On Crime, Are Some Democrats Finally Waking Up?

Contrition from Democrats is rare. See recent COVID-19 debates or the ongoing Sen. Joe Manchin drama for current examples.

But when it comes to the record crime sweeping America’s liberal cities, introspection is occurring in some places.

Just over two weeks after George Floyd died, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced several reforms aimed at “demilitarizing” her city’s police department, ending police response to “non-criminal activity,” addressing bias, and “redirecting” some $120 million away from the police and toward the city’s black community.

What a difference 18 months make.

Breed delivered a blistering and necessary speech at San Francisco’s City Hall last week announcing that she will be “asking our police department to do more” to address a “problem that has persisted in the city for some time now,” but has “gotten worse” in recent months.

“The reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” she explained. “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 bullshit that has destroyed our city.”

The strong but accurate words irked some progressives, including radical District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who, despite potentially being recalled next summer, still apparently doesn’t mind heinous crime in his once-proud city.

But Breed preempted such pushback.

“San Francisco is a compassionate city, we are a city that prides ourself on second chances and rehabilitation. But we’re not a city where anything goes,” the mayor argued. “What I am proposing today — and what I will be proposing in the future — will make a lot of people uncomfortable. And I don’t care. At the end of the day, the safety of the people of San Francisco is the most important thing to me. And we are past the point where what we see is even remotely acceptable.”

San Francisco has long served as an example of failed left-wing governance, since the city routinely tops America in drug overdoses and homelessness.

Since California’s Proposition 47 passed in 2014 — reclassifying thefts under $1,000 as misdemeanors — businesses like Target and Walgreens have closed numerous San Francisco stores, while some residents told media they now leave their trunks open when parked to let potential burglars know there’s nothing worth stealing.

Shoplifting in San Francisco pic.twitter.com/DVcgLww0hQ

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) November 24, 2021

Breed pointed out last week that even narratives affect a city’s reputation.

“The data doesn’t matter when somebody randomly walks up to you who is on crystal meth and socks you in the face and puts you in the hospital,” she told the New York Times. “The data doesn’t matter when you are here in San Francisco on vacation and all your belongings were stolen because someone broke into a car right in front of you.”

Breed’s 180 is another indication that Democrats’ romance with so-called criminal justice reform is effectively done, thanks to ballot box defeats.

President Joe Biden signed multiple bipartisan bills into law last month to support police.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams emerged from a large primary, running on his record as a retired police captain who’d keep the city from reverting to the lawlessness seen during the pre-Rudy Giuliani era.

Minneapolis voters rejected a dangerous ballot measure that would have replaced the city’s police department with a “Department of Public Safety,” and deep-blue Seattle elected a Republican city attorney over an anti-police radical. Buffalo voters also defeated an anti-police socialist.

Let’s hope more Democrats, and especially George Soros-supported prosecutors, wake up and help America.