The year 2020 likely saw the largest percentage increase in homicides in American history. Murder was up nearly 37% in a sample of 57 large and medium-size cities. Based on preliminary estimates, at least 2,000 more Americans, most of them black, were killed in 2020 than in 2019. Mainstream media and many politicians claim the pandemic caused this bloodbath, but the chronology doesn’t support that assertion. And now the criminal-justice policies supported by President Biden promise to exacerbate the current crime wave, while ignoring its actual causes.
The local murder increases in 2020 were startling: 95% in Milwaukee, 78% in Louisville, Ky., 74% in Seattle, 72% in Minneapolis, 62% in New Orleans, and 58% in Atlanta, according to data compiled by crime analyst Jeff Asher. Dozens of children, overwhelmingly black, were killed in drive-by shootings. They were slain in their beds, living rooms and strollers. They were struck down at barbecues, in their yards, in malls, in their parents’ cars, and at birthday parties. Fifty-five children were killed in Chicago in 2020, 17 in St. Louis, and 11 in Philadelphia. In South Los Angeles alone, 40 children were shot, some non-lethally, through September.
Why this mayhem? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch expresses the conventional wisdom: because of the “economic, civic and interpersonal stress” from the coronavirus pandemic. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed pandemic-related “frustration, anger . . . trauma and mental health challenges.” But crime fell during the first months of the pandemic shutdowns, both in the U.S. and globally. Only at the end of May did that trend reverse itself, and only in the U.S., thanks to a surge in drive-by shootings.
...Cops now face a poisonous environment. Since the summer, they have been shot in the head, firebombed and assaulted with lethal projectiles. An officer providing first aid at a crime scene may be met with a hail of rocks and bottles. Resistance is now the norm. Officers believe they face a political and legal environment that is eager to sacrifice them in the name of racial justice.
...“Proactive police work is dead,” says Lt. Bob Kroll of the Minneapolis Police Department. The data bear him out. In Minneapolis, police stops fell more than 50% over the summer. The number of police-civilian contacts plummeted in Philadelphia, Oakland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Across the country, specialized police units that got guns off the street were disbanded, since they were said to have a disparate impact on African-Americans. Police chiefs and prosecutors have refused to enforce low-level quality-of-life laws for the same reason.
The consequence: More gang members are carrying guns, since their chances of being stopped are slim. They are enthusiastically killing each other and innocent bystanders out of opportunism, not economic deprivation or existential angst.
...Mr. Biden’s presidency augurs no turnaround. During the campaign, he claimed without justification that African-Americans rightly feared that their loved ones could be killed by a cop every time they stepped outside. His criminal-justice blueprint promises to eliminate racial disparities in law enforcement. Given vast racial disparities in the commission of crimes, that can be done only by eliminating law enforcement itself.
...The Biden policing agenda is based on a false conceit, however. In 2020 the police killed 15 unarmed African-Americans and 21 unarmed whites, according to the Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings...
...The police aren’t the problem in the black community, criminals are. The many law-abiding residents of troubled areas know this and beg for vigorous law enforcement...
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