Progressive politics are undermining safety — Ask the criminals

The political climate in urban America is creating an environment that’s growing beyond rhetoric to the point where lives are endangered.

Currently, local public safety policy is being shaped by elected leaders, political candidates and a competitive media with increasingly less editorial control, legitimizing narratives through the use of out-of-context statistics, incomplete statements and outright lies.

The result is a leadership that is losing control over potentially dangerous fringes of society with deadly consequences to the law abiding public and those who are sworn to protect us all.

{mosads}While the responsibility for the ambush of officers of law enforcement officers in New York, Dallas, Houston, Baton Rouge and Philadelphia lies with the shooters, statistics clearly show a rise in not only crimes against law enforcement but homicides in general.

It has been widely argued that this is a direct correlation to a media and political movement painting those in the criminal justice profession (law enforcement, prosecutors, corrections, etc) as those responsible for criminal justice issues.

Regardless, the steady rise in violent crime in cities where these viewpoints are being debated raises the question whether these politics are increasing dangers on the streets.

To help illustrate this point, look at the Monday news from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago, where a shocking number of shootings occur.

Compare the cities where these shootings are on the rise with news of public outcry demanding oversight of law enforcement or worse; where elections are funded by outside social justice movements with little regard for the administration of justice or protection of citizens from needless bloodshed in their own communities.

Philadelphia serves as the most recent and alarming example of this issue. Within the last month, America’s fifth largest city has seen the incarceration of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who was the 15th public official to be a target of a successful corruption probe in roughly two years.

The election to replace him would be routine, if not for Beth Grossman, the Republican candidate who is running for the seat after two decades of experience as a prosecutor. Her opponent is Larry Krasner, a defense attorney and counsel to both “Black Lives Matter” and “Occupy Philly.”

Krasner takes pride in his record of suing police 75 times but never prosecuting a criminal.

So how did Krasner, who clearly hasn’t the requisite experience for the role of Philadelphia’s chief law enforcement officer, win a seven-way primary to become the candidate?

The answer is he received $1.7M from New York billionaire George Soros.

Soros’ donation to Krasner represents an innovative political strategy for the extreme-left. The electoral map clearly shows a legislative disadvantage for those espousing leftist views.

However, in less-expensive local elections, their policies and social experiments can be implemented without the involvement of Capitol Hill.

A prior example of this is shown in the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio and District Attorney Cyrus Vance in New York. Vance’s policies have resulted in a rise in New York’s homicide, rape and robbery rate for the first time in 20 years. This, after New York City became the national benchmark of crime reduction.

Shortly thereafter, a political carbon copy appeared in nearby Philadelphia.

Mayor Jim Kenney was elected on a socially liberal platform followed by the current election where Krasner is running for district attorney in a similar vein as Vance, who has effectively ended “broken-windows policing.” Remember, “broken windows,” was the strategy credited for dropping New York’s murder rate, which in the 1990s exceeded 2,000 homicides per year.

The difference, however, is that unlike New York, Philadelphia doesn’t have 35,000 police officers and five different district attorney’s offices. Any reductions in enforcement will have an effect on public safety, especially in Philadelphia which has both the highest poverty and violent crime rates of America’s major cities.

In Philly, unfortunately, Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1 and millions of dollars are being donated from outside interests with no stake in the actual safety of the citizens of the city.

A district attorney is a prosecutor, sworn to legally represent the interests of both the city but the victims of violent crime.

To think that the men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department are going to risk their lives to bring in cases to a district attorney they feel won’t prosecute them or worse — who has become personally wealthy suing them — then you are living in denial.

In the last few years, elected officials at the municipal level and in the Department of Justice have been creating numerous policy restrictions on law enforcement ranging to include consent decrees documenting every interaction with the public.

The end result has been more violent crime and less police presence on the streets. Worse, examples like law enforcement assassinations are showing a growing disregard for the law.

The district attorney’s race in Philadelphia is but a microcosm of a David vs. Goliath fight happening in many American cities where candidates like Grossman, who spent over two decades on the front lines of the war on crime seek to create new innovations to reform the justice system while aggressively targeting those who profiting from addiction and crime.

Meanwhile, her opponent seeks to abandon broken-windows policing, stop-and-frisk, and continues to portray those responding to and enforcing crime as the cause for the imbalance in the criminal justice system.

The Fraternal Order of Police, who represent the rank-and-file of Philadelphia’s police have spoken in their endorsement for Ms. Grossman, as lowered police morale will clearly lead to less preventative policing and thus; more guns on the street.

So for those reading this outside Philadelphia, consider what would happen if George Soros and the other Hollywood and New York millionaires are proven right in their attempt to purchase this election.

If the lives of working class citizens can be put to risk to perform a social experiment, who suffers?

Politicians are earning political capital for pursuing arguments against law-and-order, whether it’s against immigration enforcement or the enforcing drug offenses. What is clear is that the criminal element is noticing and acting accordingly, resulting in needless death and injury.

The strategy for proactive policing and crime reduction was demonstrated over 20 years ago in New York. Therefore, if our political leaders (and candidates) ignore what works to back political narratives not supported by crime statistics; than they are complicit in the crimes they failed to properly enforce.

Unfortunately for Philadelphia, without the outside support for honest candidates like Beth Grossman; many working Philadelphians will be put at risk and forced to confront this violence or simply leave the city they call home.

Mannes is a regular public safety contributor to The Hill and host of “The 3rd Side of the Story” show on Wildfire Radio.  

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.