Dems’ tough talk on crime pushes aside reform
after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.
A concern about homicides, carjackings and auto theft in some cities is prompting the shift. But there is also disillusionment with some progressive policies and a sense among some officials that Democrats leaned too far left on public safety in recent years, leaving the party politically vulnerable to GOP attacks.
They pitch their stance as a necessary recalibration for liberals, but it is generating a backlash from reform-minded politicians and groups who accuse them of reverting to failed policies that have exploded prison populations and promoted racial inequality.
This new, more muscular approach on crim e is playing a central role in the debate over a D.C. criminal code revamp that has becom ea major political football and the race for mayor in Chicago, but it has also become a force in San Francisco, New York and other cities.
“In the '90s, we went too far — everybody was (pushing) mass incarceration,” Bates said in an interview. “What we've seen here lately is people have gone too far the other way, where we are really afraid to hold people accountable because we are afraid of mass incarceration.”
The rapid rise of tougher-on-crim e De mocrats over the past year or so is a surprising development in some deep-blue bastions that were just a short time ago the site of massive protests calling for defunding of police and overhauling the criminal justice system.
A long-running revision of D.C.'s outdated criminal code was swept up into a national debate on crime that engulfed Congress and President Joe Biden in recent weeks, highlighting shifting attitudes among Democrats on public safety.
The D.C. Council approved revisions to the code in February, but Mayor Muriel E. Bowser vetoed the measure in part because it reduced maximum sentences for some offenses at a time when concerns about crime are running high in the District. The council then overrode Bowser's veto. Republicans pounced. The House and Senate GOP sought to paint Democrats as soft on crim eby introducing a measure blocking the criminal code overhaul, but in a sign of the renewed salience of crime and fears about its use as a political cudgel, Biden and scores of Democrats backed the disapproval measure, including more than 30 in a Senate vote Wednesday. It was the first tim ein more than 30 years that Congress voted to overturn local D.C. legislation.
Washington Mayor Muriel E. Bowser stops to talk to a resident as she takes a walk up Georgia Avenue in the wake of increased crime in the Petworth neighborhood.
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said in a radio interview Thursday it was the right call.
“I think the vast majority of the people in D.C. and the literally hundreds of thousands of Virginians that go to work in D.C. each day don't want to be going into a community where they are actually lowering the penalty for carjacking when that's become an epidemic in the city,” Warner said.
In Chicago, where gun violence has spiraled, public safety has been a dominant issue in the mayor's race. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was criticized for her response to crime and other issues, was the first incumbent to lose an election in 40 years during the first round of voting in late February.
Paul Vallas, a former Chicago schools executive above pre-pandemic levels. Some major cities are also grappling with jumps in carjackings, auto theft and quality-of-life crimes, though crime rates still remain far below peaks in earlier decades.
Seattle's mayor recently called public safety a top priority in his state of the city address, and it has becom ea major issue in the races for mayor in Denver and Philadelphia as well.
Perhaps no city has been whipsawed by changing attitudes on crim e as much as San Francisco. Mayor London Breed was one of the first politicians to call for shifting funds away from police following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
But amid concern about homelessness, drug overdoses and theft, Breed took to the steps of City Hall in late 2021 to announce she was increasing police funding, declaring an emergency in the hard-hit Tenderloin district, and putting in place measures to combat shoplifting.
A frustrated Breed said officials would be “less tolerant of all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.”
Last year, San Francisco voters recalled Chesa Boudin, one of the nation's most liberal district attorneys, amid anger over some of the same issues Breed cited. Breed replaced Boudin in July with a former deputy of his who offered a sharply different vision on criminal justice.
While Boudin emphasized drug decriminalization, the new district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, said in an interview she is going after drug dealers she blames for overdoses, gun violence and addiction that fuels thefts and other street crime.
Jenkins announced she was revoking 30 plea offers to repeat fentanyl dealers made by Boudin. She said she may allow her prosecutors to seek murder charges against fentanyl dealers whose drugs lead to fatal overdoses and will seek pretrial detention for dealers the office believes pose public-safety risks.
Jenkins said she still supports many reforms, but less punitive measures were not working. She said Democrats have ceded the discussion of public safety to Republicans and it was tim efora more forceful response.
“We tried the opposite approach with extreme leniency,” Jenkins said. “We see that it got us to a state in San Francisco that was intolerable for residents, for visitors and for business owners.”