After decades of decline in the rate of violent crime, last year saw it spike and then some. In big cities across the country, murders were up 17 percent. And that masks how bad it is in some particularly traumatized urban areas—parts of Chicago, for instance, have become killing fields. Scholar Heather Mac Donald has made a compelling case that the explosion in crime can be tied to what she calls the “Ferguson effect,” in which the police, afraid of being accused of racism or abuse, have become hesitant. Their paralysis in turn allows criminals to become bold.
There has been no hesitation from Mac Donald, who has reported on and analyzed the distressing phenomenon in publications including City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard and has done so in the face of withering criticism from left-wing groups such as the Black Lives Matter movement. Mac Donald has courageously followed where her research and the data have led her, which is to the conclusion that the great threat to young black lives is not abusive policing but violent criminals assaulting and intimidating members of their own neighborhoods and communities. By weakening the police presence that had kept those criminals somewhat in check, Black Lives Matter has only succeeded in putting black lives at greater risk.
This is one of the core conclusions of Mac Donald’s new collection of essays, The War on Cops, which not only diagnoses the recent crime epidemic but also prescribes cures, including careful but vigorous law enforcement. The Scrapbook congratulates Mac Donald on her important work, on her focus on improving the lives of minorities and the poor who suffer from lawlessness around them, and on her unwillingness to be bullied by leftists who would like to shut her up.
Let’s hope The War on Cops is widely read and that its recommendations are given a chance to improve the lives not only of the much-beleaguered police but of the long-suffering citizens who need police protection the most.
