Pirate's Cove

Also, water is wet. And this makes police reform, otherwise known as defunding the police, rather difficult

With violent crime spiking, the push for police reform collides with voters’ fears

One of the top candidates for mayor of New York is a former police captain who has said addressing the city’s surging violent crime rate will be his highest priority.

In New Mexico, a Democrat running for Congress in a left-of-center suburban district has been put on the defensive for supporting a measure to cut spending on law enforcement.

And in Philadelphia, the country’s most prominent liberal district attorney is facing a vigorous challenge from a police-union-backed prosecutor he once fired.

Philadelphia has become a hotbed of murders, which the local media generally fails to cover, as The First Street Journal has pointed out time and again. Like here. Most of this stuff doesn’t make the national news. So far, there have been 34 shot and 5 killed in Chicago. Anyone in the national news reporting this? Surprisingly, Chicago isn’t even the worst for overall crime, which would comprise the violent rate and the property crime rate.

It has been less than a year since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, spawning a national movement to reimagine the American criminal justice system and end race-based abuses.

Yet with shootings spiking in cities nationwide during the pandemic, there are growing signs that the thirst for change is being blunted by fears of runaway crime.

Critical tests of just how far the pendulum has swung will come in the next several days and weeks, with a nationwide flurry of elections for mayor, district attorney and members of Congress. Although Republicans have long been skeptical of reform efforts, the races are concentrated in big cities and other areas that are friendly terrain for Democrats. They should offer, at least in theory, fertile ground for the sort of systemic overhauls that protesters who flooded the streets last summer were demanding.

Yet the proposals on offer from leading candidates have tended to be more modest. Some top contenders have even positioned themselves in opposition to the calls of activists for radical change, arguing that police and prosecutors need to be permitted to do their jobs so crime can be brought under control.

It’s cute when politicians want to listen to these unhinged activists, but, then the majority start speaking up, and they want to feel safe. They do not want to be shot, stabbed, assaulted, robbed. They do not want their cars stolen, their homes broken into. They don’t want to see people fighting in the streets, nor pooping, nor doing drugs. And politicians have to listen to those people, who very much include your average Democrat living in a Democratic Party run city, who aren’t down with violence from BLM/Antifa nor what occurs because police are being reticent about doing the job because of the demonization of all police, and, since so many have left/retired, those who are left are being tasked with protecting the rich and upper middle class areas first.

In New York, the idea of a police veteran and former Republican who has pledged to carry a gun in City Hall leaping to the front of a crowded Democratic mayoral field might have seemed unlikely at the height of the movement against police brutality last year.

But Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, said his 22-year career as a police officer has been an asset, not a liability, at a time when crime is at the forefront of voters’ minds. Shootings in New York City are up around 50 percent this year from last year, in line with trends seen in cities nationwide.

“Violent crime is the number one issue. People want to be safe,” Adams said.

Yes, they do. They want to know that the police will show if called. The want to know that police will be around doing what they can to nip crime in the bud.

It is activists, Adams said, who are out of step with voters — especially those in the working class Black and Brown communities that have been his base.

“I’ve never been in a situation in which I hear people say ‘I want less police,’ ” Adams said. “Just because you’re the loudest and most organized doesn’t mean you’re in the majority.”

Most of the activists never seem to live in the areas that end up being the recipients of the crime spikes.

Anyway, this is a very long article that delves more into politics and politicians, somewhat missing that most people do not want police defunded. They might well approve of some reform, and working towards more mental health and such, but, they want criminals punished, and crime out of their lives.