“Depolicing”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) district saw a 57% increase in major crime under her tenure, a new study found.

The district suffered massive increases in what the New York Police Department considers the seven “major” crimes of murder, rape, robbery, felonious assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto, a study by former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro found. Shootings went up by 47.05%, the study said.

“Let’s just say, with those numbers: Were she a precinct commander, she’d better have some answers for the chief of department,” Mauro wrote in an opinion piece.

‘Overwhelmed’: Cops combat violent crime as ranks dwindle

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Five years after Brian Spaulding’s parents found him fatally shot in the home he shared with roommates, his slaying remains a mystery that seems increasingly unlikely to be solved as Portland, Oregon, police confront a spike in killings and more than 100 officer vacancies.

The detective assigned to investigate the death of Spaulding — a chiropractic assistant who didn’t do drugs, wasn’t in a gang and lived close to the house where he was born — left in 2020 in a wave of retirements and the detective assigned to it now is swamped with fresh cases after Portland’s homicide rate surged 207% since 2019.

Portland, Oregon, cops, already diminished, demoralized, and defunded, are being targeted, yet again, by Leftists who have intentionally put a target on their backs. Officers involved in two shooting incidents were outed and doxxed by anti-police Leftists. After a third officer-involved shooting, Portland Police refused to divulge the officer’s identity.

A police shooting in Minneapolis reveals the misplaced priorities and misguided policies of the defund-the-police Left.

In Minneapolis—birthplace of the nationwide defund-the-police movement— another viral police killing has ignited a local firestorm. But the circumstances of this case, in contrast to George Floyd’s death in police custody, have highlighted the activist Left’s perverse prioritization of violent criminals over their victims and the folly of one of their preferred policing reforms.

On July 13, at about 9:30 P.M., police responded to a call from 24-year-old Arabella Foss-Yarbrough, a mother of two young children. She told police that a man had “shot through” her apartment while she was cooking dinner for her kids, adding, “I don’t know if I should shoot back. I have [a] license to carry.”

A wealthy Minneapolis neighborhood crowdfunded $210,000 to pay the city’s police department for extra officer patrols amid a skyrocketing crime surge.

Extra patrols were dispatched to Lowry Hill, where more than 40 percent of residents earn six figures, after the community raised funds to pay cops $107 for each hour of overtime they worked.

The community requested additional police presence after Minneapolis saw increased violence and criminal activity after an outcry over George Floyd’s murder prompted the woke city council to cut $1 million from the police department.

West Hollywood voted to cut financial support for the sheriff’s department

Southern California has always had a casual relationship with reality, but West Hollywood’s decision to stop funding the LA Sheriff amidst a mounting crime tsunami takes the fantasy to a new — and dangerous — level. As usual this policy was concocted by woke politicians and not approved by the voters, who might be less than enthusiastic about the notion of replacing police officers with 30 unarmed “security ambassadors”.

Liberal elites who benefit from the institutional status quo have fallen in love with the term systemic racism because it doesn’t lead to substantive changes.

On Wednesday morning, Toronto Police Chief James Ramer issued a formal apology to Black people in response to new race-based data on police use-of-force and strip searches.

“The release of this data will cause pain for many,” Ramer said. “Your concerns have deep roots that go beyond the release of today’s report. We must improve; we will do better.”

“I’m here to address what I see as really egregious in terms of this particular public relations stunt that has been delivered by our Chief here.”

Beverly Bain, a professor at the University of Toronto and a member of the No Pride in Policing Coalition, told a room full of reporters and Toronto police’s top brass Wednesday.

“This has nothing to with the Black community. In fact, the Black community never asked for an apology. Neither did I think that you were apologizing to the Black community. You were apologizing to your rank and file,” Bain said.

I doubt their claim to represent the community. They seem the usual cast of rent-seekers.

An expansive Toronto police report released Wednesday confirms what many racialized people in the city have long said: Black, Indigenous and other diverse groups are disproportionately affected by use-of-force and strip searches by officers.

Toronto Police Chief James Ramer is discussing the data analysis at a morning news conference.

The never-before-seen statistics released today were drawn from records of 949 use of force incidents and 7,114 strip searches over the course of 2020. The granular analysis, compiled by the force’s Equity, Inclusion and Human Rights Unit alongside outside data experts in concert with a 12-member community panel, examines a wide range of questions.

How can they be overpoliced? “Racialized” people are the majority in Toronto. Perhaps the arrest stats merely reflect that demographic.

Toronto police are set to release race-based statistics on officer use of force and strip-searches on Wednesday; the results will “lead some people to question the hard work you do every day,” an internal memo warns.

On the eve of the release of race-based statistics on police officer use of force and strip-searching — findings that “reaffirm the existence of systemic racism” within the force — Toronto police is warning its employees that “challenging” days are ahead.

Two major Toronto police reports are set to be released Wednesday: race-based statistics on the use of force and strip-searching by officers, and the results of an external review into workplace harassment within the force.

In an internal message sent Saturday and obtained by the Star, Toronto police informed its employees that the race-based data will prompt discussion “about the extent to which systemic racism has led to differential treatment of racial groups by our service.”

I bet the Star has a call in to Chesa Boudin.

… More than 400 officers have left while crime has soared. This past week The Seattle Times and KUOW reported new sex assault cases aren’t being investigated because of understaffing. Meanwhile, the softer approaches envisioned for community safety still are in the pilot stages.

This past week the city announced it is refunding 100,000 parking tickets and voiding another 100,000 because of an oversight — namely that the parking enforcement officers, who are civilians, were not regranted the authority to write tickets after they were switched out of the Police Department last fall.

Performative politics won’t help victims of crime

In Baltimore the protests that followed the death of George Floyd felt less like an eruption and more like a mellow reprisal of events that had taken place five years earlier. The death of Freddie Gray in police custody had sparked protests that ended in injuries to both protestors and police, mass arrests, widespread property damage, arson, and no significant policy changes. The 2020 protests, in contrast, were less spontaneous, largely directed by civic leaders, and far less violent. Out of their ashes emerged a young mayoral candidate named Brandon Scott, who was running on a progressive platform of public safety.

Violent crime is surging on New York subways because the justice system switched its focus from enlightened prevention to post-mayhem mop-up.

On Sunday, Daniel Enriquez became the New York City subway’s latest “random” crime victim, shot in the chest at close range and killed as he traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan for midmorning brunch. Enriquez was the fourth person to die by violence on the subway this year, and the third to be killed by a stranger. Each of the four subway killings has something in common with the others: justified intervention by police, prosecution, or incarceration could have prevented it. A few years ago, it likely would have. New York is suffering soaring crime because it has abruptly switched its justice system from enlightened prevention to gruesome mop-up.