The Rise of the Urban Criminal

2020-- the year when urban crime returned, with a vengeance. Perhaps it was generated by years of seditious rhetoric from our media and our politicians. Surely, it was influenced by a new class of pro-criminal prosecutors.

In America’s major cities citizens elected weak anti-police officials. The result, more crime, less prosecution. By now members of minority communities have expressed their displeasure with the current state of their communities. But, after all, they voted for it, so we do not feel especially sorry for them.

Anyway, what could more clearly typify urban lawlessness than an attack yesterday, in broad daylight, on a BMW, in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue and 21st. St. That is not a disadvantaged neighborhood.

A physician was driving his elderly mother when their car was assaulted. Powerline blog has the story:

Yesterday in Manhattan, a gang of 25 to 50 “youths” attacked a vehicle stopped at a light:

The Daily Mail reports:

The BMW was adorned with medical license plates, but that did nothing to deter the gang of brazen teens.

… By the time cops arrived at the scene, the teens had sped off. No arrests have been made.

One witness said Torgovnick’s mother was ‘shaking and in tears’.

‘We were trapped, there was so much violence, I thought I was going to die,’ she reportedly said.

Torgovnick says he has lived in New York all his life and could never have previously imagined such a scenario occurring on the streets of his home city.

Law enforcement, under continuous attack from Mayor DeBlasio, who apparently has no problem with this sort of chaos, was nowhere in sight.

The attack was not the exception; it was the new rule.

Powerline continues:

As a result of the left-wing social forces that have been unleashed this year, violence in our cities has skyrocketed. Hans Bader has the numbers, relating specifically to murder:

Murders have skyrocketed this year, as local governments have become softer on crime. In the 57 major cities for which data is available, the murder rate is up an average of 36.7%. Murder went up in 51 cities, and down in only six cities. Murder is up 74.1% in Seattle, 72.3% in Minneapolis, 55.5% in Chicago, 54.1% in Boston, 39.2% in New York, 34.5% in St. Louis, and 30.4% in Los Angeles.

This huge rise in murder occurred as progressive prosecutors became softer on crime, parole became available to more murderers, and the death penalty stopped being used in most states.

So, America is suffering an urban crime wave. And urban Americans voted for said crime wave. Democracy in action....

Michael Snyder has some more of the numbers:

Let’s take a look at some of the hard numbers. 

In New York City, the number of murders has risen 41 percent compared to 2019…

In Chicago:

“We’re over 700 homicides by gun in Chicago this year and close to 800 total homicides for the year,” Chicago FOP President John Catanzara told Fox News Tuesday. “It’s reaching historic levels, and this when the city council and the mayor’s budget just cut over 600 jobs from the police department’s budget when crime is soaring. It’s ridiculous.”

In Portland, Oregon:

Fox News reports based on local crime statistics that murders are surging in Portland, Oregon. “As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019.”

2020 numbers dwarf the prior year’s, having reached over 850 shootings. Among these are more single-year homicides than in any year over the prior nearly three decades.

In Philadelphia:

In Philadelphia, if 15 people get murdered by January 1st they will break the all-time record which was originally established 30 years ago…

A violent night pushes Philadelphia closer to reaching a grim milestone. The city could be on track to surpass the most homicides ever in a calendar year.

The record is 504 homicides which was set in 1990 and with three days left to go in this year the city is has had at least 490.

In Miami-Dade County:

And in south Florida, the number of murders in Miami-Dade County has already broken the old record by a good margin…

Officials recorded 272 homicides through Dec. 24 across Miami-Dade County, up 31 cases from all of 2019, records show. The year isn’t even over and it’s a recent high — up from 232 in all of 2017, and 252 in 2015.

In Minneapolis, where the police are being defunded and replaced with social workers, carjackings have increased exponentially:

Compared to last year, carjackings in Minneapolis were up 537 percent last month.

Just think about that.

When something is rising 537 percent, you are talking about an exponential increase.

Of course it might help if Minneapolis and other major cities were to actually increase police funding instead of decreasing it.

You can put as much money into “mental health programs” as you want, but the truth is that very few criminals will ever be talked out of committing crimes.

If the editors of Time Magazine had half a functioning intelligence they would have made the Urban Criminal the Person of the Year.