Crime and Safety

Sunset Park Brooklyn is a predominately Hispanic community and over the past few years whites have begun to move in as they look for less expensive places to live outside of Park Slope or Manhattan. The process of gentrification has begun but in the early 90’s my youngest daughter told me that this area was dominated by gang wars. Today it is as safe as downtown Cedar Rapids or Marion, Iowa, where I live. At night, restaurants are full, small convenience stores, bakeries and grocery stores are busy and there is a taco stand at the corner of 38th street and 5th Ave operating at night. Crime rate has significantly dropped from the early 1990’s, and as I told my daughter, “This is the legacy of Rudy Giuliani.” New York is probably the safest major metropolitan area.

During the 2016 election, law and order became an issue, and while crime rate is significantly lower than in the early 90’s, voters view crime as an issue. The reasons would include the increased numbers of police officers killed in the line of duty and the publicity surrounding the murder rate of major cities such as Chicago. Over the past year, homicides shot up 12% nationwide. Cities of a half million have seen a 14.5% rise in murders and in cities of a million or more this increase has reached 20%.

Pew Research noted that 57% of voters viewed crime as increasing since 2008, including 78% of Trump supporters. While overall violent crimes and property crime has fallen 19% and 23% since 2008, the average voter is viewing 2015 as that year that something changed as crime did increase that one year. Even Hillary Clinton supporters, by a margin of 37% to 25%, view crime as increasing.

Gallup polls this past spring found that 53% of voters worry about crime, a 10% increase over the previous year, while 70% believe that the crime rate has increased, contrasted to 63% the year before. By a margin of 46% to 33%, voters viewed crime as increasing in their area.

What voters may be viewing is a change in attitude toward crime. Since Ferguson and the rise of Black Lives Matter, many voters have seen policing change in major ways. Manhattan Institute Heather McDonald stated, “Starting in the second half 2014 however, after the shooting of Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri…crime in heavily black neighborhoods started going up because, again, officers are backing off of policing under the relentless hostility they get on the streets and under the message that they are the biggest threat facing young black men.”

Many in the public see this and wonder if we are seeing a national trend of police officers backing up aggressive tactics that helped reduce crime in the first place. The crime rate is nowhere near what we saw two decades ago before Congress passed new laws that increased incarceration for violent and repeat offenders as part of “get tough on crime” during Clinton’s administration. “The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 contained an expansion of the federal death penalty to include drug offenses, the "Three Strikes, You're Out" rule, and billions in funding for police, prisons, and states that made it harder for people to get parole (though Mr. Clinton neglected to mention this when he mentioned that most prisoners are incarcerated by the state)…But if Bill and Hillary Clinton were the pot, black politicians, activists, and pastors were the kettle. Their support of punitive measures actually paved the way for Clinton.” The majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported the bill under the leadership of Representative Kweisi Mfume and the reason that many black leaders supported the bill was to rid their communities of gang violence as violent crimes such as rapes, assaults and murders were at a record high in the inner cities.

The bipartisan consensus that existed in the 1990’s no longer exists. Many black activists view the war on crime as responsible for the increased incarceration of blacks and as LA Batchelor of the radio show Batchelor Pad mentioned to me on a debate of Stop and Frisk, “It is the blacks who get frisked not the whites.”

The dilemma for many blacks is that while history with law enforcement has led to distrust of police, will this distrust lead to increased crime in their neighborhood? Blacks are the biggest victims of crime but many blacks view that police discriminate against them and are not on their side. They don’t trust the very people whose job it is to defend them. As we have seen in polls on gun rights, blacks are supportive of the right to defend themselves, but until trust is built between police and the community, the risk of crime returning to 1990‘s levels exists. A community can’t be prosperous without being safe to live in.

Many voters are seeing their government backing away from protecting them and thus the polls are reflecting not so much of what is happening today but the fear of what will happen tomorrow. In spite of a rise in crime from 2014 to 2015, the overall crime rate is down from 2008 but voters’ fears of the future is what is driving the poll numbers. Going into 2018 and 2020, law and order may be the sleeper issue since voters understand that safety means prosperity in their community. The issue of economics and being safe from crime are intertwined, and in the voter’s mind, the political class is not interested in doing the steps to protect them. Just as many voters joined the Trump movement over border security, they also moved toward him in 2016 due to their own feeling that Trump cared for their safety. Trump, in his acceptance speech, stated, “There can be no prosperity without law and order…Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation…The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country… The first task for our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities…The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its own citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead." Trump made the connection of prosperity and security within a community and many voters responded.

Sunset Park is a reminder of what local government can do to secure a community and allow it to grow, but if a government forgets the lessons that allowed this to occur, the law of the jungle will soon replace the rule of law designed to protect that community.

Crime rates are below their peak from 1990’s but the increase in violent crimes over the past couple of years has captured voters’ notice. In the 1990’s, many urban communities and their representatives supported tougher prisons sentences and longer prison sentences. This resulted in a reduction of crime rates. There was a bipartisan agreement that crime threatens the public safety but today that consensus is now broken with the rise of Black Lives Matter. Many on the left are opposing the 1990’s reforms. The Populists and conservatives will support policing tactics that reduced the crime in metro areas and while the left has publicly come out for reversing the 1990’s tactics, those who are living in more dangerous areas could demand a more vigorous enforcement approach.

Trump’s approach is to make the case that public safety produces not just a safer community but a prosperous community. The left and Black Lives Matter frame this issue of supporting more law enforcement approach as racist to keep the minority component of the Democratic Socialist coalition intact.

With the Ron Johnson/Americas PAC approach of incorporating the crime issue with the Prevailing Economic Agreement, “Jobs fight crime”, Republicans can expand their coalition, and just like in education, this approach could hook enough minorities as part of the conservative majority.