In Atlanta this weekend, an 8-year-old girl was shot and killed while riding in a vehicle with her mother. The driver was trying to enter a parking lot where a group of people had illegally placed barricades. Someone in the group reportedly opened fire.
Elsewhere in Minneapolis, a pregnant woman was shot while in her car. Doctors were able to deliver and save her child, but the woman died shortly thereafter. And in Seattle, where a teenage boy died last week, another young woman was killed after a car drove into a group of protesters on a closed highway.
We don’t know much about the perpetrators or their politics, but we do know this: Violence will continue to escalate in cities that refuse to check and put down lawless behavior. There is a disconnect between the belief that black lives matter, or any other lives, and the refusal to protect them with police.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms had to beg residents Sunday night to turn in the person who shot 8-year-old Secoriea Turner. Bottoms, who to her credit has urged residents to take responsibility for their neighborhoods rather than attack the police, lost the confidence of Atlanta officers amid the controversy surrounding the death of Rayshard Brooks. Dozens of officers called out sick, and citywide protests have continued unabated. Only after Turner’s death did Bottoms say what she should have said weeks earlier and demand an end to the violent protests.
Over in Minneapolis, city officials have abandoned common sense. The city council voted to begin disbanding the Minneapolis Police Department. As a consequence, homelessness, prostitution, and drug deals are running rampant in neighborhoods where law enforcement has been shut out. Until the city puts its foot down and restores order, it will continue to deteriorate, and such a crackdown seems unlikely.
In Seattle, where protesters created their own autonomous zone for weeks without opposition from law enforcement, one resident drove head-on into a group of protesters, killing an innocent woman and injuring one other. Police haven’t determined whether the attack was intentional, but after watching video footage of the incident, it’s hard to see it as anything but.
The incidents mentioned above have important differences. But the one thing they have in common is a government too afraid to step on the toes of activists. Bottoms suggested she’d support the “Defund the Police” movement so long as it focused on reallocating resources. She’s already begun that process within the city’s Corrections Department. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan all but crippled her own Police Department, refusing to allow Seattle officers to return to their East Precinct building until multiple shootings rocked the protesters’ autonomous zone. And Minneapolis City Council members are insisting that they don’t need police at all while forking over tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to hire private security teams.
This has got to stop. Government officials need to step up and do whatever it takes to protect the lives of their citizens. They should start by letting police departments do their job and enforce the law.
Lawless behavior will not stop until it is forcefully quashed. Bottoms can plead with her city’s residents, and Durkan can try to negotiate, but at the end of the day, there’s only one solution: increase the cities’ police presence and allow officers to return to preventive policing. The activists can complain, but at least the cities will have a better chance at saving the lives of innocent men, women, and children who have been caught in the crossfire.
