Democrats are moving a step beyond national debate over defunding the police, with three leading Democrats issuing statements over the past month that excuse or tolerate criminal acts.
As some Seattle residents illegally seized several city blocks in June and christened the area the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan did not initially intervene. Instead, Durkan said CHAZ was “patriotic” and that it could turn into “a summer of love.”
“Burning, rioting, and looting are criminal acts and should never be justified or excused,” said Heritage Foundation President Kay James. “It is an absolute scandal that political and corporate elites would not only excuse this behavior, but cheerlead the destruction of communities, the ransacking of local family businesses, and the skyrocketing rates of violence against the most vulnerable citizens. We must … expose the powerful people who are providing aid and comfort to the domestic enemies of our American republic.”
In early July, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about the destruction of statues nationwide when a reporter pressed her on one such toppling in Baltimore.
“Shouldn’t that be done by a commission or the City Council, not a mob in the middle of the night throwing it into the harbor?” the reporter asked.
“People will do what they do,” Pelosi said.
Former senior FBI official Andrew Bringuel II said Pelosi failed to uphold the law, which lawmakers swear to do when they take office.
“Politicians are saying, ‘It’s not OK necessarily, but we understand why you want to destroy these statues,’” said Bringuel, a retired supervisory special agent at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and executive director of the Behavioral Science Unit. “That doesn’t negate the fact that these people are committing acts of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience short of terrorism is still a violation of law.”
When asked this week about the rise in homicides in New York City, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seemed to justify crime, saying people were facing a level of “economic desperation” that had not been seen since the recession.
“Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent. And so they go out, and they need to feed their child, and they don’t have money,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “They feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”
Rafael Mangual, deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute, said Ocasio-Cortez’s point has been debunked. Crime was down in the Great Depression even as a greater rate of people were out of work than any period in the past century.
“Look at New York between 1990 and 2018. Annual homicides went from 2,262 down to 295 per year,” said Mangual. “I’ve yet to hear a root cause explanation for the crime decline in New York. If you look at New York’s 2016 poverty rate, it was 19.5%. … Economic [downturns] driving crime fails to grapple with the reality that shooting somebody doesn’t actually enrich you. We’re not seeing a big surge in robberies. It’s shootings and homicides that are going up most sharply.”
Dr. James Alan Fox, professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University, said violent protests are not made legitimate even if the reason for protest is righteous.
“We shouldn’t justify criminal activity, even if it’s done to make a point. Peaceful demonstration is one thing and fine. Obviously, lawlessness is not,” said Fox. “We have to keep in mind lawlessness is a small portion of all the demonstrations we’ve seen.”
Democratic tolerance of criminal behavior is becoming more routine, but it is not entirely new. Following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, who had been detained by police, riots erupted in Baltimore. Democratic Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake told police to stand down and let people destroy property.
“I made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech,” Rawlings-Blake said. “It’s a very delicate balancing act. Because while we try to make sure that they were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”
Pelosi, Durkan, and Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to requests for comment.
