of every 6,762 black offenders were shot and killed by police.  The ratio of unarmed black males shot and killed was one out of every 67,334 African-American men who were arrested. 

The statistic no media or politician dares to mention is this: 88.9% of all murders of African-Americans are committed by blacks.  By comparison 80% of white victims were murdered by other whites. Blacks kill far more of their own citizens than white policemen.  

Those figures hardly justify headlines screaming police shootings of blacks are an epidemic. Given the sheer volumes of contacts law enforcement has in a single year, the number of people killed by police stands as evidence most police act responsibly and use proper judgement. 

As further proof, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for 2015 revealed that 53.5 million people had at least one contact with police. The majority (95%) of those contacts involved traffic stops.  Only 2% of all citizens involved with police experienced force or the threat of force, the BJS reports.  

The facts haven't stopped politicians from asserting policing is an "indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence."  That is a quote from Brooklyn Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the outspoken leaders of the national effort to dismantle policing in America. 

The anti-police campaign has been built on lies, myths and the media's biased reporting of officer shootings.  Yet if anyone armed with facts tries to unravel the narrative, that individual is branded a racist for refusing to bow to the established presumption of police targeting blacks.

Unless the country begins to examine the facts, racial divisions will become a chasm too wide to repair.  That prospect is tragically becoming a reality because politicians and the media are invested in criminalizing police protection in our communities.  

Ironically, a Gallup poll found African-American respondents were twice as likely as their white counterparts to want stepped up policing in their communities.  Activists who want to defund police would do more harm to black communities by their insistence on weakening police protection.    

If the anarchists have their way, the real epidemic will be runaway crime in black communities.

Defunding Police In The Midst of Crime Waves

One-year-old Davell Gardner reclined in a stroller near a Brooklyn playground.  His father stood admiring his son.  Suddenly two men approached and opened fire.  A bullet pierced little Davell in the stomach.  He died minutes later at a local hospital.  Davell was two months shy of his second birthday.

The tragedy in the New York City area was one of seven murders on the same day.  Davell is just the youngest victim in a deadly killing spree in the nation's largest city.  In one bloody 28-day period, New York City recorded 42 murders, a 13.5% increase from the same period a year ago.

Davell's sad death was the exclamation point to New York City's 24% spike in murders from 2019. The boy's father, Davell Gardner Sr., had a message for the thugs who killed his infant son: "These guys just took my son's life.  For what?  He didn't do nothing to nobody."

The boy's grandmother Samantha Gardner minced no words.  "For the cowards that did this, you should be ashamed of yourself because everybody talks about Black Lives Matter.  What about baby lives? You took an innocent from his mother and father as well as the grandparents."

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio presides over the crime outbreak with appalling ineptness. He has the audacity to proclaim his administration has been tough on crime, while leading the effort to defund the police department, the thin blue line that stands between peace and anarchy on the streets.

De Blasio championed the city council's recent vote to slash $1 billion from the police department's $6 billion budget.  The mayor pledged the funds would go to "youth programs and recreation centers." It wouldn't have prevented Davell Gardner's murder. He was wounded near a Brooklyn playground.

De Blasio, a harsh critic of the police department, ignores the soaring number of shootings. Last week New York passed another grisly milestone when it recorded shooting number 777, surpassing the figures for all of last year.  The mayor has done nothing but assure New Yorkers he is praying for the victims.

Since the George Floyd death on May 25, there has been a nationwide escalation in crime.  The last time the country witnessed such a rise of this magnitude was in 2015 and 2016, after the controversy connected to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Gotham City's crime surge pales in comparison to gory Chicago.  In the Windy City, murders are up 51% from 2019.  In one 28-day period, Chicago killings soared 89% compared to the same period a year ago. Shootings have increased 47%,   There have been 414 murders this year, a record clip even for Chicago.

One of the latest victims is a nine-year-old boy who was playing in a vacant lot near the site of a former housing project.  Janari Ricks and  a few friends were caught in deadly gunfire that ignited nearby.  A stray bullet struck the youth in his chest. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

A few days earlier 15 people were wounded in an a mass shooting at a funeral.  Gunmen fired from a vehicle that sped away before it crashed one block later.  The criminals fled.  The victims included at least 10 women, according to police reports. The scene is all too familiar to Chicagons.  

Last year 13 people were wounded, four of them critically, in a memorial gathering.  In 2018, six people were shot as mourners were leaving a church. In 2013, gunmen shot 13 people outside funeral services, wounding a three-year-old boy.  In 2012, two men were shot outside a church memorial service.

Police have not escaped violence.  Three Chicago police officers were shot by a carjacking suspect on a Thursday morning.  The prisoner was taken out of a patrol van and walked into the Northwest Side police station when he opened fire wounding the officers. Police are investigating where the suspect got the gun. 

In the midst of a crime rampage, Chicago's tragically incompetent Mayor Lori Lightfoot has stiff-armed growing calls to defund the police by city council members.  Her stance has more to do with racial politics than her support for the city's men and women who are hired to protect citizens.

"When you talk about defunding, you're talking about getting rid of officers.  Most of our diversity lies in junior officers.  Which means you are getting rid of black and brown people," she told the Chicago Tribune. Like many mayors, she views the police department as part of the political spoils of her office.

West Coast cities have been some of the most aggressive in scaling back police budgets.  In Seattle the city Council carved 50% out of the current budget and has already chopped spending for next year by $76 million.  Seattle experienced a stunning 525% increase in crime in July.

During the height of violent protests, Police Chief Carmen Best warned local residents and businesses that her department would not be able to contain unruly crowds to prevent looting, arson and rioting.  The city council had shackled police by outlawing the use of pepper spray, a tool for dispersing crowds.

Portland's City Council sliced $15 million from its police budget.  "Defunding the police is a victory," the City Council said in a statement. And the council threatened: "We are not done."  Violent shootings have surged 240% in the city compared to the same period a year ago.

Portland recorded more homicides in July than in any other month over the last 30 years.  And the violence is spreading like a cancer.  In the latest incident, rioters doused an elderly woman with white paint and harassed another who was using a walker to shuffle through the crowd.  

In Minneapolis, scene of the George Floyd incident, the city council ripped $10 million from the police budget.  Homicides have jumped 60% from 2019.  Violent shootings have totaled 269, surpassing the number for all of 2019. 

There are two ironies to the cities' Bataan-like march to defund police.  The overwhelming majority of shooting victims listed in this article are African-Americans. Secondly, the neighborhoods most impacted by the crimes are predominantly black.  African-Americans are demanding more police presence not less.

That is paradoxical because the loudest voice for defunding police has been the Black Lives Matter crowd. There are other organizations that have joined the chorus too.  However, if activists are concerned for black lives they should be advocating for beefed up police funding and presence in black neighborhoods.

A recent Pew Research study found more Americans agree with increasing local police spending (30%) than endorse defunding (25%). A total of 42% of those surveyed support the current level of funding as appropriate.  Despite the media drumbeat, most Americans are not in favor of defunding police.

The fact is Black Lives Matter and other politically motivated organizations care more about creating chaos and spreading a false narrative than about African-Americans.  Appallingly, the result has been a media-backed stampede in support of BLM's campaign to defund the very people protecting black lives.