In the early-to-mid 1990s, the crime rate in America peaked. This was until conservatives revamped a useless pork-filled progressive crime bill proposed by President Bill Clinton in order to make America tougher on crime. Since then, crime has been on the decline. In 2020 and now in 2021, however, statistics are showing a full 25% increase in murder reporting across America–and that is from incomplete data, so the final percentages might end up being higher. This increase would equate to a staggering 20,000 murders. But that is not all.
We previously reported on the dramatic toll that local government policies regarding riots and Covid have had over the past year. Now, the numbers are in, and they are so undeniably tragic that even the New York Times has been forced to begrudgingly acknowledge them.
Throughout 2020, progressive leaders in progressive cities around the country defunded police and allowed Antifa and BLM to freely riot, causing well over 2 billion dollars in reported insurance claims and endless violence, while releasing most of the rioters by the hundreds. Yet, the intellectuals at the NYT just can’t seem to figure out what might have caused the unprecedented uptick in murders in 2020 and 2021 that are the worst America has seen in over 25 years. They are also at a loss to understand why the most progressive large cities all over the country are seeing astronomical increases in violent crimes across the board. Portland, for instance, saw a staggering 255% increase in murders and 173% increase in shootings.
How did we get here?
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It was one of the greatest public policy achievements of our lifetimes — the generation-long decline in violent crime. Since the early 1990s, violent crime and murder have dropped by two-thirds, with almost every subsequent year showing a new drop in crime levels from the previous year. Many people thought this was a permanent and irreversible trend and even forgot what it was like to live with ubiquitous violent crime. Well, new data presented by the FBI shows that the entire generation-long gain against murder has been wiped out, with no end in sight.
For the past seven years, I have been a lone voice fighting the trend of de-incarceration promoted by both parties and the Koch brothers. Those who forgot that we achieved the drop in crime by locking up career criminals used the low crime levels to justify “criminal justice reform,” aka jailbreak. Well, now those policies have come home to roost.
Although the FBI doesn’t release its full uniform crime reporting until later in the year, on Monday, the agency released preliminary statistics showing a 25% increase in murder reporting last year from an incomplete set of major city data reporting. What does that mean? It’s not just a reversal of the downward trend, but according to the New York Times, “A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995.”
The data does not even include New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, which experienced particularly sharp increases in murder in 2020. Also, a sample of 37 cities shows that the trend of higher crime is persisting into 2021, with those cities reporting an average of 18% more homicides for the first quarter of this year over last year.
While the NYT recognizes the sharp increase in crime, the paper criticizes the FBI for changing its method of reporting and feigns ignorance as to the source of the rise in crime. “Although it’s not clear what has caused the spike in murder, some possibilities are the various stresses of the pandemic; the surge in gun sales during the crisis; and less belief in police legitimacy related to protests over police brutality,” speculates author Jeff Asher.
Well, the stress of the lockdowns (not the pandemic) certainly didn’t help, but in fact, crime went down last year from March until the Floyd riots in late May. Also, most of the increased murders are in inner cities, not across the board, which is what one would have expected if the virus was the cause. Furthermore, where is the evidence that the gun sales are to the criminals (who get them on the black market) and not to the people protecting themselves against the criminals? Also, “less belief in police legitimacy” is an uncanny way to describe lack of deterrent, which is the real culprit. We have simply stopped deterring and punishing crime in this country.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Portland, Oregon, where BLM and ANTIFA, including some career criminals, have been able to riot, beat, burn, and occupy public and private property with impunity for nearly a year. The result? According to crime policy expert Sean Kennedy, a fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute, since June 2020 (just after the Floyd riots), there has been a 255% increase in murder in Portland through February 2021 and a 173% increase in shootings.
Remember, Portland is not known for murder. As Jeff Reynolds of PJ Media explains based on Kennedy’s data: “The numbers are truly alarming. From January through April 2020, there were a total of three murders in Portland. Just in January and February 2021, we’ve already seen 20 murders. For the period of June 2020 through February 2021, 71 murders have occurred in Portland. That’s a staggering 255% increase over the same period one year prior.”
“Less belief in police legitimacy,” indeed! It’s more like the criminals know they will not be punished for their crimes.
The bottom line is that a mixture of pretrial criminal releases from jail, early prison releases (both accelerated under COVID), hands-off policing, unpunished rioting, and virtually no prison time for juvenile carjackers has created a perfect storm to reverse the downward trend on crime we once thought was irreversible.
There is no city that showed the drop in crime in the 1990s better than New York City, yet it now also serves as the poster child for the reversal of that trend, with a 47% increase in murder and a 100% increase in shootings. Police unions in New York place the blame squarely on the mass pretrial releases of gun and other violent felons. It’s not that more guns are on the street as a result of first-time suburban moms buying guns to protect themselves; it’s that more gun felons and gang leaders are on the streets and not behind bars. The same people who promote locking up the guns are working overtime to release those who commit gun violence.
According to the NY Division of Criminal Justice Services, the average daily jail census in New York in 2020 was less than half the level from just a few years ago. That’s an awful lot of criminals who used to be locked up who are now out on the streets.
