A politician’s attempt to duck and dodge is nothing new, especially when cornered with unwelcomed facts, but those same politicians who are witnessing their own citizens get robbed and killed are insisting, with a straight face, that crime is down.
“The last three decades,” Gov. Gavin Newsom recently told reporters, “we've actually seen a significant decline in crime in the state.”
Jason Johnson of Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund says Gov. Newsom and other politicians are finding clever ways to skirt the truth.
“Crime statistics, like all statistics, are very easy to misrepresent depending on the window of time you look at,” he advises, “and what particular category you select as your proxy for crime either going up or going down.”
That is why Newsom is going back 30 years, when Pete Wilson was governor, when this year 11 California cities have earned the dubious title of “Most Dangerous” city in a rank of 100 nationwide.
“We are seeing a downward trajectory,” Lori Lightfoot, Chicago’s mayor, said last week, “where other cities are continuing to see a climb.”
Mirroring the Mayor’s claims, Chicago’s police officials say violent crimes committed during the summer are actually lower than past years, but a CBS News affiliate reported last month the city leaders are being loose with the data going back to 2020 and 2019.
2020 crime rates tied for the “third highest spiking in the homicide rate in Chicago’s modern history, a criminology professor told the TV news station.
‘Reimagining’ a left-wing slogan
At the same time Democrat politicians are insisting crime is down, they are also insisting “defund the police” is some right-wing talking point because no city government from L.A. to New York City has literally disbanded its police department.
And that is true. In news stories reviewed by One News Now, city mayors have been urged by far-left groups, and sometimes by fellow city council members, to literally abolish the police department. In a compromise, the budgets are cut and new hirings are frozen because the city government is “reimagining” public safety that means fewer police on the streets.
And that often turns out just as one would expect. Antonio Brown, an Atlanta City Council member, watched teenage thieves swipe his white Mercedes last year in the city’s Dixie Hills neighborhood.
Brown, ironically, had voted in 2020 to withhold $73 million from the Atlanta Police Dept while city leaders debated how to reallocate the funds.
Brown predictably called police for help after the carjacking but did not press charges against the teens because, he said, they are victims of “generational poverty.”
In a Twitter post thanking police for their “swift action,” the city council member also insisted, “It’s time we Reimagine Atlanta Together.”
Back in California, among those crime-ridden cities, No. 5-ranked Oakland has seen a crime rate jump a whopping 210% higher than the national average. Yet you wouldn’t know that from the far-left activists who are still defending fewer cops on the street.
“It is not, ladies and gentlemen, about taking all the money away from the police and there being no police left on your streets to deal with violent crime,” Cat Brooks, who leads the Anti-Police Terror Project, told Bloomberg News last year.
Brooks insisted to Bloomberg nine months ago that Oakland’s politicians were “fear mongering” about crime in the city after the city council supported plans to redirect police funds to more social services.
Last month, in a June 28 story, Oakland’s police chief said homicides jumped 90% over 2020 while the city council is redirecting $18 million for “violence prevention” and “harm reduction.”
This week, crime-ridden Oakland is making headlines after Barbara Boxer, the former U.S. senator, was mugged in the city's Jack London Square waterfront district. The popular area is considered a safe area of the city.
