America's Talking - Police Groups Blame Broken System as Cities See Crime Rise

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

A rise in crime, looting, and unhindered theft around the U.S. has helped fuel Americans' rising concerns about crime. Some of the nation’s largest cities are experiencing crime waves in recent years, and new polling shows Americans are worried. Gallup released new polling Tuesday showing that more Americans are concerned about higher crime with Americans ranking it as the sixth largest problem facing the nation, behind other issues like “poor leadership” and inflation. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to American Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does most every week, is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. It's great. It's an honor to be a part of the best part of your week. It's up there. It's in the top 75 parts of my week anyway. Okay. Thank you for that. We are recording this on Thursday, May 4th. Casey, there's been growing concerns, the country about increased violent crime rates, increased retail theft rates. There was a new poll that came out from Gallup this week. What did that, what did that poll tell us? Right. And this poll showed essentially, you know, they ask Americans what their top concerns are for the nation. And what

we saw is a sharp increase in Americans who were worried about crime last month. So, or rather, in March. So crime is really in the American mind. And so we, you know, I did some digging to look. How much of this is, you know, just fearmongering and how much is actually based in data. And it turns out there's real data behind these fears. I mean, we can go through different cities from D.C. to Chicago, you know, where you and I are respectively based in. And we have seen a major uptakes in crime. I'll just, your neighborhood, Chicago, let's take a look here. This is according to Chicago, Chicago Police Department, a report from 2022. In the last four years, murder rose 20 percent. Motor vehicle theft is up 114 percent. You know, some things like burglary saw a drop, like 30

But overall, crime in the city is up 19%. And that homicide, you know, murder rate, of course, is probably the most significant one to keep track of. So major rise in homicides. But that is a common theme we've seen in cities around the country. Police groups are really upset about it. Now this polling shows that Americans are upset about it. And there's a feeling of, I think, a little bit of helplessness. You know, we're talking about defunding the police a couple years ago.

But now crime is, is continued to rise in particular homicides. And I think it's causing people to question that stance and say, okay, what do we do? You reference Chicago. I do live in the suburbs in Chicago and have been following the increased crime in the city. You referenced one type of crime that's actually down year over year, and that was home burglaries, essentially. But retail theft up up, significantly motor vehicle theft up 140%. I've got a theory about why burglaries, home burglaries, might be down while all these others are up, when you've got prosecutors who don't prosecute retail theft, who essentially allow

people to go into stores, sweep up as much as they can, walk out, don't prosecute them for crimes. Why not do that when you might be staring down the barrel of a gun if you break into someone's home? You don't know who owns a gun or not. There's definitely my neighbors and I, other folks that I know in the suburbs, I wouldn't say stopped visiting, but we've decreased the amount of times we go to Chicago, whether it be for ball games, entertainment purposes, good food, good restaurants, because of the rising crime there. If that's happening in Chicago, I can understand what other major cities, San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, that people's concerns would be up because of that. Right. Yeah, I think there's something to that. And this is a little bit of speculation,

but you can imagine that if there's a sense that the crime isn't going to be prosecuted, then why report it? Right. I mean, realistically, then if somebody stole your stereo, are you really going to file a police report? You know, you don't have it on camera. What are the police going to do? Right. So I think you can imagine that the more people feel rightly that these crimes aren't being prosecuted because many of the district attorneys are outright saying they're not going to prosecute it, especially some of these nonviolent crimes just go. I don't know if you've ever called the police to have for something like a burglary or a TV was stolen. They kind of just, you can just tell by how they

handle it like, yeah, good luck, basically, is the message, right? So why you ever report it? And then, you know, I'm pretty sure that, I don't know if you can fact tell me on the stand, but if you, what makes it a burglary is that you didn't, like, hold someone up at gunpoint or something, right? So if you had a gun on it, it would be a robbery. But if you do it without a gun or then it's a burglary. So I wonder if the increase in violence could account for some of the lower burglary. But also, I think what's part of this is, you know, social media is so much forming,

especially the younger generation, how they view this, how they view law and order, how they view crime, how they view if they're going to get caught or not. And we have seen so many viral videos of people, as you described, walking in, I'm sure you've seen these, where they walk in with a trash bag into a CVS, they fill it up and they walk right out. Or in your home city, Chicago, were you, what was the discussion like where all those teenagers were running wild through the city, robbing, even attacking people, like, you know, looting stores? And it seemed to me to go unaddressed. And that was not in the, you know,

the poor gang-stricken neighborhoods of Chicago, that was in the loop, the tourist center. And there were media reports of older tourists who were attacked during that. Would you ever want to come back to Chicago if you were a tourist and you got attacked in the loop in the downtown tourist area? And there are other ramifications for this to too. Walmart has had eight super centers in the city of Chicago. They announced recently they're closing four of those super centers in the worst crime neighborhoods because they can't do anything about the retail theft. They can't make money.

So it's those lower income residents that live in those communities that are going to suffer greatly because the city can't get crime under control. Right. And people, you know, people, I've heard a lot of people say, oh, boo-hoo, Walmart, you know, billions of dollars. They can absorb it. And, you know, I understand not feeling much sympathy for a corporation that large. But as you said, it's the people who live in that community pay the price because what if your mom worked at that Walmart, right? Or, you know, Walmart, of course, is going to be cheaper than a lot of other places. So there's a lot of talk about food desert.

So it may, you may not feel sorry for these big companies like Walgreens, which shut down almost two dozen locations in San Francisco. for similar reasons. You may not feel sorry for these big corporations, but they take with them jobs, economic opportunity, and they can start a domino effect to discourage investors who would be investing in those same neighborhoods. Yeah, and in these lower income, you know, areas, not everybody owns a car. Yeah, there's plenty of public transportation in Chicago, but you want to have to take a bus two miles away, loaded up with grocery bags and bringing it home. Well, we could, We could go on and on on on this story, Casey, but we are out of time. Our listeners can keep up with the concerns about eat increased crime at the center square.com.

For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulip. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening.