The eruption of mass violent crime over the past weeks—shooters in Uvalde, Texas, in Laguna Woods, California, in Buffalo, New York—evidences a predictable escalation, an inexorable incremental evolution, of an environment, an atmosphere that fails to discourage criminal activity, developed in large part by a new breed of privately financed progressive prosecutors, entrenched in major urban centers from coast to coast.
It’s an atmosphere aggravated by a president who, two days after the May 28 massacre in Uvalde, issued an executive order, not directed at the perpetrators of crime, but rather limiting police access to military equipment, and otherwise implementing limitations on the effectiveness of the police. Hardly an appropriate response for a nation in crisis, desperately in need of more effective police protection, and of a White House cognizant of the magnitude of domestic insecurity from upsurging crime.
The warning signs have been appearing for a considerable time, and a review of the dissolution of the criminal justice establishment in New York provides the framework—although examination of Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and virtually any major blue-managed city will evidence a near-identical pattern of regression.
While the Brenan Center, a progressive think-tank, argues that there’s no direct evidence that the revisions in the law were the principal cause, it would defy credulity to argue that actively enhancing the number of active criminals on the streets of a large city doesn’t contribute to the growing level of criminal activity. Particularly when accompanied by mayors who have antipathy for law enforcement authorities, as was the case with Bill de Blasio in New York, and continues with mayors such as Lori Lightfoot, Eric Garcetti, et al.
Compounding the negative effects of the 2019 legislation, Mayor de Blasio cut the budget of the New York Police Department dramatically, while simultaneously disbanding the police’s highly successful plain-clothes anti-crime units. This defunding of the police became a nationwide phenomenon, an illogical reaction to the increase in rioting and looting following the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
As crime rates soared, the search for explanations was initially limited in scope to the usual suspects, to the logical, oft-repeated “root causes” such as social unrest, disparity of income, family structure, and drug use. It wasn’t until the Jussie Smollett and McCloskeys cases made national headlines that the true, new, root cause came to light, the exponential multiplier effect on criminal activity in all forms.
Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago and Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in St. Louis inappropriately dismissing and mishandling the cases, respectively, brought attention to a new phenomenon: prosecutors who are sympathetic to those arrested for committing violent crimes, and not to their victims; prosecutors who have formal policies that discourage lodging felony charges and who support de-incarceration of violent felons.
His most recent success:
The New York County District Attorney’s office has historically been one of the most prestigious and respected prosecutorial offices in the country. From the time of the legendary Frank Hogan (served 1942–1974) to the equally extended tenure of Robert Morgenthau (1975–2009), the New York DA’s office was reputed for gang busting and for sophisticated investigations in prosecutions of crime at all levels, from complex white-collar criminal investigations on Wall Street to violent crime in all its manifestations.
It has traditionally been part of the responsibility of young assistant district attorneys to rapidly evaluate recent arrests and to determine how best to prosecute them. The decision is made just before or at arraignment, and many factors must be taken into consideration: the nature of the crime, the degree of violence used, the harm caused, the arrestee’s criminal record—number of convictions and time served in prison. These and other factors are—or rather, used to be—weighed and a decision made as to whether to proceed with the case as a felony or reduce the case to a misdemeanor charge.
Additionally, a snap decision had to be made as to how much bail was to be requested for the judge to set. Historically, use of a weapon in the course of a violent crime would virtually automatically lead to felony prosecution, unless the case was so riddled with problems, poor police work, and unreliable witnesses that a felony conviction would be unlikely to result. Guidelines were generally unwritten and focused on seeking a just outcome for the defendant and—significantly—for the victims, and for society at large.
Now there has been a sea change, and the new New York County District Attorney’s Office has established a presumption that virtually all cases will be prosecuted as misdemeanors, if they’re to be prosecuted at all, including egregious cases involving the use of weapons and physical injuries. The office’s new prosecutorial guidelines detail with great specificity how the DA’s office will proceed with all variety of criminal activity.
If their purpose is to sow discord by creating an environment where criminal activity soars, then they have indeed been successful. While this district attorney clearly has no “street sense” or any apparent appreciation for the consequences of under-prosecution of violent crime, there must be other forces at work, empowering and institutionalizing such self-destructive procedures.
Misdemeanor charges, while potentially leading to up to one year in prison, in reality rarely conclude with a sentence longer than 90 days, and more often than not, probation with no prison time. By charging serious felony cases as misdemeanors, the deterrent effect of a criminal prosecution evaporates, criminals are incentivized to continue their criminal activity, and police officers are disincentivized from making arrests, knowing the futility of their efforts.
The inevitable result is the dissolution of the “invisible web”—described by the jurist Learned Hand—that allows for the functioning of a civil society, such that the entire range of criminal activity becomes commonplace, from the murder of police officers to brazen shoplifting by delinquents filling up bags with unpaid for goods and strolling out of retail stores, sneering at security guards as they pass unchallenged through the exit doors.
And ultimately, tragically, to mass shootings in churches, schools, parking lots, and other public venues, such as those that have wreaked such terrible havoc in recent days and times.
