Even Democrats have realized the danger of left-wing criminal justice policies
Christopher Tremoglie
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Violent crime has plagued the country for several years. Many of the nation’s once heralded booming metropolitan areas have regressed into crime-ridden cesspools that more resemble dystopian horrors than cities in America.
Much of this stems from disastrous criminal justice policies implemented by Democratic mayors and George Soros-funded district attorneys throughout the country. Now, after years of ineffective efforts that have left innocent citizens begging for government officials to do something, Democrats have realized the monstrous reality they helped create.
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Consider the plight of Baltimore. A recent study found that Maryland’s largest city had the highest homicides per capita in 2022. Additionally, it was ranked as one of the “most dangerous cities in the world,” according to a report released in October. Crime has devastated the “Charm City” for years, exacerbated by the commitment of Democratic government officials to prioritizing the welfare of criminals over the protection of innocent people. It didn’t work. It had no chance of actually working, and city and state officials have realized the error of their left-wing ways, even if they refuse to admit it.
Incidentally, it appeared it was incidents from Independence Day weekend that caused Democrats in Maryland to have an epiphany and decide to start protecting citizens from the bad guys. During that weekend in Baltimore, 30 people were shot, and two people were killed. It was enough carnage to motivate left-wing Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) to admit what Republicans have been saying for years: The state needed to get tougher on crime. He announced a new strategy to “increase policing and toughen punishment for those facing criminal charges.”
“You cannot violate the safety of our community and think there will be little or no accountability for it,” Moore said. “These people who are repeat violent offenders, I want them to know we’re coming for them.”
“This is about how we are actually improving the quality of life for everybody for good. We just cannot continue going from tragedy to tragedy,” Moore added.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser is another Democrat forced to walk back her support for progressive criminal justice ideology. Initially, after the rioting and chaos in 2020, Bowser and the Council of the District of Columbia cut millions of dollars from the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget under the guise of social justice and supposedly other citywide fiscal decisions. Bowser also implemented multiple left-wing ideological reforms that did nothing but embolden criminals. Bowser’s decision would have disastrous consequences.
To no one’s surprise, the reduction in the city’s police budget correlated with an increase in crime, including a homicide rate that was at its highest level in 20 years. Just like Moore and numerous other Democrats nationwide, Bowser realized the dirty little secret that Democrats want to keep hidden: Left-wing criminal justice reforms do not work. In an effort to remedy the bloodbath she helped facilitate, Bowser committed to “new legislation to support safe and effective policing” in October that would “hold criminals accountable and keep neighborhoods safe.”
“We have to reverse the policy environment in the city that, quite frankly, went haywire in the last three years,” Bowser told Bloomberg News in October.
“We need to act now, and we need to send the strong message that violence is not acceptable in our city — and this perception that people have, that you can commit a brazen crime and get away with it, has got to stop,” Bowser said. “This legislation will change that.”
Who would have guessed that enforcing laws helped prevent crime?
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Inexplicably, Democrats like Bowser and Moore have a hard time comprehending that law enforcement holding criminals accountable deters crime — despite this fact being a known reality for centuries, if not millennia. Bowser could have just listened to Republicans for the last few years on crime. If she did, more people would be alive, and she would have less blood on her hands. Upholding laws and keeping criminals in jail is what prevents crime, not reforms and directives coming from Soros and the Open Society Foundations.
Democrats have been a disaster on crime. They know it. Everyone knows it. The only people who benefited from Democrats’ ideals have been those residing in the criminal underworld. Things deteriorated so severely that Democrats had to essentially embrace Republican criminal justice policies — because, as the Left has repeatedly demonstrated, when it comes to crime, Democrats prefer to protect criminals while Republicans seek to safeguard the innocent.