
<p>(<em>This commentary is a bit long, but the subject requires more than a headline because of all the disinformation coming from the left</em>.)</p>



<p>There’s a peculiar phenomenon sweeping across America’s major cities—one that would be hilarious if it were not so tragically stupid. It’s the progressive crusade to dismantle law and order, brick by brick, policy by policy, tweet by tweet.  ;Now, I’m not saying those Democrats on the radical left are <em>trying</em> to turn cities into crime-infested playgrounds for repeat offenders—but &#8230;. ; oh, that is exactly what I am saying. It has been going on far too long to be attributed to incompetence or simple stupidity. ;  ;The fact remains that high crime is an iconic feature of the major Democrat-controlled cities – most severe in the segregated minority communities.</p>



<p>Oh &#8230; I know those on the left keep pointing to some Republican states with crime rates higher than Chicago, New York or Baltimore. ; And they talk about the crime numbers in their own cities coming down. ; Both of those claims are deceptive. ; It is the magical use of the statistics in the spirit that figures do not lie, but liars do figure. ; (In politics, they call it “spin”).</p>



<p>Democrats employ a number of deceptions to cover their butts and deflect from their own culpability in America’s high crime rates in the ; major cities.</p>



<p><strong>Deception #1: States versus Cities</strong></p>



<p>Democrats mix apples and oranges. ; They claim there are even higher crime rates under Republican administrations. ; They arrive at that by mixing state-based and city-based figures. ; For example, the crime rate is high in the red state of Missouri – but that is because of the high crime rate in the Democrat-controlled city of St. Louis. ; AND (this is important) &#8230; <strong>policing and law enforcement are the primary</strong> <strong>responsibilities of the municipal governments, not the state governments</strong>. ;</p>



<p>Memphis is in the red state of Tennessee and has one of the highest crime rates in the nation. ; But the city of Memphis – and its police department, the prosecutors and the courts &#8212; have been under Democrat control for the past 58 years.</p>



<p><strong>Deception #2: High Crime Numbers versus Declining Numbers</strong></p>



<p>This deception has two elements. ; The first is whether the reductions claimed in the major cities are accurate – and there is every reason to believe they are not. ;</p>



<p>For example: In 2023, the FBI’s annual <em>Crime in the Nation</em> report claimed a 1.7% <strong>decrease</strong> in violent crime for 2022. This was widely touted by the Biden administration and media outlets as proof that crime was coming under control on there watch. ; BUT (ß That is a big “but”) the FBI later revised their numbers reflecting a 4.5 percent<strong> increase</strong> in violent crime for 2022. ; That is a whopping 6.2 percent swing. ; It seems the Bureau missed 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, 37,091 assaults and a bunch of lesser crimes in the original report. ; In a single year, the FBI reported 225 murders in Baltimore, while the city’s own records showed 262.</p>



<p>Under counting crime is also a local issue.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>In Wahington, D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has been accused of systematically downgrading serious crimes to lesser offenses. Records showed felonious assaults being routinely reduced to misdemeanors.</li>



<li>In Chicago, reports have shown police often reclassifying violent crimes—especially sexual assaults and aggravated batteries—as “non-criminal incidents” or lesser offenses.</li>



<li>A 2012 internal audit in New York City found several precincts were underreporting serious crimes, including rapes and robberies. Then-Officer Adrian Schoolcraft surreptitiously recorded supervisors instructing officers to downgrade crimes to appear to reduce the crime rate.</li>



<li> A 2015 <em>Los Angeles Times</em> investigation revealed more than 1200 violent crimes in the City of Angels were misclassified as minor offenses.</li>



<li>In 2023, Philadelphia police were accused of miscategorizing or omitting major crimes from reports submitted to the FBI.</li>
</ul>



<p>And the list goes on.</p>



<p>The second issue regarding the misrepresentation of crime numbers has to do with law enforcement and prosecution. In Democrat-run cities, left-wing prosecutors are not prosecuting crimes. ; San Francisco, the city that gave us sourdough bread, tech billionaires, and now, legalized theft. (Okay, “legalized” might be a stretch, but when you can walk out of Walgreens with a bag full of stolen goods and the security guard just waves goodbye, what is the difference?)</p>



<p>We have all seen thousands of serious crimes being committed during riots – arson, looting, assaults, vandalism and even murder. ; Almost none of those criminals resulted in arrests or prosecutions &#8212; nor were they included in the crime statistics. ; According to Democrat policy, if there is not an arrest or a prosecution, the crime does not exist. ; That is good for the record, but not good for the citizens who were victims of all those unreported crimes. ; That may be why so many citizens say crime is getting worse even as the reported statistics say otherwise.</p>



<p><strong>Deception #3: Percentages versus Numbers</strong></p>



<p>In an effort to push back on the criticism of the major Democrat-run cities, those on the left point to some Republican cities with higher crime rates based on percentages. This little statistical sleight-of-hand relies on the fact that a small number of crimes in low population communities become a high percentage. ; One murder in a town of 100 is a one percent murder rate. ; Whereas Chicago – which averages 500 murders a year &#8212; has a murder rate of approximately .0003 percent. ; So, which is the greater problem?</p>



<p>The point is that the plague of major crimes impacting on the most people is found in the Democrat-controlled cities &#8212; and especially in the segregated minority communities.</p>



<p><strong>Deception #4: The Number versus the Decline</strong></p>



<p>Mayors and governors of the high-crime cities claim that do not need help fighting crime (as if they are) because numbers are declining (if they are). ; That raises the question: ; Is the decline meaningful?</p>



<p>If you were trapped in a 400 degree oven, would you be cheering a temperature reduction of 10 percent – to 360 degrees. ; The point is that the <strong>actual </strong>crime numbers in our major cities – and (again) especially in minority communities – are astronomically too high whether the numbers are marginally moving up or going down.</p>



<p><strong>The Failure of Longtime Democrat Leadership</strong></p>



<p>Policing and prosecuting crimes in America’s major cities has been an utter failure for a long time. ; Those Democrat mayors claiming they do not need help fighting crime are full of bovine byproduct. ; They have failed to handle the situation – and millions of people have become victims of their incompetence, their political insensitivity and &#8230;yes &#8230; their racist policies. ; Thousands are murdered every year because those mayors – Black and White &#8212; dismiss the problem rather than solving it. And that is because the current situation benefits the folks in city hall politically.</p>



<p><strong>Ideology Over Reality</strong></p>



<p>This is not incompetence—it is ideology. The modern left has embraced a worldview where criminals are misunderstood poets of the street, and cops are jackbooted thugs with a vendetta against humanity. (Unless the cops are enforcing mask mandates, of course.)</p>



<p>In this upside-down logic, arresting someone for assault is “criminalizing poverty.” Prosecuting a carjacker is “perpetuating systemic racism.” And expecting people to obey the law? That is just fascism.</p>



<p><strong>The Political Math of Madness</strong></p>



<p>Why would anyone support this madness? Simple: votes. The left has mastered the art of grievance politics. They have built a coalition of the aggrieved—real and (mostly) imagined—and they feed that coalition a steady diet of outrage, victimhood, and TikTok clips of people yelling at cops. ; Even with high crime rates, Democrat governors and majors are mobilizing (provoking) street violence against law enforcement officers and agents. ; We have heard that message from mayors in Portland, Los Angles, Chicago, Baltimore and the list goes on. ; It’s not about solving problems. It’s about “<em>performance politics.</em> (Think Broadway, but with more hashtags and fewer coherent plotlines.)</p>



<p>And let’s not forget the media, which now functions as the public communications wing for the radical Democrat establishment. They cover a police officer’s behavior like it is Watergate revisited. ; But when a grandmother gets shoved onto the subway tracks by a guy with 47 prior arrests? Crickets.</p>



<p><strong>The Cop Exodus</strong></p>



<p>Police are quitting in droves. Retiring early, transferring out, or just deciding that being a punching bag for politicians, activists, and Twitter mob isn’t worth the pension. ; Recruitment is down. Morale is lower than Congress’ approval rating. Cities are left with fewer officers, and still the Democrat governors and mayors say they do not need any help – and especially from Trump. ; “We can handle it,” is the mantra – even though they are doing a very bad job of handling the crime problem. ; ; (In my hometown of Chicago, more than 50 people were shot – seven fatally – over the Labor Day weekend. ; They were happening at the very time Mayor Brandon was holding a rally to oppose Trump’s plan to send in more resources.)</p>



<p>But don’t worry—some cities have replaced cops with “violence interrupters” and social workers. (I am not making that up.) These are unarmed civilians supposedly trained to talk criminals out of committing crimes. It’s like sending a motivational speaker into a lion’s den and hoping the lion just needs a pep talk instead dinner.</p>



<p><strong>The Real Victims</strong></p>



<p>Here’s the part that really burns. ; The people most affected by this lawless lunacy are the very groups the left claims to champion. Working-class families, immigrants, minorities, women and the elderly—folks who cannot afford private security or to live in gated communities. They rely on public safety. And they are being abandoned. ; Their stories don’t fit the Democrat narrative, so they’re ignored.</p>



<p><strong>How to Fix This Mess (If Anyone’s Still Listening)</strong></p>



<p>We don’t need a revolution to address the problem. We need a return to common sense. That means:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Prosecuting crimes. (Yes, even the ones that make activists uncomfortable.)</li>



<li>Supporting police. (While holding them accountable—because adults can do both.)</li>



<li>Ending the fantasy that crime is exclusively a social problem.</li>



<li>Electing leaders who care more about results than optics.</li>
</ul>



<p>And maybe—just maybe—stop treating criminals like misunderstood philosophers and start treating them like people who make choices.  ;Bad ones &#8212; and need to be held accountable.</p>



<p><strong>Final Curtain Call</strong></p>



<p>The left’s war on law and order is not just a policy failure—it’s a tragicomedy. A farce. A slow-motion train wreck with a soundtrack of virtue signaling and bad sociology.</p>



<p>If we do not reverse course, we are not just losing cities—we are losing the very idea that laws matter. That actions have consequences. That civilization requires law and order.</p>



<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>

Democrats on the wrong side of the fight against crime
