Editor’s note: This column was co-authored by Bernard Kerik.
BLM, Inc., Joe Biden, and the DNC are responsible for the death and destruction that occurred this past weekend in cities like Atlanta, New York, and Cleveland.
Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have surrendered to the radical left (Black Lives Matter, Inc., Antifa, etc.).
The Democratic Party has had decades to fulfill its promises to black Americans, but all it has achieved is crime-ridden cities lacking economic opportunity. It’s time to shake things up, show the scale of the DNC’s failures, and expose BLM, Inc. as fraud.
For weeks, Americans have watched radical left-wing anarchists and Antifa thugs commit extreme violence and murder that will haunt many people for the rest of their lives.
Dozens of innocent civilians and police officers were killed, hundreds of civilians were brutally beaten, and even more 700 policemen were injured nationwide. Hundreds of millions of dollars in property were destroyed as businesses and communities in more than 42 states were devastated by arson, looting and chaos, and activists quickly called on police to repay the funds.
The alleged justification for the riot was the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, but in reality, the rioters simply exploited the case for their own purposes.
In all the lawlessness, real life and the memory of George Floyd were lost.
With each passing day, we both asked ourselves the same question: where are the governors and mayors of these cities who took an oath to uphold the United States Constitution and protect residents from harm? Instead of upholding law and order – also known as doing their job – they turned a blind eye to the violence while praising the demonstrations that radicals used as cover.
Is there really systemic racism and brutality in our police departments? Do cops kill black people at a disproportionate rate than white people? One might think so given the nationwide outrage and calls for change expressed by local, state and federal political leaders and cultural elites. Certainly the 250 US Fortune 100 corporations that have done so given hundreds of millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter and other organizations to stop racial injustice must have real evidence of such widespread racial injustice? You might think so… but it’s not.
For clarity, we took a look Washington Post. database documenting suspects shot by police. The database shows that 1,003 people were shot and killed by police in 2019. This occurred in a country of 328 million people in a year in which police made about 30 million contacts with the public and made about 10 million arrests – 600,000 of them for violent crimes.
Of the 1,003 people killed by police last year, 405 were white, 250 were black, 163 were Latino, and 185 were of other/unknown ethnicity. Only 55 of those 1,003 people were unarmed – 25 white suspects, 14 black suspects, 11 Latino suspects and five others.
In another category that often gets a lot of attention from activist groups shouting about racial injustice, 29 people killed by police in 2019 owned a toy gun – 14 of them were white, 6 were black, 4 were Latino and 5 were of unknown origin. ethnicity.
To be clear, whether they were armed or unarmed, or had a toy that looked like a real gun, in no category were blacks killed at a higher rate than whites. Considering the numbers – 14 unarmed Black people died out of 10 million arrests, which equates to a rate of 0.00014 percent – this is NOT evidence of systemic racism.
The true systemic and deadly reality is that Black men and women are being murdered in cities and communities of color across the country at rates comparable only to war zones in Iraq or Syria – and each of these cities is run by Democrats, in some cases for up to 40 years.
Recently, 18 people were shot in Chicago in 24 hours the deadliest day over the last 60 years. Other 21 people were shot in St. Louis last weekend, and 7 people were shot in Brooklyn within 10 minutes.
Average from 2015 to 2018 in Baltimore 330 murders a year in a city of 550,000 inhabitants. There were 348 murders in 2019, and 2020 is already threatening enough to be just as deadly.
Many of the mayors and police chiefs in these cities are black, and their officers are representatives of the communities they serve. But with the death of a black man in police custody, left-wing activists and politicians are beginning to call for radical reforms to combat the bogeyman of racial inequality, even as they know full well that the death does not reflect a systemic problem. If black lives really mattered to liberals, they would be marching in Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, or any other city with unacceptably high rates of violent crime and murder.
Many pundits and politicians ignore the blatant reality of mass murders of Black people because they believe it will never change. However, we would urge them to look at the renaissance that took place in New York under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, which taught us many lessons – the most crucial of which was that no one wants to go to school, live, work, or visit a place where who do not feel secure.
When Giuliani took over New York in 1994, it was the murder capital of the world. The streets were full of dirt and garbage, mothers put their children to bed in bathtubs to protect them from random gunfire, and decent people lived in more or less constant fear.
Initially, Giuliani did not focus on jobs, schools or social welfare programs. Its main goal was to reduce crime, but for every percentage point that we reduced violent crime and murder in the city, we saw a corresponding boost in economic development, property values and tourism, along with encouraging reductions in social benefits.
By the end of Giuliani’s eight years in office, we had achieved a 63% reduction in violent crimes and a 70% reduction in murders. In some of the city’s most crime-ridden areas – many of which were communities of color – the murder rate dropped by almost 80 percent. Thousands of Black lives were saved over the years, and that trend continued when Michael Bloomberg became mayor because Bloomberg maintained many of the most effective policies we have implemented.
So today’s question is: why do so many Democrat-led cities still struggle with rampant poverty, violent crime and murder? Is this an intentional act or incompetence? Either way, adolescent black men and women are being killed and no one seems to do anything about it – no one seems to even care.
America’s mayors and governors coddle criminals, curse cops and persecute thugs, and meanwhile black people are dying.
President Trump issued an executive order implementing commonsense police reforms, the Republican-controlled Senate drafted legislation to follow suit, and Democrats failed to act. The melancholy reality, however, is that until mayors and governors call out the thugs who assault and assault police officers, resist or obstruct arrest, and commit acts of mindless violence and vandalism, the fundamental problems of our cities will continue unabated. . If Democrats get their way and reduce or weaken police effectiveness, the hardest hit will be those living in communities of color, where violent crime and murder rates are already out of control.
The Democratic Party has destroyed communities of color across the country and it is long past time for up-to-date leadership. It’s time to give Republicans a chance – after all, what do we have to lose?
Ken Blackwell is the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio. Bernard Kerik is a former commissioner of the New York Police Department.
