(Voting for Democrats mean more crimes, we all know that). On the anniversary of the death of George Floyd, dozens of gunshots rang out in the middle of the day at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, forcing reporters and bystanders to duck and cover.
The symbolism was unmistakable — the yearlong bout of protest after Floyd’s killing has coincided with a surge of urban crime that has made gunplay dismayingly common.
Indeed, the intersection where Floyd was killed, now a memorial blocked to vehicular traffic, has become a watchword for mayhem.
The issue of public safety may be about to play its most significant role in our politics since the mid-1990s, the beginning of a decades-long decline in crime that steadily eroded its political salience.
Former President Donald Trump tried to make law and order a defining issue in 2020, but the rioting he so forcefully denounced was, in most places, too transitory to become an overwhelming issue.
Now, more than a year into a serious crime wave, Democrats are fooling themselves if they think they won’t be blamed for rising violence in Democratic-run cities and states.
Overall, murder increased by more than 25 percent in the United States last year, the biggest jump in 60 years. Surely the dislocations of the pandemic have been a factor, but it’s also obvious that anti-police agitation has put the cops on their back feet. Exhibit A is Minneapolis.
In the fevered aftermath of the Floyd killing, the City Council pledged to do away with the police department, among the most outlandishly unachievable and self-destructive promises ever made by an elected body. Of course, it couldn’t follow through on it, any more than it could have followed through on a promise to eliminate traffic lights or municipal snow removal.
Still, cops have fled the force, while crime has soared. The impeccably progressive mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who desperately wanted to ingratiate himself at a tribunal-like rally last summer but, to his credit, wouldn’t commit to defunding the police, now occasionally sounds like he’s channeling Rudy Giuliani circa 1993.
