America’s cities are under siege. That’s not a partisan statement when nearly 200 people were shot over the July 4 weekend, and crime is up everywhere.
Not coincidentally, cities with the toughest gun laws and decades of liberal governance are the most dangerous. Murder rates are higher in many U.S. cities than Guatemala City, San Salvador or Tegucigalpa.
San Francisco — where Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton received 86% of the vote, and no Republican has been mayor since the 1950s — is the archetype.
Chesa Boudin, child of convicted far-left terrorists, essentially ran for district attorney on a platform of not prosecuting crime. Many deemed it a “criminals first agenda.” Upon taking office, the 40-year-old immediately ended cash bail in criminal cases.
There are myriad examples of Boudin’s lax, decriminalizing policies, especially releasing repeat offenders, which has led to tragic outcomes. His record on property crime and charging rates is equally abysmal.
A recall effort is underway through Aug. 11.
While the increase in San Francisco’s homicides last year versus 2019 was not quite as large as in Minneapolis, burglaries and car thefts dramatically increased under Boudin.
Former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, who was mayor of St. Paul for much of the ’90s, said part of the problem is the failure of major cities to police and prosecute “quality-of-life crimes.” Coleman rose to power alongside tough-on-crime Republicans like Rudy Giuliani in New York City and Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, all of whom employed the “broken window” philosophy of law enforcement, Coleman said.
“The premise being that if you stay on top of the so-called ‘minor crimes’ such as vandalism and loitering — you create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness. But, on the other hand, if you don’t fix the broken window, if you leave the graffiti on the sides of buildings, if you ignore the gangs, you create an atmosphere of disorder and lawlessness,” he wrote Friday.
A shocking Chamber of Commerce poll showed nearly half of San Franciscans will leave the city due to rising crime and a deteriorating quality of life. Nearly all agree crime and homelessness have gotten worse.
Maybe that’s because a new study showed half of those released from jail before trial in San Francisco never show up for their court dates and more than half commit another crime.
“There are a huge number of people feeling empowered to rob, to loot, to kill other people,” Josh Holmes said on the Ruthless Podcast last week. “That is a systematic problem with policy and leadership. In almost all those cases, we are dealing with generational Democratic leadership. Neoliberal woke policies rely on an elite ruling class safe in their mansions. Whether it’s kente-cloth kneeling or thanking George Floyd for dying, they use people to push their partisan ideas.”
A recent Washington Post poll showed adults who believe crime is a “very serious” problem hit a 20-year high. A Fox News poll revealed more than 70% believe crime is rising. And it’s not just law-and-order conservatives. Former police officer Eric Adams recently won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor after campaigning hard on public safety, which even liberal residents said was their top issue.
The same poll found that Biden’s approval rating on crime was underwater, with only 38 percent approving. Cognizant of this, the president convened a meeting last Monday with police chiefs and mayors.
Oakland, just across the Bay from San Francisco, has a population similar to Minneapolis at roughly 430,000. They have already suffered 72 murders in 2021, significantly higher than Mill City and on track for the most homicides since 2012, when there were 126. Attacks on Asian-Americans, mainly by black men, continue. As in many cities, police have been subject to detestable actions by the City Council, but there’s also some pushback.
“It’s not a Republican issue since we don’t have control over it,” Jesse Watters explained on Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s podcast. “The Democrats are destroying themselves and opposing any agenda that will fix it, just so they can be different than Republicans. Between inflation, the border, crime, and critical race theory, that’ll awaken a grassroots movement in 2022 that Republicans will benefit from.”
It’s debatable whether Democrats want to solve the crime problem. A glance at the San Francisco Chronicle Saturday showed no stories on crime or homelessness. Instead, there were multiple articles about re-imposing mask mandates, despite the CDC, top doctors, and neighboring locales all disagreeing with that draconian, anti-science idea.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
