The Patriot Post® · DOJ Targets Police, Crime Rises

If history is any guide, the residents of Minneapolis and Louisville may want to brace for a jump in violent crime. The reason? At the behest of President Joe “Unity” Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland initiated sweeping investigations into the supposedly systemically racist policing practices of these two cities last month and, historically, such probes end up yielding higher crime.

The day after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, Garland announced a Justice Department “pattern and practice” investigation to ascertain “whether there is a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing.” And with the near certainty that the DOJ will determine there are patterns or practices that are deemed unlawful, these police departments will be forced into consent decrees.

That’s where the trouble begins. As Axios reports, “Data on all 12 agencies under consent decrees since 2012 found that seven of them experienced jumps in violent crime rates in two years compared to the two years before they entered into the consent decrees.” In short, DOJ consent decrees are a recipe for increasing a large city’s violent crime rate.

These increases are not by small percentage jumps, either. Data shows Los Angeles experienced a 61% spike in violent crime following its consent decree in 2012, Albuquerque saw a 36% increase after its consent decree in 2014, and Seattle saw a 27% rise.

There is one caveat, and it has everything to do with the size of the city. Data indicates that those cities with populations of less than 50,000 do experience a drop in violent crime rate following a consent decree. But unless the cities of Minneapolis and Louisville have experienced a sudden massive population shift, this factor is moot.

Regarding the city of Albuquerque in particular, the current GOP candidate for New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District special election, Mark Moore, contends, “Right now we are in crisis. Albuquerque is burning, and it seems like politicians are just playing the fiddle. We’ve got to be able to deal with this criminal element that has taken over the city right now.” Data shows that Albuquerque had been experiencing a 30-year low in crime prior to the DOJ’s consent decree.

If fighting violent crime is the goal, then it would seem that consent decrees are clearly not the way to go. But with the Biden administration embracing Critical Race Theory, which preaches that police are systemically racist, what could possibly go wrong?