As the old saying goes, you reap what you sow. It seems that liberal politicians who sowed the specious seeds of their version of “criminal justice reform” in blue cities across the country now don’t like their crop: high crime rates.
Gallup polls show that 63% of Americans think the crime problem is “extremely or very serious,” up from 54% in 2021. Crime rates have exploded since 2016, after a 30-year decline. And that is a political millstone around the necks of the so-called reformers. To survive in their political positions, they need crime rates to come down.
So, when the FBI announced in December that crime rates declined in the third quarter of 2023 relative to the same period in 2022, reformers and liberal pundits took to the media and celebrated the decline and mocked those (like us) who argue that crime rates are unacceptably high.
The FBI did not include crime rates in Los Angeles and Chicago, which have suffered massive crime spikes since District Attorneys George Gascon and Kim Foxx, both George Soros-supported rogue prosecutors, were elected in 2020 and 2017, respectively.
An article by a self-described “humor(ish) columnist” in USA Today chortled that the news of supposedly declining crime rates “threatens one of the Republican Party’s most-valued narratives.”
An NBC News article noted that the FBI data “contradicts a widespread national perception that lawbreaking and violence are on the rise.” Notice the use of the word “perception,” as if victims of crime—inner city store owners ravaged by rampant looting and others—are imagining crime versus actually experiencing it week after week.
Philip Bump, a Washington Post “columnist focused on the numbers behind politics,” snarked that Fox News ignored the “the narrative” that crime rates fell for one quarter. Ironically and cynically, he ignored the actual numbers showing that crime rates have risen dramatically since 2016. So much for “focusing” on the numbers.
Another recent Washington Post article trumpeted the headline “Homicides fell in many big U.S. Cities in 2023, report says.” Except that when you read the article, it makes important concessions: (1) in many cities where homicides fell, other violent crimes are still rising; (2) homicides are still higher than pre-pandemic levels; and (3) the homicide rates in certain cities such as Memphis and Washington, D.C., are still rising. So much for the article’s headline.
Here are the facts: Crime exploded in 2016 and peaked in 2022 in many blue cities. Last year, in some cities, some crimes took a slight dip. That slight dip, celebrated by the Left, is an infinitesimal step in the right direction, but rates are still way above where they were in 2015.
Crime rates have dropped across the country as a whole over the last 30 years, as the chart below depicts.
INFOGRAPHIC: FBI U.S. Violent and Property Crime, 1993-2019
They have dropped since 1992 primarily because states passed stronger laws holding violent criminals accountable while at the same time creating alternative courts and programs, like drug courts, domestic violence courts, family justice centers, and thousands of alternatives to incarceration that help provide resources and services that are more effective at keeping offenders from reoffending. Of course, an essential ingredient to the success of these programs is accountability—meaning that if someone could not, or would not, complete an alternative program, he would be sent to jail or prison to serve out his sentence.
States also empowered police and prosecutors to appropriately enforce these new, tougher laws.
But starting in 2015, prison abolitionists and other “reform” radicals, including “defund the police” zealots, planted the seeds that led to a new crime spike in the blue cities that implemented such so-called reforms. And in cities with the toxic trio of defund the police, demoralize the police, and the election of Soros-backed rogue prosecutors, crime exploded.
Looking at statistics in four of the largest cities in America—Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York—crime rates are still higher compared to rates from when crime was steadily decreasing years ago.
Los Angeles
Gascon is the rogue prosecutor in Los Angeles County who was elected in November 2020 with a $2.5 million donation by Soros to the California Justice and Safety PAC, which supported Gascon. In the three years before he was the Los Angeles DA, there were 1,913 homicides, or an average of 637 per year in Los Angeles.
According to the Los Angeles Times, between 2021 and 2023, there have been 2,304 homicides, or an average of 768 per year. So, even though 680 people were killed in 2023 compared to 764 in 2022, an 11% decrease, looking at the three-year average, there would still be 131 “extra” souls killed each year since Gascon was elected DA.
And that’s just homicides. Lootings, robberies, gang violence, and organized crime have all skyrocketed under Gascon’s watch compared to the pre-Gascon era.
Chicago
Foxx was the first big-city Soros-backed rogue prosecutor, elected in 2016 and assuming office in 2017. And while it is true that there has been a 13% decrease in homicides in 2023 from 2022 (617 versus 709, respectively), the numbers are still shockingly high. In the six years before Foxx began as the state’s attorney for Cook County, there was an average of 510 homicides per year (2011-2016). But in 2017, when she took office, homicides spiked to 660 in her first year and have averaged 661 per year through 2023.
In other words, there have been an “extra” 1,057 homicides in Chicago during Foxx’s tenure (and counting)—an average of 151 more deaths per year.
Additionally, over 75% of homicide victims during Foxx’s tenure have been black, and the majority of those (approximately 87%) were men.
To put this carnage into perspective, between 2003 and 2010, there were 3,481 Americans killed in action in Iraq—an average of 435 a year.
In the war in Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2014, there were 1,833 Americans killed in action—an average of 141 per year.
In other words, the City of Chicago’s annual murder rate is worse than the number of U.S. military personnel annually killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq at the height of the fighting in those countries. In parts of Chicago on any given weekend, it is—literally—a domestic war zone.
Chicago has seen a spike in other crimes, too, since its rogue prosecutor was elected. For example, in the three years before Foxx was elected, there were 4,460 rapes reported to the police, an average of 1,486 per year.
During Foxx’s tenure (2017-2022), there were 10,789 rapes reported to the police, an average of 1,804 per year. That means that there were an “extra” 318 rapes per year in Chicago (and counting) during her tenure.
INFOGRAPHIC: Chicago Homicides, By Year.
Philadelphia
Larry Krasner is the rogue prosecutor in Philadelphia, elected to office in 2017 with $1.7 million from Soros and reelected in 2021 with $1.26 million from Soros.
According to the Philadelphia Police Department, Philadelphia recorded 410 homicides in 2023 compared to 514 in 2022, around a 20% decrease. But when you open up the lens, you see how crime, including murder, nonfatal and fatal shootings, aggravated assaults, retail theft, and car theft have skyrocketed during his tenure compared to the years before he assumed office.
As we detailed in our book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,” in the five years before Krasner became the DA, there were 1,356 homicides, an average of 271 per year. Since he took office in 2018 through 2023, there have been 2,696 homicides, an average of 449 per year. That’s 1,340 “extra” homicides in total, or an “extra” 233 per year.
INFOGRAPHIC: Murders, By Year Philadelphia
It’s the same disaster with nonfatal shootings (an extra 500 per year and counting), aggravated assaults (an extra 906 per year and counting), retail theft (an extra 1,672 per year and counting), and auto thefts (an extra 2,974 per year and counting).
Krasner, channeling his inner Donald Trump, calls reports of rising crime rates in Philadelphia “fake news.”
New York City
Alvin Bragg is the rogue prosecutor in Manhattan. According to Fox 5 NY, overall crime in New York City was down less than a percentage point in 2023 compared to 2022. There was a 12% decrease in homicides, from 438 murders in 2022 down to 386 murders in 2023.
The New York Times reported that there were 328 murders in 2014. This means that another 15% decrease would be required to meet pre-spike murder numbers. In fact, just last year, New York’s mayor claimed that he had “never witnessed crime at this level”—clearly, an 11% decrease in murders is not enough to lessen concerns about crime.
And while rapes and burglaries were down last year in the city, assaults were up 6.3%, grand larceny was up 15%, and stabbings and slashings were up just over 5% year over year. No wonder residents and tourists don’t want to take the subway!
It’s understandable that those who planted the cancerous seeds of “reform” throughout the U.S. are engaged in deception by calling rising crime rates “fake news”—because acknowledging the reality of their crop would be tantamount to admitting that their “reforms” actually made matters much worse. But when the media parrots their lies and refuses to look at the data over time, they are doing the public a disservice. And they are doing so at the expense of public safety and people’s lives.
AUTHORS
Charles “Cully” Stimson is a leading expert in national security, homeland security, crime control, immigration, and drug policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research. Follow at .
Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Follow at .
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