http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-10-18 13:59:192023-10-18 14:01:04WATCH TRAILER: “Lawless, Liberal Policies | American Blood” Premiering on October 26th, 2023
With crime out of control, American cities are eroding. This was no accident — it was a choice made by progressive politicians who want to abandon law and order in pursuit of a utopian dream. Yet the dream of wealthy elites has become a real-life nightmare for millions of average Americans. The Daily Caller’s new feature film, “Lawless,” debuts Oct. 26 and will expose the real cost of the “Defund the Police” movement.
“We are not a city that can handle parallel critical incidents,” said Matt Mackowiak, co-founder of Save Austin Now, a PAC dedicated to restoring public safety and quality of life in Austin, Texas.
“If we get to a situation where we have a serious bank robbery in North Austin, and something happening at [Austin City Limits Music Festival] at the same time, we will not have enough police officers to respond to both incidents,” he continued.
Austin is home to some of the biggest cultural events in the country. Music festivals, football games, Formula 1 races — they all draw visitors from around the world. Yet, as Mackowiak pointed out, the “Defund” movement has made it so police no longer have the capacity to keep Austin safe during these events. Citizens will continue to be robbed, beaten, raped and murdered as calls to 911 increasingly go unanswered.
With the support of our dedicated Patriots subscribers, “Lawless” will expose the failed policies and corrupt ideology of our ruling elites that have brought American cities to the brink.
We sat down with Mackowiak as part of an investigation into the senseless violence and decay that has gripped American cities since the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Our crew of dedicated documentary filmmakers traveled to three cities at the forefront of the “Defund” movement to examine the terror it has unleashed. Random attacks, industrial-scale looting, and rampant homelessness and drug use — all the predictable results of siphoning resources and support away from police. Austin is the tip of the iceberg, but the problem is not confined to major urban areas.
Police resignations increased by 47 percent between 2019 and 2022, according to a Police Executive Research Forum survey. In the same span of time, the total number of sworn officers decreased by about 5 percent as recruitment was unable to keep up. Combined, this has led to a shortage of cops across the country; even small towns are not immune. Nearly 40 small towns have disbanded their police departments since 2019, according to a study from Rice University.
Facing unprecedented hostility and abuse, police officers around the country are quitting their jobs at a rate “never seen before,” according to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).
“I want to signal a crisis,” FOP President Patrick Yoes warned. “Our profession is dependent on the best and brightest stepping up and taking this job. And because of the actions, and because of the turmoil that has happened in the last two years, we have a crisis right now in manpower.”
Due to the national police shortage, all departments are struggling with recruitment, retention and pay. But rural communities face a unique set of difficulties, according to Sgt. Betsy Smith of the National Police Association.
“As a small-town police officer, there’s a really good chance you don’t have any backup,” Smith told Fox News. “You’re kind of on your own, left to take care of yourself and figure things out yourself. So, we have to think about what we are willing to pay for as the citizens of those small communities.” Without better funding, response times will continue to increase.
Through our investigation, we were able to paint a picture of the impending crisis yet to unfold. Soon, cities and towns across America won’t just face a choice between maintaining a police presence at major events and responding to everyday crime. If the trend continues, departments will no longer have the capacity to respond to crime at all. Liberal elites will always be fine in their gated communities, but in a time of crisis, this could mean life or death for vulnerable communities. A new generation of Americans will grow up wondering, “If I call 911, will anyone even answer?”
At the Daily Caller, we reject that things have to be this way. We aim not only to stem the tide of violence in American cities, but also to prevent the impact of these failed policies from spreading into the Heartland more than they already have.
The Daily Caller’s documentary productions are made possible by our faithful Patriots members, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without them. For the best political analysis in the business, please consider subscribing.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-10-06 12:49:202023-10-07 06:34:31Will The Police Even Answer The Phone?: ‘Defund’ Investigation Finds Austin Citizens In Distress
Despite the occasional looting, chaos, property damage, trespassing, rioting, graffiti, assaults, arson, and general mayhem, the media consistently assure us that Antifa “protesters” are “largely peaceful.” And since the majority of buildings in Portland, Seattle, and Denver haven’t been looted yet, who am I to argue?
Of course, it takes only a sliver of the population to transform downtowns into a mess and create quality-of-life issues for thousands of law-abiding citizens. And the mayors who surrender parts of their cities to left-wing “protesters” are tacitly endorsing lawlessness themselves.
There’s little doubt that if alt-right activists had occupied a few city blocks in Seattle or tried to firebomb a federal courthouse in Portland, we’d be in for feverish wall-to-wall media coverage, engulfed in a national conversation about the perils of right-wing radicalism. Every elected Republican would be asked to personally denounce the extremists to make sure they take implicit ownership of the problem.
When a few hundred angry tiki torch-carrying Nazis marched in Charlottesville, you would have thought the Republican National Committee had deployed the Wehrmacht. Those who led the riot were even asked to opine on CNN.
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On the other hand, left-wing rioters—the people Chris Cuomo and other journalists compared to GIs landing on Normandy—are immediately transformed into apolitical actors, rogue “anarchists,” as soon as any violence starts.
Who knows? Perhaps the majority of citizens and businesses in Portland, Seattle, and Denver want their elected officials to let Antifa act with impunity. Or maybe some of those citizens and businesses will begin fleeing those cities. Whatever the case, it’s a local concern.
WATCH: Journalist Andy Ngo exposes the violence of the left:
To a point. If mayors do nothing to stop anarchists from tearing down federal monuments or from defacing, vandalizing, and attempting to burn down federal buildings, the feds have every right to dispatch teams of agents to restore order.
None of which is to deny that there are legitimate concerns about how law enforcement is conducting itself. I’m sympathetic to criticisms of the federal officers who operate in camouflage and in unmarked vans. Cops should display badge numbers and identification—if they truly aren’t doing so right now—otherwise civilians have no real way to hold those in authority accountable for their actions.
But the claim that Pinochet-like secret police have begun snatching Portland protesters off the street and making them disappear amounts to the arrest of one man, who refused to speak without his lawyer and was released a little more than an hour later without any charges.
If it were up to me, I’d leave Portland to the anarchists and their political accomplices. But federal law enforcement—including agencies such as the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Department of Homeland Security; the Marshal Service; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives—regularly operate across the country. Sometimes they make arrests, and sometimes they do so after going undercover.
This happens under every administration, every day, and it often happens for far less compelling reasons. As far as we know, cops haven’t broken any laws in the streets of Portland. The protesters who cover their faces have broken tons.
With this in mind, it’s been instructive watching many of the same characters who cheer on governors who take undemocratic emergency powers and shut down houses of worship without the consent of the people—and who sometimes arrest Americans for playing whiffle ball, attending church, or cutting hair—act as if policing portends the end of democracy.
The same people who incessantly clamor to empower the federal government when it suits their purposes now act as if protecting a federal courthouse is the Reichstag fire.
MSNBC’s John Heilemann says that President Donald Trump sending federal police into Portland is a “trial run” for using “force” to “steal this election.”
In a piece titled “Trump’s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun,” Michelle Goldberg, somehow still allowed to freely opine at The New York Times, says that “fascism” is already here.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the police “stormtroopers” who are “kidnapping protesters.”
All of these contentions are ugly conspiracy theories, hyperbolic allegations meant to fuel partisan paranoia before an election. Even if we accept the criticisms of law enforcement, the driving problem, and it’s been happening to various degrees in a number of major cities, is that mayors are allowing “protesters” to trample on public and private property. They allow it because they share the same left-wing sensibilities.
But protesting should never be a license for anarchy.
War-like scenes again as federal officers stand guard outside the Portland federal courthouse and are hit with projectiles thrown by rioters. #antifapic.twitter.com/7GpBsINcJq
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2020-07-25 04:53:062020-07-25 04:55:21VIDEO: The Problem in Portland Isn’t the Law—It’s the Lawlessness
