Republican New York Congressman John Katko, appearing over the weekend on Fox News with former Congressman Trey Gowdy, suggested the main reason behind crime spikes in major U.S. cities such as New York City is the effort to defund police departments.
Katko said the problem in the Big Apple is, “Number one, they defunded the police department in New York City by one-sixth, cutting one billion dollars from a police department that is charged with protecting the number one terrorist target in the world, New York City.”
Add to that Joe Biden’s announcement of his plan to reduce so-called “gun violence,” and Katko observed, “Well, yeah, not only that, and that’s absolutely true, but what is the use of having gun laws and laws in general if you’re going to defund the police and you’re going to pass laws that makes it almost impossible to enforce (against) crime?”
According to Katko, shootings in New York City are up a staggering 97 percent, based on information from unidentified police sources.
Fox News’ Laura Ingraham went off on Democrat policies she says are contributing to the crime surge.
Jump west 2,400 miles and check the situation in Seattle, Washington. Last year, according to Seattle Police data, the city logged 52 murders, way up from the 37 recorded in 2019 and farther above the 32 in 2018. So far this year, according to a Twitter page that follows slayings in Seattle, there have been 22 slayings including one over the weekend. In that city, the “Defund Police” effort has been running at full volume for a year. The department has lost more than 200 officers since last year.
Skip south about 250 miles to Portland, where KPTV News has decided to demonize the weapon instead of the perpetrator by reporting there have been at least 33 “gun violence homicides.” According to the report, that is out of 42 “presumed homicides.”
Defunding police agencies may be a key element in the rising crime situation, but there appears to be some disagreement whether that is the only problem. As noted by The Atlantic, “Criminologists don’t agree on the specific causes and mechanisms of the recent increase in murders, which coincided with the coronavirus pandemic and especially with protests against police violence last summer.”
But in his address last week discussing crime, Biden’s fallback was gun control. But a new Rasmussen survey released Monday shows the majority of likely voters do not believe Congress will approve new gun control measures. Fifty-seven percent don’t think it is likely, while only 34 percent believe some new gun laws will be approved.
