Biden Misidentifies the Crime Culprit President Biden does political damage control amid rising urban disorder.
President Biden is stumping for Democrats in Pennsylvania this week, and law and order was his theme Tuesday in Wilkes-Barre. He was joined by Rep. Matt Cartwright, who is in a tight race to keep his House seat, and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro. Democrats are worried about public anxiety over rising crime, and they should be.
Statewide, murders and non-negligent manslaughters increased 46% last year compared to 2019, according to Pennsylvania’s Uniform Crime Reporting System. Pittsburgh recorded 53 homicides last year, a 43% increase over 2019. Nonfatal shootings there were up 25% in 2021 compared to two years prior.
Earlier this year Pew reported that only 44% of Philadelphia residents said they felt safe in their neighborhood at night, while 65% said they’d heard gunshots near their homes in the past year. Some 362 people have been slain in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year, compared to 226 in the first eight months of 2019.
Mr. Biden was at pains Tuesday to neutralize the perception that Democrats want to defund the police. “When it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police. Fund the police.” That’s a welcome line, but remember that in 2020 such sentiments were heresy in the Democratic Party.
Police are quitting in droves nationwide, and fewer cops now contend with more crime. Pennsylvania law-enforcement agencies had more than 1,200 police vacancies in March, according to the public-media organization WHYY. Cops don’t want to work where they lack political support.
The problem is that Mr. Biden didn’t offer any serious ideas to improve law enforcement. Instead he attacked the gun lobby, mass shooters, and Republicans for not condemning the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. “Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress,” he said. “Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th. . . . Whose side are you on? Look, you’re either on the side of a mob or on the side of the police.”
But big-city residents are worried far more about the gangs on their street, and illegal guns in the hands of criminals. Mr. Biden would have done better to save his ire for progressive prosecutors like Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who brags about how few criminals he’s put behind bars. The disorder will continue until state and local governments are willing to prosecute and incarcerate lawbreakers.
Mr. Biden’s speech was an exercise in damage control, not crime control.
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