It is time to end the foolish liberal soft-on-crime methodology

April 23, 2024

We all remember the incident back in 2020 when George Floyd was wrongly killed by a Minneapolis police officer during an arrest. What followed was a manic anti-police movement resulting in “defund the police” efforts in many places in the country, and cases where funding for police operations were reduced.

We have also seen soft-on-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute many people charged with crimes; no-bail policies that released those accused of crimes, many with multiple previous charges, back onto the street without having to post bail; and violent protests against police departments that resulted in much damage to public and private property, but relatively few people held to account for their criminal behavior.

How police should react to various situations involving crimes was then “re-imagined,” and new ideas about dealing with crime appeared. While some advocated doing away with police altogether, another idea was that of using “soft police,” where social workers, rather than trained uniformed officers, would deal with crimes and criminals.

Mariame Kaba is described as an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of prisons, and all police.

At about the time the George Floyd riots and protests began, Kaba had published an article in The New York Times in which she wrote: “As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm. People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation.”

She suggests that the problems of safety and justice can be solved by spending more taxpayer money on housing, food, and education, rather than making people pay a price for breaking the well-known and sensible laws.

In the years since this soft-on-crime approach began, crime has increased substantially across the nation, particularly in blue cities and states where this foolish philosophy exists.

One example of this was reported by the FBI. From 2019, before the soft-on-crime mentality appeared, to 2020, following the Floyd death, the national murder rate jumped by 30 percent, the largest single-year increase in history.

Many of us, likely most of us, understand that the system that has been in effect since the origins of the United States of America actually is the more sensible and successful system.

A fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Rafael Mangual, showed the fallacy of not enforcing laws in the traditional way. Police presence, he said, often is all that is needed to deter crime. But removing criminals from the street is also a needed action.

“If a police officer makes an arrest and removes an active offender from the street, if that’s someone who was committing 10, 20, 30 felonies a year,” he said, “that individual being in custody spares the community the crimes that would have otherwise been committed.” Makes sense, doesn’t it?

“In the city of Chicago, the typical homicide suspect has 12 prior arrests,” he continued. “One in five [homicide suspects], 20 prior arrests, these are not just individuals who are being locked up for the first offense and having the key thrown away.”

And he added that crime will always be with us, but removing or reducing the successful practice of having a police presence is “irresponsible.”

As for the public perception of the crime problem, a Gallup poll from last November shows that among both Democrats and Republicans, the number who believe that crime is a serious problem is at the highest point since Gallup started reporting it in 2000.

Predictably, the left responded to the perception of crime being a serious problem, saying it is just a “moral panic.”

But this “moral panic” is the result of seeing what the soft on crime idea has produced: murders, robberies, rapes, assaults, and more.

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald understands the fallacy of these current trends towards crime. She noted how criminals have become more brazen and the commission of many kinds of crimes exploded.

Focusing on the increase in retail crimes that the left-wing scholars ignore, she said, “Our criminal justice elites have decided that they would rather subject the property of honest businessmen to mass expropriation than to apprehend and punish looters, because doing so has a disparate impact on minority criminals.” And, she correctly said that these crimes are “not crimes of necessity, they are crimes of opportunity.”

In the criminal mind is the attitude, “if I won’t be punished, why not rob the store?”

“This is not a normal state,” she said. “It is due to a failure of will. The will to enforce the values of civilized society.”

“It is not a ‘moral panic’ to be concerned about the lawlessness that has broken out since 2020, it is realism,” MacDonald said.

After years of being horrified with what has happened, the public is finally supporting a return to sensibly dealing with crime. Perhaps things will soon begin to change. Cities like San Francisco and Washington, DC have begun to make changes. And not a moment too soon.

High crimes and misdemeanors? No. But some very odd courtroom occurrences

Last week was certainly interesting. With a high profile guilty plea, and a surprising not guilty verdict, among other things, it was quite a week.

Michael Flynn, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Obama administration, then briefly as President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor, on Friday followed predictions that he would plead guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI about conversations he had with Russian officials during Trump’s period of transition to the presidency.

This has gotten the Russia-obsessed left all excited in its so-far frustrated grand hopes of showing that Trump should be impeached for interfering in the election. This incident, however, will not satisfy those desires.

As a transition team member, Flynn’s talking to representatives of foreign governments is not illegal, and in fact is routinely done. Sorry, Trump haters, it is not evidence of collusion in the election.

Given all of that, why did Flynn lie about what he discussed with the Russian ambassador? Who knows? He hadn’t done anything illegal, and could simply have declined to talk with the FBI. It’s a mystery. A report in National Review, in fact, says that Flynn’s lies were so small and insignificant a crime that the FBI didn’t think it would prosecute him. And then, the FBI already had transcripts of Flynn’s discussion with the Russian ambassador, so why question him? Could it be they did it in hopes of trapping him in a lie?

A source close to Flynn said that said the investigation has taken a toll on his family’s financial condition and has been emotionally draining, and that he pled guilty to end the process, according to a Fox News story. Following the guilty plea Flynn agreed to cooperate with the FBI’s continuing investigation.

The news of the plea spawned an ABC News story that Flynn would be testifying that he was directed by then-candidate Donald Trump to reach out to Russia during the campaign. As you can imagine, this story created some crazy reactions. The Dow Jones Industrials took a 300-plus point drop. And, Trump-hater Joy Behar on ABC’s “The View” delightedly told the TV audience that, “ABC News’ Brian Ross is reporting Michael Flynn offered full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians! Yes!” Her excited announcement drew enthusiastic responses from her co-hosts and the studio audience.

Unfortunately for all those Trump haters, it was “fake news.” Ross’ report was incorrect, which ABC finally acknowledged after eight hours, and later suspended Ross for his incompetence.

Moving from that fake news to an incomprehensible jury verdict in a tragic death: on a pleasant San Francisco evening a couple and their 32 year-old daughter walked leisurely on Pier 14, when the daughter fell to the ground. Seriously injured, she begged her father, “Dad, help me!” as he held her in his arms. He couldn’t help her and shortly thereafter Kate Steinle was declared dead of a gunshot wound.

At the time the gun went off, it was in the possession of an illegal alien who had been previously deported five times, and had seven felony convictions. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate’s answers to police questions had at least two very different accounts of what happened, but he said the shooting was an accident. One account held that he simply found the gun, which had been stolen from a federal law enforcement officer’s car a week earlier, under a bench wrapped in a tee shirt, and that the weapon accidentally discharged. Another account claimed the gun accidentally discharged. Three times. Another had him shooting at seals in the ocean. The shot, or one of the three shots, ricocheted off the ground and hit Steinle.

CBS News reported “Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was homeless in San Francisco when he shot Steinle. He had recently completed a prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the U.S. when he was transferred to the San Francisco County jail to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge. 

“Prosecutors dropped that charge,” the CBS report continued, “and the San Francisco sheriff released Zarate from jail despite a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation. The sheriff's department said it was following the city's sanctuary policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”

Zarate was charged and tried for first-degree murder, second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, assault with a semi-automatic weapon, and possession of a firearm by a felon. He was found not guilty of all but the possession charge.

A person who was in the country illegally for the sixth time and had seven felony convictions was breaking the law by handling a weapon, during which time that weapon (accidentally?) discharged and killed an innocent person.  That is pretty much the definition of involuntary manslaughter.

Many people bear some responsibility for this tragedy. First, Zarate; then, in no particular order, the sheriff; those operating and supporting sanctuary jurisdictions; and the defense attorneys, who put saving their client from his just rewards above their duty to achieve justice.