“Depolicing”

An unoccupied car belonging to Democratic ‘defund the police’ advocate Rep. Cori Bush was struck by gunfire in St. Louis early Saturday, marking the second time her vehicle has been hit in two years.

The Missouri congresswoman confirmed the news Thursday on Twitter, saying: ‘I’m touched by everyone who has reached out. Thankfully no one was harmed. But any act of gun violence shakes your soul.’

Bush, 45, said in a statement: ‘Like far too many of us in St. Louis, experiencing gun violence is all too familiar.’

After a spike in crime, progressive cities are reversing cuts

Over the last two decades, progressives have established a new consensus on crime. Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession should be reclassified as misdemeanours. Cities should defund the police and spend the money on nurses, psychologists and social workers instead. Offenders should have minimal involvement with the justice system — and be kept out of jail wherever possible.

She and other Democrat mayors and DA’s apparently expect the feds to save their cities from the crime surge they’ve made possible.

Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon is one of the congressional Dems who sponsored the Mental Health Justice Act. The bill would give incentives to police departments to replace emergency responders with mental health professionals to respond to crimes with individuals who have “behavioral” issues.

Scanlon was carjacked at gunpoint and, because she wasn’t injured, we can say it’s poetic (and political) justice.

Scanlon is typical of the Democrats who have tried (and in places succeeded) in defunding the police. Those people tolerate — and thus encourage — criminal behavior.

Democratic Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has jumped on a tweet sent by former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton that went viral earlier this week.

In the tweet, Bratton – who worked under outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio – shared a photo of several homeless people sleeping on a New York City subway train.

‘You know why NY’s ‘recovery’ isn’t happening? This photo today on the E Train at 6:45am at 42nd & 8th says it all,’ he wrote on Wednesday.

Radical prosecutors and woke politicians in American cities have been defunding, demoralizing, and neutralizing the police—and violent crime is rising. In response, citizens have started taking the law into their own hands. This can happen in the middle of a riot, as in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse, but it can also occur in a more planned, deliberate fashion. Entire neighborhoods in several cities have enlisted private security services to protect their homes and loved ones.

Two Democrats who supported police reform in Philadelphia and Chicago were both carjacked at gunpoint within 24 hours of each other.

Illinois state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) was targeted in suburban Chicago on Tuesday night, while Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) was carjacked Wednesday afternoon after an event in South Philadelphia.

Lightford was driving with her husband, Eric McKennie, in Broadview at about 9:45 p.m. when three masked suspects in a Durango SUV hijacked the couple’s black Mercedes.

For several years now, progressives have waged a war on law enforcement

Preventing crime and punishing offenders is primarily the responsibility of local authorities. They have no greater obligation to the citizens who elected them and who fund the government.

It is up to local police, supervised by political leaders and subject to the law themselves, to provide a safe environment for citizens to go about their lives, pursuing their own goals in peace and security. It is up to local politicians to ensure that police are adequately funded and properly trained. It is up to local prosecutors to follow up all justified arrests and prosecute offenders when the evidence is adequate. When police overstep their limits, prosecutors should pursue them too. The goal is a safe environment, subject to the rule of law.

“In Burlington, Vermont?” NBC reporter Stephanie Gosk exclaims in this utterly predictable story of outcomes from the Defund the Police movement, even in bucolic Burlington. The city leaped into the “Defund the Police” movement by cutting its police department in the wake of the George Floyd murder, cutting funding by nearly 30% and imposing a hiring freeze.

San Francisco mayor London Breed called for more “aggressive” policing in the city on Tuesday to combat smash-and-grab robberies and other crime, over a year after proposing budget cuts to the police department amid a nationwide movement to defund police.

“It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” Breed said at a press conference at City Hall. “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.”

The city experienced a record number of murders this year

Once known as a laid-back college town with more than its fair share of eccentric inhabitants, Austin has been radically transformed over the past decade. Not only is it emerging as a major tech hub, but in the last 18 months the city has also acquired such high-profile residents/evangelists as Joe Rogan and Elon Musk.

Just 64 days after I moved to Milwaukee, my apartment building’s security called to say that someone had been seen trying to steal my car. The thief had been interrupted, and the car wasn’t taken. But the passenger-side window was smashed, the glove compartment was ripped out, the base of the steering wheel was dismantled, and the ignition was toast.