Thomas Sowell "Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and
actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor
and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves,
in order to curry favor with local voters.
"Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they
were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years.
Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.
"Various other communities across the country are experiencing very
similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of
anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as
“protests.' ” . . .
Unfortunately, when some people experience years of safety, they
assume that means that there are no dangers. That is why New York’s
current mayor is moving back in the direction of Mayor Dinkins. It is
also the politically expedient thing to do.
And innocent men, women and children — most of them black — will pay
with their lives in New York, as they have in Baltimore and elsewhere.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His website is www.tsowell.com.