'Law & Order' Politics is Back

[Frodo]

We're back to competing on which party is tougher on crime:

Dems retreat on crime and police reform
If 2020 was the year the left reordered the traditional politics of crime and policing, 2022 looks like the year centrists regained their footing and nullified those gains.

It's almost as if the Black Lives Matter movement never happened. 

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Well duh it’s cause Law and Order came back on air

[Calthrina950]

We're back to competing on which party is tougher on crime:

Dems retreat on crime and police reform
If 2020 was the year the left reordered the traditional politics of crime and policing, 2022 looks like the year centrists regained their footing and nullified those gains.

It's almost as if the Black Lives Matter movement never happened. 

I've noted this myself. The George Floyd murder, which seemed as if it would usher in a new reckoning with the inequalities in our criminal justice system, ultimately did not have such an impact. I don't think we will ever see systematic criminal justice reform, and a tough on crime approach will be the generic one taken moving forward.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Good. It would be, at any rate, if we had a party with credibility on the subject. Listening to partisan Democrats and Republicans talk about law and order is like watching a dog play the piano. They did this to us.

One thing I've noticed from local politicians like the Hennepin County Attorney candidates is taking a bit of a new twist on this sort of thing: pushing for stiffer sentences and bragging about how they would do that and handle violent offenders, while also opposing now unpopular policies associated with "law and order" in the past, such as draconian drug laws and mandatory minimums/three strikes sort of stuff. Like candidates here who are talking about how they'd lock up carjackers and violent robbers while end all enforcement of any marijuana-related crimes.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

We're back to competing on which party is tougher on crime:

Dems retreat on crime and police reform
If 2020 was the year the left reordered the traditional politics of crime and policing, 2022 looks like the year centrists regained their footing and nullified those gains.

It's almost as if the Black Lives Matter movement never happened. 

I've noted this myself. The George Floyd murder, which seemed as if it would usher in a new reckoning with the inequalities in our criminal justice system, ultimately did not have such an impact. I don't think we will ever see systematic criminal justice reform, and a tough on crime approach will be the generic one taken moving forward.

If anything, it might have hurt the movement in the long run, seeing as BLM probably cost the Democrats several congressional seats.

[Santander]

Both parties are criminal organizations.

[MarkD]

It's always so discouraging to see people resort to three-word slogans as their main emphasis of discussing a political issue.
Law and Order
Defund the Police
Black Lives Matter
Freedom to Marry
Love is Love
(And the slogan is better if the three words are monosyllabic; having too many syllables makes a slogan too complicated.)
It's as if nobody thinks they are capable of explaining their views with any nuance. Even worse, the three-word slogans also imply that "my position is absolute and non-negotiable. I want it all; no compromises."

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Like candidates here who are talking about how they'd lock up carjackers and violent robbers while end all enforcement of any marijuana-related crimes.

Support for BLM and skepticism of law enforcement is more due to unequal sentencing and awareness of the school-to-prison pipeline than sympathy for carjackers and violent robbers lol 

No one's sympathetic for them. But a lot of people are upset not much is being done about them in various cities. Like in Minneapolis a lot of carjackers are actually getting arrested and then just released with no chargers.

Also this ties into skepticism of the police. For another example a couple months ago two robbers of a small grocery store who shot the clerk who had to spend several days in the ICU for her abodomen wound were arrested by the FBI because that's how much the Minneapolis PD sucks at dealing with such people currently.

[Waldo]

LGBTQ+ is the new BLM. Libs don't know what to do without identity politics. Since the BLM movement picked up steam in 2020, murder rates skyrocketed in the double digits in cities across the country, mostly targeting minorities. Santa Monica won't even deliver mail anymore because of all the assaults on mail carriers. Still, I think what really got them to switch was the mass exodus from those cities to more conservative territories. People are voting with their feet.

Now that they've mistakenly destroyed their own cities and states, the current belief is that women's sports are a more acceptable form of collateral damage.

[West_Midlander]

Well duh it’s cause Law and Order came back on air

Dun dun.

[nerd73]

had to spend several days in the ICU for her abodomen

for some reason i read this as 'spend several days in the ICU for her lobotomy'

[Indy Texas]

People are tired of getting the catalytic converters stolen from their cars; tired of having to ask an employee to unlock a case every time you want to buy something because shoplifting has gotten so bad; tired of road rage and rising murder rates and people acting crazy on planes.

Who sympathizes with someone who steals designer handbags? You can't eat a designer handbag.

Who sympathizes with someone who engages in petty crime instead of getting a proper job when unemployment is so low that anyone who wants a job can have a job?

Who sympathizes with people like the subway shooter?

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who commits a violent crime should be locked up for life. Get the garbage out of society.

[Calthrina950]

Well duh it’s cause Law and Order came back on air

That's true in a way, because Law & Order first premiered back in 1990, when crime was sweeping through the nation's cities. And more than thirty years later, as it is revived, we're going through another crime wave.

[jamestroll]

People are tired of getting the catalytic converters stolen from their cars; tired of having to ask an employee to unlock a case every time you want to buy something because shoplifting has gotten so bad; tired of road rage and rising murder rates and people acting crazy on planes.

Who sympathizes with someone who steals designer handbags? You can't eat a designer handbag.

Who sympathizes with someone who engages in petty crime instead of getting a proper job when unemployment is so low that anyone who wants a job can have a job?

Who sympathizes with people like the subway shooter?

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who commits a violent crime should be locked up for life. Get the garbage out of society.

You can support criminal justice reform measures without sympathizing with violent criminals......

[jamestroll]

I am all for decriminalizing drug usage, legalizing marijuana, reforming to abolish cash bail. I just do not understand the parts of the online left and the thugs who were thinking campaigning on "DEFUND THE POLICE!" would be a great idea to win elections.

Police agencies need to be funded with proper training.  I did not see police officers try to go hide from covid indefinitely, unlike you know.. teachers.

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

When it comes to crime and police brutality, there should almost always be nuance. However, it seems as though many people on both sides just go to the extreme.

[It’s so Joever]

Y’all fr be acting like everything is super dangerous now. Please crime has always been a  thing but 99% of the time it’s hypersensationalized and blown way out of proportion. It’s absolutely an issue but the rhetoric from everyone is like we’re in some war zone lmao.

[Frodo]

Y’all fr be acting like everything is super dangerous now. Please crime has always been a  thing but 99% of the time it’s hypersensationalized and blown way out of proportion. It’s absolutely an issue but the rhetoric from everyone is like we’re in some war zone lmao.

Rising crime rates (as with rising inflation) is not a figment of the imagination.  Homicides, for instance, are at their highest since the mid-1990s:


Data for 2020 and 2021 are estimates.  Sources: Jeff Asher; F.B.I.

And people are noticing. So much so that progressive prosecutors elected in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests are coming up against a brick wall in their bid to roll back anti-crime policies first put in place in the 1990s:

They Wanted to Roll Back Tough-on-Crime Policies. Then Violent Crime Surged.
With violent crime rates rising and elections looming, progressive prosecutors are facing resistance to their plans to roll back stricter crime policies of the 1990s.

Four years ago, progressive prosecutors were in the sweet spot of Democratic politics. Aligned with the growing Black Lives Matter movement but pragmatic enough to draw establishment support, they racked up wins in cities across the country.

Today, a political backlash is brewing. With violent crime rates rising in some cities and elections looming, their attempts to roll back the tough-on-crime policies of the 1990s are increasingly under attack — from familiar critics on the right, but also from onetime allies within the Democratic Party.

In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall vote in June, stoked by criticism from the city’s Democratic mayor. In Los Angeles, the county district attorney, George Gascón, is trying to fend off a recall effort as some elected officials complain about new guidelines eliminating the death penalty and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, quickly ran afoul of the new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, and his new police commissioner over policies that critics branded too lenient.

The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less — forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren’t rushing to their aid, with some saying they’ve soured on the officials they once backed.

[progressive85]

This decade is like a revival of every single bad ideology from the 20th century.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

When it comes to crime and police brutality, there should almost always be nuance. However, it seems as though many people on both sides just go to the extreme.

This is kind of a boring stock answer, but it's true.

"Defunding" the police never made much sense to me, even after that was 'clarified' to mean reducing funding and transferring police services, because if you want more good police, you need to actually increase funding for better training. And there's certainly an argument to be made that mental health care providers should play a big role in rehabilitation, as well as a general transition to rehabilitative care over punitive justice, but taking cops off the streets was never a good idea. Even though many of them are bastards.

[Indy Texas]

Y’all fr be acting like everything is super dangerous now. Please crime has always been a  thing but 99% of the time it’s hypersensationalized and blown way out of proportion. It’s absolutely an issue but the rhetoric from everyone is like we’re in some war zone lmao.

Rising crime rates (as with rising inflation) is not a figment of the imagination.  Homicides, for instance, are at their highest since the mid-1990s:


Data for 2020 and 2021 are estimates.  Sources: Jeff Asher; F.B.I.

And people are noticing. So much so that progressive prosecutors elected in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests are coming up against a brick wall in their bid to roll back anti-crime policies first put in place in the 1990s:

They Wanted to Roll Back Tough-on-Crime Policies. Then Violent Crime Surged.
With violent crime rates rising and elections looming, progressive prosecutors are facing resistance to their plans to roll back stricter crime policies of the 1990s.

Four years ago, progressive prosecutors were in the sweet spot of Democratic politics. Aligned with the growing Black Lives Matter movement but pragmatic enough to draw establishment support, they racked up wins in cities across the country.

Today, a political backlash is brewing. With violent crime rates rising in some cities and elections looming, their attempts to roll back the tough-on-crime policies of the 1990s are increasingly under attack — from familiar critics on the right, but also from onetime allies within the Democratic Party.

In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall vote in June, stoked by criticism from the city’s Democratic mayor. In Los Angeles, the county district attorney, George Gascón, is trying to fend off a recall effort as some elected officials complain about new guidelines eliminating the death penalty and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, quickly ran afoul of the new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, and his new police commissioner over policies that critics branded too lenient.

The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less — forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren’t rushing to their aid, with some saying they’ve soured on the officials they once backed.

Some of this is due to the fact that police officers have effectively been engaging in soft strikes since 2020 if not since 2014.

The solution to that is to do to the Fraternal Order of Police what Scott Walker did to AFSCME/AFT/NEA in Wisconsin—disempower LEOs, make them answer to non-LEO management, and make it considerably easier to fire police officers (none of this "paid leave for a year while your shooting is 'investigated'" nonsense).

[jamestroll]

I am all for criminal justice reform but I can not help but think...

some of my neighbors who I chatted with in Oakton/Fairfax City area who are all majorly supportive of criminal justice reform... even if they tend to live in apartments or condos... I doubt they would so enthusiastically support of all that if they lived in Baltimore, St. Louis, or Detroit.

They live in their little safe liberal leaning bubble.

[Aurelius]

People are tired of getting the catalytic converters stolen from their cars; tired of having to ask an employee to unlock a case every time you want to buy something because shoplifting has gotten so bad; tired of road rage and rising murder rates and people acting crazy on planes.

Who sympathizes with someone who steals designer handbags? You can't eat a designer handbag.

Who sympathizes with someone who engages in petty crime instead of getting a proper job when unemployment is so low that anyone who wants a job can have a job?

Who sympathizes with people like the subway shooter?

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who commits a violent crime should be locked up for life. Get the garbage out of society.

I don't go as far as you do about locking them all up for life, but I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said before that. The kind of surge in crime we are seeing is not at all the kind of petty crime you see from people desperate to find the next meal for themselves and their kids. And sympathy is made even thinner by the fact that, as you said, anyone with a pulse can very easily get a job right now. There may have been a time and place for the folks who talk about how criminals are the real victims and are forced into crime by structural factors outside of their control, but now sure as hell ain't that time.

[Frodo]

Republicans are having second thoughts about then-President Trump's effort on criminal justice reform:

Trump’s criminal justice reform bill becomes persona non grata among GOPers
With rising crime and the approaching midterms, Republicans have moved far past the First Step Act.

[MiddleRoad]

Being “tough on crime” doesn’t mean “being tough on black peoples.” If you think it does, or must, maybe you need to examine yourself.