Haven’t you heard?! Crime is down.
In the lead up to election day in November, this refrain has become a favorite of Democrats who’d like you to forget their flirtations with — and, in many cases, explicit support for — defunding the police.
That’s on top of the dozens of police and criminal justice “reforms” they enacted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
The headlines speak volumes:
“A Drop in Crime Rates? Thanks, Biden!” — Bloomberg
“New data show homicides down in Biden’s last year vs. Trump’s” — Axios
“The crime wave is over, but Republicans can’t let go” — Vox
And New York City is often Exhibit A in this duplicitous messaging campaign.
Through mid-August of this year, murders and shootings in Gotham are each down 10% compared to the same period in 2023.
And in 2023, those numbers were also lower than they were in 2022.
But something’s fishy here.
They don’t say it, but the reason progressives are championing recent declines in offenses like homicides and gun assaults these days is to undermine voters’ (accurate) sense that the left’s criminal justice approach actually contributed to the upticks in violent crime in the first place.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.
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