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Busting MAGA Myths: Democrats are weak on crime, law and order [1]

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Date: 2022-10-05

DA Schubert’s rhetoric and policies have not delivered lower crime or falling crime rates. In fact, San Francisco has sustained larger crime declines overall and achieved lower rates of violent crime than the City of Sacramento since 2014.

Like so many, I am fed up with the escalation of criminal activity around the state, which brings nothing but chaos and destruction to our neighborhoods and communities. As a career prosecutor, I understand that this will not change until we are willing to admit that certain policies have for too long prioritized criminals over crime victims.

Schubert, who is now running for attorney general, promotes longer prison sentences and more aggressive prosecution of all types of crime, and blames progressive politics for failing to protect public safety. In an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune , she noted:

During that same period, in the tenure of conservative prosecutor Anne Marie Schubert, violent crime in Sacramento increased 9 percent.

The study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice shows that violent crimes have fallen 29 percent in San Francisco since 2014, including the past two years when Boudin has been in office.

Crime in San Francisco under progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his predecessor has been lower across the board than in Sacramento, where the old-school DA touts her “tough-on-crime” credential, a new study shows.

Taking first things first, does having a progressive DA really mean higher crime rates? Well, No.

The GOP loves to keep up the myth that "Democrats bring Crime" but as this DA points out the greatest number of murders are in Red States, and it seems to be connected to weak gun laws (Oh Heaven Forfend), not to DA's who don't believe in cash bail or lessening punishments for non-violent crimes.

The second major issue argued by the GOP/MAGAs is the slogan “Defund the Police.” Now, I think that is a very simple slogan that encompasses some fairly subtle and nuanced ideas, but it has been unfortunately taken to be an expression of “Cop Hate” where cities would simply cut the funding for police in blind retaliation. In reality — as I see it — it has three separate elements.

First, the “defunding” should primarily be for the paramilitary equipment that police forces have been hoarding for decades. Weapons of war, except for very extreme cases, should not be used on our city streets. The actual need for this equipment is dubious at best, and many departments are simply stock-piling it all to look cool rather than actually use it in law enforcement. Fully automatic weapons, tach vests and military vehicles are often overkill. There is no good reason to have an MRAP driving down the street as a law enforcement vehicle. It makes the police look like they are an invading/occupying army as if they were the Russians battling through enemy artillery in Mariupol. MRAPs are designed to be survivable against IUD attacks — is anyone using IUDs in downtown Dallas?

Secondly, there is the fact that police officers are protected from the consequences of their wrongdoing, wrongful assaults and deaths — by “qualified immunity.” Rather than the officers themselves being liable for their misdeeds, the payout of settlement agreements falls most often onto the taxpayers of the city who were wronged by the officers in the first place. Police misconduct cost taxpayers $3.2 Billion over the past decade, I think that shouldn’t be a tax-payer burden. I think the officers who did the crime, should be paying for it.

Thirdly, the real primary argument behind “Defund the Police” is the idea that some funds — not all of them — should be diverted from paying police to answer mental health calls which they aren’t equipped or trained to handle to instead having a team of 24/7 mental health first responders to handle those calls. A pilot program for this has been established in Cincinnati where mental health first responders have been answering calls instead of police.

A new pilot program in Cincinnati will give 911 dispatchers the option to send a mental health professional to certain low-risk incidents instead of police, officials announced Thursday. Called "alternative response," these programs are popping up across the country as cities seek to reform police departments in the wake of the 2020 protests prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. "There are [911] callers who can best be helped by another resource," Mayor Aftab Pureval said in a press conference Thursday. "Our communities are asking for this service." The $178,000 pilot will create a team comprised of one licensed behavioral health clinician and one Cincinnati Fire Department paramedic. The clinician has not yet been hired, officials said. The program is scheduled to launch by July.

This is what “Defund the Police” actually means. Fund someone else who is effectively trained and can do the job properly and safely without pulling out a gun and getting someone killed. Police are not the human equivalent of a swiss army knife with a handle tool for every problem, some things are specialized.

Getting back to the main issue as shown by the CDC's stats for Homicide Mortality the top-rated states are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, and South Carolina with over 15 deaths per 100,000 people. The MAGAs often talk about deaths in Chicago where, admittedly, there are many shootings, but Illinois is #9 out of the top 10 at only 11.2 deaths per 100,000 persons compared to other states.

Homicide Rate per State

This is what the Homicide map of the US actually looks like. https://www.cdc.gov/.../homicide_mortality/homicide.htm

Homicides by State

Here’s another map of gun deaths from the Gun Violence Archive:

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