It is hard to turn on the news on any channel today without being confronted by another case of a convicted felon released on bail and using the free time to commit more crimes including murder, rape and armed robbery. Democrat District Attorney’s are the problem and their “soft on crime” ideology is more radical socialism funded by George Soros who dreams of a Communist United States.
The murder of four people by Ezekiel Kelly is an example. Kelly was convicted of “aggravated assault” in 2020 after shooting a man in the chest and a boy in the leg. Sentenced to three years and let out after one year, his recent shooting spree left four dead and three wounded in Memphis.
Kelly’s crime spree was followed by the murder of Eliza Fletcher, also in Memphis, by Cleotha Abson who sported a long criminal record and had been sentenced to 24 years in jail for a long list of crimes including rape and kidnapping from 1995 to 2000. He was released in 2020 and now faces a murder charge.
Voters are expressing their dissatisfaction at the ballot box. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Bouduoin who was elected on a progressive platform of finding alternatives to incarceration, ending the “war on drugs” which he saw as “racist”, and, holding police officers “accountable” was on the receiving end of an overwhelming recall vote and was turfed out of office.
Pharmacy chain CVS plans to permanently shutter 900 drug stores, many owing to the frequent looting that is not policed in places like San Francisco. The company’s announcement is politically correct and does not mention crime as the motive but spins the decision as “improving customer engagement” which is a lovely term for getting out of town where theft has made store economics tenuous. Twitter is rife with videos of thieves brazenly entering retail outlets and helping themselves with whatever they want and walking out, confident they will neither be arrested or charged with a crime. Police will ignore theft of less than $950 in progessive cities like San Francisco providing thieves effectively with a license to shop at will without any pretense of paying. My grocery or drug store bill has yet to be over $950 on any visit I can remember. Retailers are hiring security guards and now armed guards.
Fox aired a video of a thug sucker-punching a stranger and leaving him in a coma in New York, followed by an assault charge being reduced to a misdemeanour and the culprit released. Former police chief Eric Adams, now Mayor of New York, has not done much to improve policing and New York Governor Kathy Hochul has demonstrated her “soft on crime” attitude repeatedly despite the increasing crime rate. Maybe she thinks the victims are all Republicans? If they weren’t before they became victims, it seems likely they will be now.
The mid-term elections are a short few weeks away and “crime” will on the ballot for many progressive candidates. It will be interesting to see how the election turns out for those Democrats who keep preaching “defund the police”. I suspect the Democrats may find the outcomes disappointing.