A World Without Police

America seems to be undergoing a paroxysm of guilt over racism-- past, present and future.

Police in major American cities have redeployed to control public protest. And this has, for reasons that I am hard pressed to understand, left neighborhoods open to criminal elements. As it happens, it’s a small social experiment. Undermine the police, defund them, replace them with social workers-- someone has a wicked sense of humor-- and what do you get: more crime. Duh?

Let’s begin with Chicago, last Sunday. Then, Chicago set a record for homicide. 18 people killed. Another 7 people were killed from Friday night through Saturday evening. Congratulations, Chicago.

This, from the Chicago Sun Times:

Whiile Chicago was roiled by another day of protests and looting in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, 18 people were killed Sunday, May 31, making it the single most violent day in Chicago in six decades, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The lab’s data doesn’t go back further than 1961.

From 7 p.m. Friday, May 29, through 11 p.m. Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city, with another 85 wounded by gunfire, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

In a city with an international reputation for crime — where 900 murders per year were common in the early 1990s — it was the most violent weekend in Chicago’s modern history, stretching police resources that were already thin because of protests and looting.

Why might this be happening? Why, you guessed it: there were no police. And let’s not forget the looting and the pillaging:

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a longtime crusader against gun violence who leads St. Sabina Church in Auburn Gresham, said it was “open season” last weekend in his neighborhood and others on the South and West sides.

“On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing,’” Pfleger said.

“I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour,” he added. “No police came. I got in my car and drove around to some other places getting looted [and] didn’t see police anywhere.”

In New York City, it was more of the same. More crime, more violence, more killings… fewer police. Compared to last year, the city has seen a spike in crime.  The New York Post reports the grim statistics:

Murders and shootings in the Big Apple skyrocketed last week compared to the same period last year, law enforcement sources said.

From last Monday to Sunday night, there were 13 murders in the city, compared to five killings during the same week last year, sources said.

The city reported 40 shootings last week — the most in a week since 2015. In the same time period in 2019, there were 24 shootings, sources said.

Since the Post merely takes us through Sunday night, we turn to the Daily Mail for the update on what happened last night:

Seven people were injured in shootings in Brooklyn, New York, in a space of just 10 minutes on Monday night.  

Two men, 27 and 34, were each shot in the leg in the first incident at 10.40pm in Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to the New York Post.  

Just five minutes later a shooting in Flatbush left a 35-year-old man injured.  

Then three men, aged 17, 35, and 50, and a woman were gunned down at around 10.50pm in Brownsville. 

What are good New Yorkers doing to deal with this crisis? You guessed it; they are leaving town. As fast as the moving companies can move them. We have various ways to follow demographic moves, but moving van activity is surely a good one.

This, from Fox Business. The story emphasizes the reaction to coronavirus. Perhaps its a vote of no confidence in inept leadership provided by our governor and mayor. Clearly, the same will continue now, given our mayor, Comrade de Blasio’s efforts to defund the police department: 

New York City, the metropolitan area hardest hit by the domestic coronavirus outbreak, is losing residents at an unprecedented clip, according to local moving companies.

Roadway Moving President Ross Sapir, for example, told FOX Business that people are moving out of Manhattan in numbers he has “never seen before,” as his company deals with its busiest season since its 2008 inception.

“It’s insane … I’ve never seen such growth,” Sapir said. “[Business is] double or triple compared to any other season as far as moving out of the city.”

On some days, Roadway experiences a 200 percent increase in leaving inquiries. Its clientele consists largely of higher net-worth individuals, typically 25-year-old to 45-year-old professionals in well-to-do parts of Manhattan.

There goes New York’s tax base. A city that had had become intensely livable has been reduced, in the space of a few months, into a boarded up, bombed out hell.