Mayor Who Wanted 'Summer of Love' Gets Mugged by Reality, Now Sees Need for More Cops
What a difference a year makes.
It was only last June that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was drawing national ridicule after suggesting that allowing a segment of her city’s downtown to devolve into lawlessness could be paving the way for a “summer of love.” (It didn’t.)
Thirteen months later, and eight months after she signed a city budget that slashed police funding by almost 20 percent, Durkan is singing a different tune — but she isn’t getting a lot of sympathy.
In a news conference Monday, the liberal Democrat who has already announced she’s not running for re-election said the Emerald City is going to have to rebuild its police force.
“As a city, we cannot continue on this current trajectory of losing police officers,” she said, according to Fox News. “Over the past 17 months, the Seattle Police Department has lost 250 police officers which is the equivalent of over 300,000 service hours. We’re on path to losing 300 police officers.”
The news conference followed a weekend where Seattle saw five people killed in separate shootings, according to KCPQ-TV.
That’s coming in a year where, according to KOMO-TV, the total number of shootings in King County — where Seattle is the county seat — was already running 33 percent higher this year than the four-year average for 2017-2020.
Shooting deaths this year are 48 percent higher than the four-year average, KOMO reported.
So a liberal city that was determined to cut down its police force has found itself up to its ears in violent crime. That’s what’s known as being mugged by reality.
It’s not just Seattle, of course. Cities across the country that allowed leftist loathing for law enforcement translate into actual action have seen similar, striking increases in violent crime: Minneapolis, Chicago, New York.
But it was Seattle’s mayor who was sounding the alarm on Monday. And it was Seattle’s mayor who was facing the scorn of social media users.
No wayyyyyy you mean the world actually needs more policemen? I figured we should defund them for having one of the hardest jobs in the nation! (Sarcasm) it’s all fun and games until somebody breaks into YOUR (everybody that wants to defund the cops) house and you need them.
— Dalton Shell (@Daltonshell12) July 28, 2021
This is like admitting water is wet. Leftists try to change reality by denying it.
In pursuit of perfect solutions for in imperfect world.
They always fail because Utopia can never be exist. There’s a reason our Founders spoke of a “more perfect union” and not a perfect one.
— Populist_Perspective (@PopuSpective) July 28, 2021
Defunding the police has serious consequences.
Who knew! ??♀️??♀️— Janne Clark?? (@janne_clark) July 28, 2021
Block party not going as planned?
— beccasu (@CocoaMonoi) July 28, 2021
The real mystery here is why any adult with a functioning intellect could think that drastically cutting police budgets would not result in a rise in criminal activity — but liberal eyes are blinded by their ideology.
Leftists have a tendency to confuse the actual, necessary functions of government with promoting the progressive agenda. It’s just the result of that political malpractice is rarely as starkly apparent, as a literal matter of life and death, as it is when it comes to law enforcement.
For instance, too many public school systems serve as permanent employment centers for unionized teachers, whose primary purpose is spreading progressive propaganda rather than serious education.
American students routinely suffer for it, of course, particularly the black and Hispanic kids liberals claim to care so much about, but consistently failing grades in schools and a functionally illiterate inner-city population don’t make the evening news.
Dead bodies in the street do.
Unfortunately, that’s also how, under the disastrous administration of President Joe Biden, the country’s armed forces — which exist exclusively to deter the nation’s enemies and do deadly violence to those who won’t be deterred — are becoming laboratories for psycho-social engineering more than surgically efficient killing machines.
In too many Democratic minds, including, apparently, the wandering mind in the Oval Office, the military is mainly a means for sexually disordered individuals to have taxpayers fund their gender transition surgery. (It’s a good bet our Chinese and Russian rivals don’t share that misconception.)
For liberals, the idea that a police force exists for the sole purpose of preventing criminals from victimizing others clashes with their misconception that American policing is focused on oppressing minorities.
So, they get rid of police forces and criminals thrive — with the phantom oppression of “systemic racism” in minority communities being replaced with the very real oppression of criminal violence, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and death.
Every American community and every American citizen deserves better than that.
Mugged by reality, the Democratic mayor of Seattle seems to be at least learning that lesson. With only 15 months to go before the midterm elections, the rest of her party could be learning the same lesson before too long.
And that could make a difference that will make history.
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