Democrats own the environment that has led to surging crime rates

The Biden administration and the Democrats created the environment that has caused crime rates to soar. As Americans express outrage at the surge in violent crime because of reduced and defunded police departments, the left is attempting to change the narrative.

Turns out the left doesn’t like to be held accountable for its bad choices.

Just last week, however, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had the opportunity to reject the defund police theme that the left has been spewing for the last year. Instead, she indicated that she wants to defer dollars away from policing and incarceration and put the money into social programs.

Pressley also honed in on ending qualified immunity in order to focus on “police accountability.”

Qualified immunity protects police officers who act within the law and their training against lawsuits.

Pressley is not alone in emphasizing defunding police. In many large cities, run by Democrats, they have actually cut police funding. Many officers have left because of the lack of support.

Vanita Gupta, a Biden nominee for the Department of Justice wrote just a year ago, “… it is also critical for state and local leaders to heed calls from Black Lives Matter and Movement for Black Lives activists to decrease police budgets and the scope, role, and responsibility of police in our lives.”

Another Biden Department of Justice nominee Kristen Clark endorsed cutting the budgets of police until she was a Biden DOJ nominee.

House Democrats passed legislation several months ago that would have removed qualified immunity for police officers and put federal mandates on local law enforcement agencies. The mandates were estimated to impose almost $500 million on local agencies.

The result, if passed, would be a de facto defunding of police.

In the meantime, as their polling numbers continue to crater on this issue, the Democrats and some of their minions in the press, are trying to craft a new narrative.

With great hubris the left claims that the Republicans voted to defund police. It is a whopper, and they know it is.

Every Republican voted against the $2 trillion bailout several months ago. The bill was larded up. But it also included $350 billion for state and local jurisdictions which could be spent as those jurisdictions determined.

For instance, Texas is attempting to use some of that money to finish construction of the border fence. But, of course, Democrats are trying to prevent that.

In the meantime, the Democrats who are attempting to take away police protections and directing money from policing now say that the dollars are fungible. That, indeed, they intended for that money to go to policing.

But that is drivel.

There is not one word of that legislation that mentions police or law enforcement. No one can say with a straight face and clear conscience that Democrats intended to replace federal dollars for local dollars that local jurisdictions purposely eliminated from police budgets.

A befuddled Biden administration, incompetent and incapable of halting inflation or addressing the border crisis, resorts to prevarication and distraction.

Biden and company are not used to being held accountable for the repeated bad outcomes of their repetitive implementation of bad policy. Thus, when the American people want to live in safe communities, the Democrat party doesn’t disavow its anti-police policies, it simply blames someone else. In this case, the Republicans.

Democrats and the left simply lie. And the leftists in the media help perpetuate those lies.

Biggs represents the 5th District and is a member of the House Judiciary Committee.