Why Are We Not Keeping Violent criminals off the Streets?
By
Allan C. Brownfeld
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Recently,
a 30 year old man, with a long history of arrests and mental illness,
was choked to death by another subway passenger in New York. City
residents have been divided about whether this incident was an example
of vigilantism or a legitimate response to danger, in this case the
threatening behavior from a mentally ill, homeless person.
Gregory
Umbach, associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal
Justice, says that, “Riders on the subway deserve to have a ride where
they don’t feel threatened. And the mentally ill deserve to have the
treatment and the protection that would allow them to work out their
struggles in the protected space. We can’t have a subway system that’s
both a system of transportation and housing for the homeless. Those are
incompatible goals.”
New
York City’s subways have been the stage for high-profile crimes
before. In 2022, 10 people were injured by gunfire after a shooting in
Brooklyn. There have been numerous reports of people being pushed onto
to the tracks, sometimes to their deaths. Last year, Michelle Alyssa Go
was shoved onto the train tracks by a homeless man with a history of
violence and mental health issues.
Tackling
New Yorkers’ sense of insecurity has been a top priority of the city’s
mayor, Eric Adams, a former police captain who pledged to take a tougher
approach to reducing crime, upon taking office. Last year, the New
York Police Department removed hundreds of people suffering symptoms of
mental illness from the city’s transit system. Adams, who is black, and
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, have announced plans to put
1,200 more police officers at subway stations during peak hours. Crime
on the transit system climbed about 30 per cent last year as more riders
returned to public transit as the Covid-19 pandemic abated.
Mayor
Adams declares that, “The hardworking women and men of the New York
Police Department are doing the work, but the overall system is failing
New Yorkers by allowing repeat offenders back out on the streets over
and over again. Time and time again our police officers arrest someone
who has multiple charges and no matter how many times this person may
have been arrested before, they are often walking three hours later.
There is almost no accountability and that makes us all less safe.”
Our
criminal justice system in many parts of the country seems unable and
unwilling to take violent criminals off the streets. The average person
arrested for homicide has been arrested 11 times previously, said
Washington, D.C. Police Chief Robert J.Contee III during a March news
conference on D.C. crime with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. D.C. Crime Facts,
a private newsletter that reports on D.C. crime, said that people on
parole, probation or community release had a 20 percent higher rearrest
rate for new charges in fiscal 2022 than fiscal 2021.
More
and more liberal observers are becoming concerned about growing rates
of crime and recidivism. Washington Post columnist Colbert King
provides this assessment: “Many advocates of criminal justice reform
contend that incarceration is the least effective way to encourage
long-term reduction in recidivism. That might be the case. But neither
can high rearrest rates for people under community supervision be swept
aside. The problem needs examination and explanation. Is the risk
assessment used to set the level of supervision for each arrestee
professionally sound and up to date? Are caseloads set at a manageable
size to allow staff to do their jobs or are they too high and unwieldy
to make possible the kind of intervention with arrestees that produces
favorable results?..Arrestees usually leave a long trail of victims in
their wake.”
Consider
developments in Baltimore. Former Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby was
a leading voice in Democrats’ push to reform the criminal Justice
system, gaining national prominence after she charged police officers in
the death of Freddy Gray and instituted progressive changes. She
became the subject of widespread criticism from Republicans. But in
January, 2023 criticism was aimed at her from a surprising direction.
The Democrat elected to replace her.
Ivan
J. Bates told a crowd at his inauguration that crime was soaring in
Baltimore and laid part of the blame on Mosby. He announced that he was
dropping her signature policy of not prosecuting some low-level crimes,
a change aimed at correcting racial disparities in the courts. Bates
said it bred disorder. Addressing a cheering crowd, the state’s
attorney declared, “Effective right now—-this moment and second——I
recall that policy. Simply put, my office will start holding people
accountable for quality of life crimes.”
Fortunately,
there is growing disillusionment with so-called “progressive” policies
and a sense among some officials that Democrats leaned too far to the
left on matters of public safety in recent years, leaving the party
politically vulnerable to GOP attacks. They say their stance is a
necessary recalibration for liberals. This, however, is generating a
backlash from those on the left.
Last
year, voters in San Francisco recalled Chesa Boudin, one of the
nation’s most liberal district attorneys. He was replaced with a former
deputy of his who offered a sharply different vision on criminal
Justice. While Boudin emphasized drug decriminalization , the new
district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, is going after drug dealers she
blames for overdoses, gun violence and addiction that fuels thefts and
other street crime. Jenkins announced she was revoking 30 plea offers
to repeat fentanyl dealers made by Boudin. She said she may allow her
prosecutors to seek murder charges against fentanyl dealers whose drugs
lead to fatal overdoses and will seek pretrial detention for dealers the
office believes pose public safety risks.
Jenkins
says that Democrats have ceded the discussion of public safety to
Republicans and it was time for a more forceful response. “We tried the
opposite approach with extreme leniency,” said Jenkins. “We see that
it got us to a state in San Francisco that was intolerable for
residents, for visitors and for business owners.”
In
New York City, Mayor Eric Adams, during his first year, brought back
anti-gun units , put more officers in subway stations and announced a
new plan to tackle low-level offenses like public drinking and dice
games. He has pushed to undo bail reforms which he blames for
exacerbating crime.
Kansas
City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas, who chairs the U.S. Conference of
Mayors Criminal and Social Justice section, said he thinks the message
of “defunding the police” has been a disaster for Democrats policy wise
and politically. He urges a policy approach that is moderate, “where
we can have accountability but we can also have our police departments.”
In
April, Gallup found that concern over crime was at its highest level
since 2016 with 53% of Americans saying they “worried a great deal”
about it. President Biden has criticized those in his own party who
have led campaigns to ,defund the police.” Democratic Party strategist
James Carville said of crime that, “This is a front and center issue and
it’s one that we should by any measure or statistic be ahead of.”
Recently,
Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, was attacked in the elevator of
her Washington apartment building by a man who had committed 12
previous assaults. She criticized some of her fellow Democrats on crime
and assaults upon the police, and pointed as an example,to a 2021
ballot measure in Minneapolis to abolish the city’s police department
and replace it with a news agency. She said, “There are people who have
been, in my view, reckless with their words over the past few years.
If we have to choose as a nation between social Justice and public
safety, we’re all lost. We have to choose both.”
Republicans
and Democrats should be concerned about the safety of their
constituents. It should be viewed as unacceptable by both liberals and
conservatives for innocent citizens to be victimized by criminals who
have been arrested many times and repeatedly been let back on the
streets to victimize additional men and women. Fortunately, we are now
seeing a healthy backlash in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Chicago and other cities. Police misconduct, of course, must also be
dealt with. But crusades to “defund the Police” are highly
irresponsible. The Democratic Party would do well to isolate its small
number of vocal advocates of such a policy. Given the nature of man and
society, law enforcement is a necessity. Minorities would be most
seriously harmed by such a policy, for crime is highest in inner city
neighborhoods. There may be campaigns to “defund the police” someplace
else in the world, but, thus far, they only seems evident in some of
our own fanciful progressive circles.
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