You don’t have to be McGruff the Crime Dog to recognize what’s happening in American cities; Violent crime is going through the roof across America’s urban landscape. As we covered earlier this week, shoplifting is commonplace in San Francisco, Chicago is in disarray as police are banned from chasing most criminals on foot, and now, we have a report that Dallas is the latest metro area to outpace the number of murders at this point in 2020.

But, the solution, as we’ll discuss today, to these problems is both in part of the government getting tough on crime, as well as focusing on policies that incentivize fatherhood.

Fox4 reports that “halfway through 2021, and violent crime is on track to eclipse 2020. Last year had 252 homicides, which is the most in nearly two decades.”

Indeed as the local TV station notes, on Thursday of this week, “a child was stabbed to death, a man was shot while driving and another man was shot to death in his North Dallas apartment.”

According to police, that victim on Thursday was a seven-year-old girl. The suspect in that case is 23-year-old Troyshaye Mone Hall, 23.

She is “facing charges of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. She was booked into jail just before 11 p.m. Thursday.”

The Dallas News reports that Hall is currently out on probation. She has had previous run-ins with the law, including threatening to stab her boyfriend.

Court records show that Hall is serving eight years of deferred-adjudication probation after pleading guilty in 2017 to charges of aggravated assault and burglary of a habitation.

Police said that she threatened her boyfriend with a knife in late May of that year. A few days later, she was accused of forcing her way into an apartment where the boyfriend’s cousin lived — police said the boyfriend was staying there and that Hall mistakenly thought the cousin was his new girlfriend — and attacking the other woman.

Hall is just the latest example of a homicidal criminal plaguing America. CNN recently told its readers that:

Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year.

Critics, of course, say that violent crime can be blamed on guns and that more gun control is needed to address the problem. This doesn’t make any sense, considering that stabbings and physical assaults are rising as well. And even if they weren’t, as RedState readers know full well, these cities often have the strongest gun control laws in the country, which wind up allowing only the bad guys to have guns.

What is rarely reported in the mainstream media is that these cities’ violent crimes are Democratically run, and have been for decades. Take Dallas for example, there has only been one Republican mayor since 1995. The rest have been Democratic, except for one year an independent held the position.

Democrats in these cities have tried everything from bail reform to restorative justice, to gun control, to an increase in social workers, and yet come still keeps going higher. But there are truly two tried and tested areas that still stop crime from rising.

The first is the “Broken Windows’ policy. This was then-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s tough on lowe level crime, such as prosecuting a vandal for breaking a window, as a way to date criminals from other violent crime. According to City Journal, the policy had resounding results. “With Broken Windows as a key part of a broader reform of policing (including the introduction of new accountability measures and computer analysis of crime patterns), the Giuliani era saw serious crime fall 65 percent in Gotham, sparking a citywide revitalization.”

The second reason is one that most “leaders” in America shy away from discussing; the lack of fathers in cities. America is currently facing what should be considered an epidemic of fatherlessness. This is nationwide, but as of 2017, 70 percent of all homes in major cities are without a father. According to Professor Melissa McKearny, this has disastrous effects for children:

“…research consistently shows that kids who live with two married parents have lower rates of poverty, have higher cognitive test scores in childhood, have fewer behavioral problems. They seem to have better health outcomes. They’re less likely to live in poverty when they’re 25. They’re more likely to complete college and they’re less likely to become young, unmarried parents themselves.”

This problem may seem like a neve ending cycle. Fatherlessness has been rising for decades. As children grow up in communities without fathers, they think it is the norm. And so, the problem of fatherlessness gets passed onto the next generation and with the behavioral issues that lead to crime and societal degradation.

So, until there is a focus on fatherhood in America, as well modeling “justice reform” not on allowing more criminals into the streets, but as Mayor Giuliani showed, getting tough on lower-level crime, we can expect these crime rates to continue. But, in an era where the Democratic Party seems more focused on showing that there are no differences between men and women and that having a father and mother doesn’t matter, as well as District Attorneys who want to focus less on lower-level crime, it’s tough to see either of these policy issues coming to the forefront of the Democratic party’s platform.