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Remember not long ago when New York City had so much crime, violence, and disorder that it was labeled unlivable? I do. City residents were under siege by street thugs, hustlers, prostitutes, and drug dealers. Businesses fled to neighboring states. Why? Because the city officials and liberal politicians of that time created the deplorable conditions with their failed urban policies that abandoned societal behavioral norms, implementing soft on crime policies, all in the name of feel-good social engineering bluster. These failed experiments disregarded human behavior while sound empirical research and study told them not to do it.
Fortunately, in 1994 Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor. He had a lot of work to do because the residents had suffered enough crime and violence to choke a horse. With Giuliani at the helm, New York City experienced a renaissance. Giuliani focused on public order maintenance. He selected a no-nonsense commissioner, William Bratton, to lead the police department. Bratton went right to work, cracking down on subway fare turnstile jumpers who made the underground transportation facilities their living space. These miscreants intimidated riders, shaking them down for money. Riders obliged so they would be left alone. It’s the same way with the motorist on the street who couldn’t move a city block without being interrupted by a squeegee man shaking them down to clean their windshield.
Cleaning up the streets resulted in miraculous reductions in crime, violence, and disorder, plummeting the levels to historic record lows. Other urban cities plagued with high crime copied this empirically researched crime reduction strategy called, Broken Windows policing strategy for crime control with similar results. As more police were hired, murders in New York declined from over 2,000 a year to around 200. City leaders worked with prosecutors and the courts to hold criminals accountable for minor violations as well as misdemeanors and felonies. Criminals were jailed for the longest period that the law allowed. The revolving door of criminal justice was halted. Criminals got the message that something was going to be done about their anti-social behavior. Robberies and rapes declined while investors and businesses began to return to the city. New York City became livable again.
Fast-forward to 2020. The War on Police and the soft on crime, hug a thug mentality, has returned and destroyed the safety and order of the city. Criminals have morphed into victims, where Mets Baseball tickets are given out for promises to appear in court. Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio and his band of cowards offer hugs and kisses for criminal conduct. Who comes up with this idiocy except liberals? Mayhem has returned. Murders, and robberies are increasing, and the message is clear to crime victims: you don’t matter. Politics does.
The current climate in New York City is dire. Yet rather than protect the law-abiding citizens, the misguided liberal politicians doubled down with another pro-criminal policy that no longer requires bail for people arrested. This will fully unleash the criminal element on law-abiding New Yorkers. It won’t be long before it begins to have an impact on Manhattan tourism. The results in the first month of this insane policy are apparent. A sharp rise in crime so far in 2020 has predictably occurred. In one incident a serial bank robber released with no bail walked out the door and robbed another bank!
This recent insanity is all part of the progressive plan to manufacture chaos in public spaces. It has nothing to do with equal justice under the law. It is about getting the police to back down and not enforce the law. This has always been the goal of the War on Cops. The destruction of the rule of law will cause the social order to collapse. Vast unrest will follow. Then government solutions will be proposed to restore order. That doesn’t include the use of police, jails, and prisons to control crime and disorder either. They are laying the groundwork for mass demonstrations if President Trump gets re-elected. It will be their only option as the thought of another four years of a Trump presidency delays their warped vision of remaking America for maybe decades. These lunatic lawmakers also realize that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts which have served as their firewall will slip away if Trump continues to fill these judicial posts.
It’s not pretty folks. I refuse to stick my head in the sand and ignore what is happening. I obtained and read the confidential manual called DEMOCRACY MATTERS: Strategic Plans for Action. You should too. Four well-known leftist subversive groups like Shareblue, Media Matters, American Bridge, and CREW, designed it. They are well-organized, well funded, and their plan to destroy this republic is underway.
In the meantime, we must ask how many crime victims will think twice before picking up the phone to call for help in the Big Apple? Even when the victim is placed in severe harm's way, why pick up the phone and call for help? Sure the police will come and arrest the criminal for a violent crime. But hours later they’ll be back to finish the crime—no cooling off, no remediation, no protection, while New York liberal lawmakers and politicians offer them cover. Sickening. Clearly, crime victims and law abiding residents do not matter in New York.
Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board of Directors for the Crime Prevention Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com