Jim Bratten
“Criminal justice reform” has been a progressive cause célèbre among our political ruling elite for years; eliminating cash bail and shortening sentences two objectives. In addition, they demand fewer police officers and a reduction of officers in “overpoliced” neighborhoods. They also want voting rights restored to incarcerated criminals. These radical changes labeled as criminal justice reform will sadly result in more death and property destruction unless this progressive political agenda is stopped.
The Left is trying to keep violent criminals out of prison. They aren’t being released for good behavior or having their sentences pled down to lesser charges; they’re simply being released.
In the largest cities across the U.S. murder rates have increased substantially in the last five years, after falling steadily for over a decade. Some blame for this carnage can be placed on George Soros, Barack Obama, and Eric Holder, as they work to disrupt law enforcement through the insertion of progressive district attorneys and state attorneys general. We see their success in the lawlessness that is occurring in many parts of this nation.
One example is in Philadelphia. Under George Soros-funded district attorney Larry Krasner, the city recorded 359 murders in 2019, an increase of 10% over 2018 but the highest death toll in more than a decade. Baltimore had 348 murders last year, the most since 1993 and per capita the highest on record in that city. Dallas had only 116 homicides in 2014. Last year, after the Soros-backed progressive mayor promised not to prosecute theft under $750, the murder rate in Dallas soared to 200.
Charlotte, North Carolina had 51 homicides in 2018. Last year, Charlotte hit that number before June. That city ended 2019 with 108 murders, the most since the early 1990s. Washington, DC recorded 88 murders in 2012; 116 in 2017, and 166 in 2019.
Besides an increase in homicides, San Francisco is experiencing a surge in shoplifting, car break-ins, and auto theft, after state legislators and local municipalities reduced or removed arrest and punishment for “misdemeanor” 
property theft and even some non-violent felony crimes. “Quality of life crimes” is the label San Francisco’s new DA uses for crimes he refuses to process, favoring the homeless that blanket the city. There is little enforcement; only criminal justice reform that translates into property loss and death for the lawful.
The last week in December 2019 New York resident Tiffany Harris was arrested for assaulting three orthodox Jewish women in Brooklyn. She was arrested, charged, and released. The following Sunday, she was arrested for another assault and released again. On New Year’s Eve she was again arrested, for a third assault in less than a week. That third offensefinally placed her in custody for a hate crime.
Grafton Thomas attacked five people in Monsey, NY during Hanukkah, stabbing them at a rabbi’s home. Thomas had significant psychological troubles and seven prior arrests, but politicians stood by their ideology instead of the rule of law and concern for public safety. His prior offenses were for assault, resisting arrest, and killing a police dog, but the only arrest that ever took him off the street was for a drug offense in 2013. An anti-Semite, the Muslim man had raised dozens of warning flags but officials in New York ignored all of them.
Thousands of violent criminals like Harris and Grafton are simply processed through “turnstile justice,” spending very little time in jail. And sadly for New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio are aggressively reversing anti-crime reforms made in prior years in that state. In actions that are strictly political and ideological, they are placing the public, and law enforcement officers, in grave danger, expanding turnstile justice.
Decriminalizing crime will only result in more tragedy for the law-abiding.
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