But they do, and now some of America's biggest blue cities are among our most dangerous.
"Memphis, New Orleans, and Richmond rank as America's homicide hotspots, with scholars linking their rising murder rates to soft-on-crime Democratic leadership and low police morale," the UK's Daily Mail reports.
According to a study conducted by WalletHub, murder rates in the largest cities in the United States increased by 10 percent between the first quarter of 2001 and the same period in 2021, and the rates continue to rise.
The figures were released as William Shaw Jr.'s arrest on a second-degree murder charge for fatally shooting his uncle in South Memphis earlier this week comes amid a string of homicides in Tennessee's second-largest city. Shaw's arrest is the most recent in a series of killings that have taken place in the area.
Studies have revealed that murder rates began to increase during the Covid-19 pandemic, with Democratic-led cities experiencing more rapidly rising rates than their Republican-led counterparts, the Daily Mail noted further.
The increase in murder rates in Democratic-led cities was attributed to several factors, according to the study. These included a rise in gun purchases, 'bail reform' initiatives that saw Soros prosecutors eliminate cash bail, and police avoiding the predominantly Black inner-city neighborhoods where gang-related killings are concentrated, following the protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
"The public reaction to the killing of George Floyd is perhaps the foremost example of this," noted Chidike Okeem, a crime expert at Western New England University. "As a response to the social unrest, some officers have embraced de-policing, which is the idea of not engaging in proactive policing practices in order to avoid increased scrutiny and censure."
Okeem noted further that when there is a dearth of police presence, "violence proliferates."
To determine their findings, the researchers evaluated various cities by calculating their homicide rates during the first quarter of 2023 and compared those numbers to the same period in both 2021 and 2022.
Memphis, New Orleans, Richmond, Washington DC, Detroit, Durham, Dallas, Milwaukee, Las Vegas and Kansas City ranked as America's worst cities for homicides. Amazingly, New York came in 36th and Los Angeles at 38th, while Norfolk, Omaha, Atlanta, Fort Worth, and Raleigh ranked at the bottom of the list of the worst-affected big cities.
According to researchers, murder rates increased at a faster rate in cities with Democratic mayors compared to those with Republican leaders who tend to value police and shun 'defund' efforts.
The killing of George Floyd and other unarmed Black men by police sparked widespread racial justice protests and calls from liberal groups to "defund the police," which resulted in police officers avoiding predominantly black, high-crime neighborhoods. But in fact, based on the FBI's own crime stats, there are few unarmed black men (and individuals of other ethnicities) killed each year by police officers. The biggest threat to young black men is other young black men.
Robert Spitzer, a professor at the College of William and Mary School of Law, said the death and violence in America's biggest cities showed how "police and policing are indispensable for society."
"Though police have suffered some reputational damage and loss of personnel, an increase in crime inevitably leads to people turning to the police for protection, and that helps their reputation," he added.
Analysts such as Spitzer have suggested that as the pandemic comes under control and government anti-crime initiatives are reinstated, there is a possibility of murder rates decreasing once again. But that will, again, depend largely on state and local Democratic leaders and whether they remain wedded to insane 'no fault' crime policies.
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