Last week, we discussed Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's war of words with Texas Governor Greg Abbott over immigration, during which she's had multiple fits. Despite her chest-thumping over leading a proud sanctuary city, Lightfoot has promptly bussed the incoming illegal immigrants to surrounding communities. The point about preening, hypocritical NIMBYism makes itself -- but it should be highlighted loudly and often:
"Not in my backyard!"
— AG (@AGHamilton29) September 11, 2022
These cities brag about being sanctuaries and lecture about the need of accepting an unlimited flow of migrants, but throw a tantrum & ship them elsewhere as soon as they get a tiny portion of the migrants that border towns regularly have to deal with. https://t.co/xCWU9scfWp
As pitiful as Chicago's position has been, DC surged into the pitifulness lead late last week with this instant-classic performance, in case you missed it:
DC Council Member @BrianneKNadeau blamed the governors of Texas and Arizona for creating this "crisis" and said they turned DC into a border town. pic.twitter.com/fgPkOrUdQi
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) September 8, 2022
This hardcore leftist has been a major cheerleader for sanctuary city policies, but the moment that a tiny fraction of the border crisis is dropped on her doorstep, she angrily accuses Republicans of causing the crisis and turning DC into a 'border town.' The crisis is being driven by Biden administration policies, pure and simple, but yes: A big part of the point behind Gov. Abbott's gambit has been to force Democrats to to grapple with just some of the consequences of their policies. It's working remarkably well, based on the expressions of impotent rage from these blue city officials. As we observed in our post, Lightfoot might have more important things to do than scream at Greg Abbott, as crime in her city continues to be a very serious problem. We posted video of a woman being violently robbed in broad daylight, in a nice Northside neighborhood. Another crime victim recently alleged that Cook County's ludicrous and dangerous 'criminal justice' policies have played a direct role in another spate of robberies in the area:
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Six months before prosecutors charged Tyshon Brownlee with robbing, shooting, and trying to kill Dakotah Earley on a Lincoln Park street in May, Chicago police already had evidence that someone named Tyshon Brownlee was linked to a crew of robbers that was carrying out nighttime armed robbery sprees on the North Side. At least five times during those six months, Chicago police called off pursuits of cars linked to the growing robbery pattern, which eventually claimed well over 50 victims. CPD terminated one pursuit about an hour before Brownlee allegedly robbed and shot Earley while demanding his phone PIN. And the road to justice for a Lakeview woman who was robbed by the crew last November has been littered with obstacles erected by the very people who are supposed to be fighting for Chicago’s crime victims.
This comes against a backdrop of declawing police enforcement actions:
The Chicago Police Department has unveiled a new policy prohibiting its officers from chasing people on foot simply because they run away, or because they have committed minor offenses. The policy, which was introduced Tuesday, also encourages cops to “consider alternatives” to pursuing someone who “is visibly armed with a firearm.” Under the policy, officers may give chase if they believe a person is committing or is about to commit a felony, a Class A misdemeanor such as domestic battery, or a serious traffic offense that could risk injuring others, such as drunken driving or street racing. Perhaps most significantly, the new policy makes clear that the days of officers giving chase just because someone tries to get away from them are over.
And the inevitable plunging of enforcement itself:
In [recent years], violent crime in Chicago has continued to surge —and criminals are mostly getting away with it. The police have made arrests in just 12% of crimes reported last year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis. That’s the lowest level since at least 2001, the first year the data was made publicly available. The overall arrest rate peaked at nearly 31% in 2005 and has dropped steadily...The decline in arrests mirrors a drop in nearly every category of police officers’ activity tracked by the Chicago Police Department. The numbers of traffic stops, tickets and investigative stops — in which pedestrians are patted down or searched by officers on the street — all have plummeted. The number of investigative stops dropped by more than half between 2019 and last year, falling from 155,000 citywide to 69,000. And fewer crimes overall are getting reported — by victims and by the police, who used to produce many crime reports themselves while patrolling their beats. The slowdown amounts to a pullback by police officers as the city has experienced its most violent years in decades, a rise also seen in other major U.S. cities during the coronavirus pandemic and in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
In a hastily-passed, barely-debated, party-line 2020 vote in Springfield, Illinois Democrats decided to expand Chicago's disastrous approach to the entire state. It goes into effect January 1. Supporters decided to call the law the SAFE-T Act, of course, and Gov. Pritzker has hailed it as a bulwark against 'systemic racism.' How "safe" does any of this sound, per an alarmed Illinois prosecutor (who estimates that half of the inmates in his county's jail will be summarily released once the law takes effect)?
On Jan. 1, 2023, it is estimated that more than half of the inmates in the Winnebago County Jail will walk out the door. Approximately 400 criminal defendants will be released back into our community because our Illinois legislators passed the “SAFE-T Act” back in 2020. They passed it in the pre-dawn hours of a “lame-duck” legislative session in an attempt to circumvent the democratic process. They were successful. And so, on January 1, cash bail will be eliminated throughout the State of Illinois...While there are numerous issues with the new law, perhaps most problematic is that it only allows for even the possibility of pretrial detention for a small subset of crimes and under very limited circumstances — regardless of a defendant’s risk to re-offend or their known danger to the community.
Under the new law, entire categories of crime, such as aggravated batteries, robberies, burglaries, hate crimes, aggravated DUIs, vehicular homicide, drug induced homicides, all drug offenses, including delivery of fentanyl and trafficking cases, are not eligible for detention no matter the severity of the crime or the defendant’s risk to a specific person or the community, unless the People prove by clear and convincing evidence the person has a “high likelihood of willful flight to avoid prosecution.” Additionally, in cases involving non-probationable forcible felonies, such as murder and armed robbery, judges may only detain a defendant under the new law if the prosecution proves by clear and convincing evidence the defendant “poses a real and present threat to the safety of a specific, identifiable person or persons.”
I recently interviewed veteran and former prosecutor Jack Vrett (a schoolmate of mine in college), who is running as a Republican for the state House in Illinois and who described even more serious issues with the law. Listen to the provisions he describes, as well as the major concerns he's heard from law enforcement officials in advance of the policy being put into place:
Republican Candidate For Illinois State Legislature Sounds The Alarm Over New Law That Will Release Second-Degree Murder Suspects Without Bail#FoxNews @JackVrett https://t.co/moBkZHMXRW
— The Guy Benson Show (@GuyBensonShow) September 8, 2022
As I told Vrett on air, much of it sounds too bad to be true, but it's all real. Behold, "progress" and "justice."
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