Woke-Up Call

The Democratic Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot, got stomped this past week.  She went down to defeat and failed to advance to a runoff election.

It was the first time in forty years that an incumbent Chicago mayor lost a primary.

Lightfoot raced into office in 2019 with 73% of the vote.  She was a breakthrough in Chicago politics as only the second female mayor and the first openly gay Black woman.   But his past week Lightfoot got the boot with a measly 17% of the city’s voters supporting her.

Lightfoot not only wasn’t likable.  She antagonized powerful labor unions.  She refused to be interviewed by white city hall reporters.  She blamed her woes on her Black womanhood. 

But the lowlight of Lightfoot’s years as mayor was the out of control crime on Chicago’s streets.  Windy City voters were blown away by the immense increase in shootings, murders and carjackings.

The loud and clear Chicago vote should be another woke-up call (no typo), to every politician in every American city where lawlessness is ignored and decent, law-abiding citizens have been turned into targets.

Are progressive mayors now being seen as part of the problem and not part of the solution?  Maybe, but forgive me for allowing them a partial excuse.

A mayor can set a tone for a city and can use her/his/they’s bully pulpit to advocate for public safety.  But they are sabotaged by state legislators who pass laws that put recidivist criminals back on the streets and they are undermined by district attorneys who refuse to prosecute.  

They say they will make their public safety decisions based on facts and statistics yet they stifle their party comrades who have different truths to tell.

Have you heard of David Soares?  He’s the Albany County New York District Attorney.  He’s been in office for almost 20 years.  He was born in West Africa and is a lifelong Democrat.

Last month he was scheduled to testify before a joint committee of the New York State Legislature about the criminal justice laws that were passed a couple of years ago.

Legislative leaders in Albany have said they won’t toughen them up until they see data to support change.

Soares wanted to give them that data.  Oh boy did he want to.  But they shut him down and shut him out.

D.A. Soares was disinvited from presenting in person, but his speech was read into the legislature’s public record by someone else and reprinted in the New York Post.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/19/albany-county-da-david-soares-new-yorks-bail-laws-are-a-bust/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

Among the things Soares debunked was the myth that criminal justice reform was needed because so many people were being held on minor charges and couldn’t make bail.

He cited a study of the jail population in Queens done in 2019, before the lame legislators reformed the bail laws.  It showed that 95% of the defendants were being held due to felonies, 41% violent felonies.  

Here’s another data point he wanted them to ponder.  In that same study, those people who were being held on misdemeanor charges “had an average of more than five felony arrests, seven misdemeanor arrests, seven misdemeanor convictions and almost three failures to appear.”

In other words, arresting people for minor crimes often reveals they are wanted for much bigger crimes.

One last thing.  Soares proffered data that debunked the claim that crime soared due to COVID.  He showed that crime was already going up substantially before the pandemic.  Why?  Because in anticipation of the new laws, judges began a “soft launch” and released thousands of car thieves, burglars, drug dealers and petty thieves, because those offenses would be “non-bailable” in 2020.

As Soares said, “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.”

Soares has stated publicly that “Recent criminal justice reforms have sent the wrong signal to criminals, a green light.”  He said, “The most devastating impact is clearly seen in Black and brown communities.  Victims in these communities are not just data points; they’re people.”

David Soares’ speech and Lori Lightfoot’s slap down, should encourage voters to take back their streets from the ideological imbeciles that have made up their own truths, coddling the criminals and victimizing the victims. 

Perhaps the tide is turning but lots of damage has been done by the know-it-alls.  It will take many courageous and clear-thinking elected leaders to fix what has been so irresponsibly broken in our American cities.  

It is up to us, the voters, to elect women and men who’ll speak out and declare that our safety cannot be robbed from us by fanatics, faddists and fools.  

One last thing…

This past week the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation of Long Island Congressman George Santos for possible financial hanky-panky and sexual misconduct.  It also reviewed a recommendation that Queens Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be investigated for accepting “impermissible gifts” when she showed up at the Met Gala in that “tax the rich” designer gown.

AOC and Santos, two ends of the political spectrum, but are they really so different?