After the “Defund the Police” campaign crashed and burned in spectacular fashion last year, the progressive crowd experienced a gut-punch of epic proportions. Indeed, it became apparent that the American public was not in favor of fewer police officers patrolling the streets.
Black Americans, especially, were against the idea of limiting police activity in their neighborhood. Unfortunately, they were also the main victims of the skyrocketing crime rates that occurred after major cities across the nation slashed their police budgets to appease the woke Sanhedrin.
However, despite the fact that defunding the police has been roundly repudiated, progressives are still pushing other measures designed to protect violent criminals and place law-abiding Americans in harm’s way. These programs are being imposed on the populace by woke prosecutors who are uninterested in keeping dangerous people off the streets.
Let’s take Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, for example. Despite newly-elected New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ staunch anti-crime stance, the DA vowed not to prosecute crimes like fare evasion, trespassing, and resisting arrest. But it gets even worse than that. The New York Post reported:
Manhattan’s new DA has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.
In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why this idea will have disastrous repercussions for residents – especially minorities – living under his jurisdiction.
But that’s not all.
Fox News’ James Gagliano pointed out how rising crime rates have affected minorities. “An analysis of the murder wave in 2020, conducted by The Marshall Project, determined that minority communities were the hardest hit, with 85 percent of the homicide increase located in communities of color,” he wrote.
New York Police Department commissioner Keechant Sewell criticized Bragg’s position on prosecuting crimes. She wrote an email to officers in which she noted a 59 percent increase in “quality of life” complaints to the city’s 311 information line. She also wrote:
In addition to gun possession, I am concerned that pretrial incarceration will no longer be sought for charges such as terrorism, criminal sale of a firearm, gun-point robberies … and other serious violent felonies.
In San Francisco, district attorney Chesa Boudin has pursued a similar strategy: Crack down on crime by not prosecuting offenders. The Wall Street Journal reported:
When Chesa Boudin ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2019, he said crime was caused by poverty, wealth inequality and inadequate government spending on social programs. He called prostitution, open drug use and drug dealing “victimless crimes” and promised not to prosecute them. The result has been an increase in crime so sharp that San Francisco’s liberal residents are now paying for private security guards, taking self-defense classes, and supporting a recall of Mr. Boudin, with a vote set for June 2022. Retailers like Walgreens and Target are closing stores in the city, citing rampant shoplifting. Last week, a shockingly organized mob of looters ransacked a downtown Louis Vuitton store.
Boudin is now on the receiving end of a second recall attempt, due to his refusal to take action against those committing crimes.
The list goes on and on.
Woke DAs in major cities are more concerned with making it easier for criminals to commit crimes than they are with protecting the public. With officials like these in office, who needs to defund the police? Sure, they might arrest individuals carrying out smash-and-grab operations, but what good is that if prosecutors fail to hold these thugs accountable? What kind of message are these people sending to those who have no problem violating the law?
At some point, there has to be a backlash. Just as the defund the police movement was rejected by the public, soft-on-crime prosecutors who don’t want to do their jobs must also be held accountable. Unfortunately, this troubling trend might not be so easy to oppose. Those who favor a relaxed approach to crime are typically not affected by the rise in illegal activity; they are often insulated from the consequences.
Still, this does not mean this trend will persist forever. The time will likely come when residents become fed up enough to show up at the polls and vote these people out. Indeed, it’s possible we might see this happen with Chesa Boudin. If he is ousted, perhaps other cities will follow suit. One can only hope, right?
