Surprise: Mayors Suddenly Noticing The Spike In Crime As COVID Wanes

Do they not watch television, read newspapers, cruise the ‘net? The rest of us have noticed the crime, quite a bit stemming from the aftermath of BLM/Antifa and defund the police

As Battle Against Virus Wanes, Mayors Confront a New Challenge: Crime

Mayors of American cities have yearned for the moment they could usher in a return to normalcy, casting away coronavirus restrictions on bars, restaurants, parties and public gatherings.

Yet now, even with reopenings underway across the United States as the pandemic recedes, city leaders must contend with another crisis: a crime wave with no signs of ending.

They are cheerleading the return of office workers to downtowns and encouraging tourists to visit, eager to rejuvenate the economy and build public confidence. But they are also frantically trying to quell a surge of homicides, assaults and carjackings that began during the pandemic and has cast a chill over the recovery.

In Austin, Texas, for example, 14 people were injured early Saturday morning in a mass shooting as revelers jammed a popular downtown nightlife district.

Some city officials have touted progressive strategies focused on community policing in neighborhoods where trust between police officers and residents has frayed. Others have deployed more traditional tactics like increasing surveillance cameras in troubled areas and enforcing curfews in city parks to clear out crowds, as the police did in Washington Square Park in Manhattan in recent days.

Yeah, how’s that working out? Especially when so many police are reticent on doing the things necessary to limit crime because they get abused by citizens and politicians when they do the job. And, let’s just consider, why are so many citizens living in Democratic Party run cities so criminal?

Pete Berghoff, whose family has owned the historic Berghoff restaurant in Chicago’s Loop since 1898, is planning to reopen its doors in July. But he is worried about the unruly gatherings of younger people downtown that have turned violent.

“I’m very concerned that as people return to work, there are going to be confrontations,” he said. “We’re excited to reopen. But we need to make sure that everybody downtown feels safe.”

So many of the Democratic Party voting citizens in Dem run cities feel emboldened to just do whatever they want whenever the want, even if this includes violence and other criminal activity.

Homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year, according to criminologists.

Well, that’s weird, since so many of these have tons and tons of all the gun control laws Democrats want.

Still, even as frustration has mounted, there was also a sense that residents did not want to return to the aggressive measures that officials had resorted to in the past, which had a long tail of consequences and a disproportionate impact on African Americans.

Tough-on-crime stances, once widely popular with voters, have had diminished support as the country has confronted disparities in the criminal justice system. Even without the consequences, criminal justice experts have questioned their effectiveness.

Well, if Democrats in Democrat run cities want to be squishy on crime, that’s their choice, and they get what they ask for. Let them live with the results.