Sunday The Wall Street Journal crunched the numbers on America’s startling new crime wave (after a two-decade decline) and listed seven cities that have seen noticeable, and sometimes shocking, spikes in murders and other violent crimes.
Seven cities were worthy of note. To no one’s surprise, all seven of those cities are run by Democrats. With the exception of New York City, Democrats have enjoyed one-party rule in these cities for decades. [emphasis is mine]:
Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.
The last Baltimore Republican mayor left office in 1967.
In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.
Milwaukee’s last Republican mayor left office in 1906.
The last Republican mayor of St, Louis left office in 1949.
Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.
Democrat mayors have run Atlanta since 1942.
Chicago hasn’t seen a Republican mayor since 1931.
Rudy Giuliani, the first Republican mayor of New York in nearly 30 years, cleaned up the city. He left office in 2001. The crime spike in that city can be directly connected to Bill de Blasio, who campaigned in 2013 on ending Guiliani’s (and Michael Bloomberg’s) most effective policing techniques.
Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem [New York] precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.
Los Angeles hasn’t seen a Republican mayor in 22 years.
The Wall Street Journal calls this spike in crime “The Ferguson Effect.” After two years of Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and the mainstream media waging a relentlessly dishonest hate campaign against law enforcement (starting with the Trayvon Martin lies and leading straight through to the serial lies surrounding Michael Brown), fearing media and political persecution, some law enforcement officers are understandably less proactive and aggressive, while criminals have been emboldened.
The obvious and predictable result is a rise in violent crime that only hurts predominantly poor, black, inner-city neighborhoods.
The rise in crime is, of course, all part of the Left’s Cloward-Piven strategy to further empower central government, and the elite few who benefit from it, by stoking despair and fear — which only increases dependence on the same federal government intentionally causing the problem.
The fact that this rise in crime is occurring in seven out of seven cities currently run by Democrats is no accident.
If these were all Republican-run cities, you can bet the media would have connected the political dots to this sudden increase in violent crime. The fact that the media has chosen not to is also no accident.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC