Photos (L to R): President Joe Biden, March 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)/Photo by NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 3/7/22 Mayor Eric Adams, March 7, 2022 in New York/Photo: VP Kamala Harris at the White House, Feb. 28, 2022 (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)/Photo: Andre Dickens, now mayor of Atlanta, at the White House, Dec. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The property crime rate was higher than the violent crime rate in 1994 when President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden authored the now-infamous 1994 Crime Bill.
Flash forward to 2022. Property crime has again skyrocketed, with criminals going into stores and loading stolen merchandise into garbage bags. But in addition to rising property crime, the U.S. has also seen an increase in violent crime in the last two years.
In their desperation to win votes, will the Democrats once again react with a crackdown on crime that could lead to the mass incarceration of Black people, as it did after the 1994 crime bill?
Black America has expressed concern that President Biden and Democrats will use rising crime and pandemic conditions for another mass incarceration.
“You have to be careful as the climate of high crime is used for anti-Black structural attacks. The cycle of severe & generational damage & say sorry later has to be broken. You have to remember Biden & his chief of staff Ron Klain allowed the POLICE to write their crime bill,” The Moguldom Nation CEO Jamarlin Martin tweeted.
Pandemic joblessness coupled with high inflation can be blamed for some of the crime increases, experts say. Isolation brought on by pandemic lockdowns has exacerbated mental illness while treatment was not as readily available.
According to some research, there is a correlation between mental illness and crime.
Not only are mentally ill people disproportionately victimized by violent crime, but some types of severe mental illness also increase the risk that a person will perpetrate a violent crime. These risks vary based on such factors as substance abuse or unemployment, wrote David Kopel, a law professor, NRA safety instructor and research director at Independence Institute, in a Washington Post column.
The covid pandemic and isolation have been blamed for the spike in 2020 homicides and assaults.
Crime overall has increased. Homicides went up more than 5 percent in 27 major U.S. cities in 2021 compared to 2020, according to one study. And in 2021, at least 12 of those cities broke annual homicide records. Murders in New York City rose by 4 percent and in Chicago by 3 percent, ABC News reported.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violent crime rose in 2020 for the first time in four years, including a nearly 30 percent spike in murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
While progressive and community activists have pushed for defunding the police and reforming law enforcement departments, a growing number of Democrats are taking a tougher stance on crime to win elections. But that’s not new.
Back in 1994, Clinton proved that Democrats could win elections by talking tough on crime. He embraced the crime-attack mode so much he sounded more like a traditional Republican. “Bill Clinton has carjacked our issues,” then-Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour said at the time.
In 2011, an “up-and-coming young career prosecutor named Kamala Harris” won her first bid for public office. Harris was elected attorney general of California in part by talking tough on crime. She has worked her way up to vice president.
New York City is now being run by a former cop, Mayor Eric Adams, who spent 22 years in the New York Police Department before entering politics. A Democrat, Adams is already bringing back controversial tough-on-crime police policies such as stop-and-frisk, in which police have the right to stop and frisk anyone they choose.
In Atlanta, new Mayor Andre Dickens, a Democrat, has put his support behind the city’s controversial “Cop City.” The city recently finalized a $90 million investment in a massive and militarized law enforcement training center, despite 98 percent of residents who responded to a survey saying they opposed the plans.
In San Francisco, Democratic Mayor London Breed, who once called for more grassroots solutions to crime, has taken a tough-on-crime stance. She reacted to a spike in violence in her city in which fatal and nonfatal shooting incidents rose by 33 percent from 2020 to 2022 by enacting tougher crime fighting. In December, she declared a state of emergency to battle illicit drug use and dealing. “I’m proud this city believes in giving people second chances,” she said, before insisting that there needs “to be accountability when someone does break the law.”
U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, a Democrat who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, has emerged as the front-runner by becoming tougher on crime. Previously, Bass fought to reform policing, but now she is cheering on the L.A. Police Department. In February 2021 she reintroduced George Floyd Policing Bill in Congress that called for police reform. Now it seems she’s singing a different tune. During her campaign Bass, has promised to “aggressively recruit” new LAPD officers, move more sworn officers from desk duty to street patrol, roll back bail-reform measures in some form, and crack down on “property crime,” The Appeal reported.
Other Democrats are caving on their original progressive policies. In February, L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón walked back two major campaign promises from a year earlier. Previously a deputy LAPD chief and top prosecutor in San Francisco, Gascón promised a slew of anti-carceral policies. After being blasted by conservatives as “pro-crime,” Gascón announced he will, contrary to his previous promise, allow his prosecutors try children as adults and seek sentences of life without parole in “exceptional cases,” The Appeal reported.
In his March 1, 2022 State of the Union Address, Biden talked tough on crime. He said, “We’re going after the criminals who stole billions in relief money meant for small businesses and millions of Americans.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President. You didn’t mention saving Black lives once in this speech,” responded Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in a tweet. “All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result? 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings. Defund the police. Invest in our communities.”
“Biden’s “fund the police” is authoritarian just like the 1994 Crime Bill, that he wrote,” Solidarity @jrabbitt77 tweeted.
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So is the Biden of 1994, who infamously said “Lock the S.O.B.s Up” back? Some say he never left. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden did apologize for portions of his anti-crime legislation. But he played down his involvement, saying he “got stuck with” shepherding the bills because he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill led to the mass incarceration of Black people that continues to this day. As president, Biden has vowed to cut incarceration in half that. Because of racist policing and sentencing laws, jails and prisons are disproportionately populated by Black people and people of color. Yet the federal prison population is growing.
“This is the most telling sign yet that this administration has criminal justice low on its list of priorities, despite the campaign promises to the contrary,” tweeted Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor who served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission under President Barack Obama.
The White House, however, insisted it’s still dedicated to lowering the prison population. “President Biden is committed to reducing incarceration and helping people to re-enter society,” spokesperson Andrew Bates told The New York Times. “As he has said, too many Americans are incarcerated, and too many are Black and brown. His administration is focused on reforming our justice system in order to strengthen families, boost our economy and give people a chance at a better future.”
Photos (L to R): President Joe Biden speaks at the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference, March 14, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)/Photo by NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx 3/7/22 Mayor Eric Adams speaks with several small business owners in the East Village on New York City’s suspension of Key to NYC on March 7, 2022 in New York/Photo: Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an event to celebrate Black History Month in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 28, 2022, in Washington.(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)/Photo: Mayor-elect Andre Dickens of Atlanta speaks with reporters after attending meetings at the White House in Washington, Dec. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
