Treating cops like suspects and lawbreakers as victims is a bad deal for taxpayers and especially for the poor.
Last year, 327 career criminals were responsible for 30% of New York City’s 22,000 shoplifting arrests, according to the New York City Police Department. “And guess what,” said the exasperated NYPD official who announced the findings at a press conference last week. “Two hundred thirty-five of them—so 235 out of 327—are walking around the streets of New York right now.”
Thanks to bail-reform legislation enacted by lawmakers in Albany (and other state capitals) in recent years, most shoplifting suspects are protected from pretrial detention, and judges aren’t permitted to consider a defendant’s danger to the community. This misguided leniency has hurt morale among police officers, who risk life and limb catching bad guys only to see them cut loose within hours of being arrested. It can also lead to more civilians taking matters into their own hands. Last weekend, a District of Columbia resident shot and killed a 13-year-old after witnessing the boy and other youths breaking into cars at 4 a.m.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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