What Will Voters Believe on Crime?

Blue-state governors seem to be responding to President Trump’s anti-crime campaign with Marxist tactics. Not the communist, Karl, that is, but the comedian Brothers. In “Duck Soup,” Chico Marx famously deceives a wealthy widow by asking, “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” It’s an apt metaphor for Governor Kathy Hochul of New York when she poses as a defender of law and order.Feature, say, Mrs. Hochul’s ballyhoo today touting her “war on shoplifting,” as Politico puts it, in an attempt to counterbalance Mr. Trump “using the weight of the federal government to crack down on urban crime in blue states.” Any New Yorker with eyes can tell that there is precious little progress to see on the scourge of shoplifting. If there were, then why is nearly everything in the city’s drug stores behind lock and key? This enhanced security of everyday consumer products — at the cost of New Yorkers’ time and convenience — emerged after Albany Democrats in 2019 weakened laws on crime-fighting. Among other errors, they limited the imposition of bail on criminal defendants accused of low-level offenses like shoplifting. They made it harder for prosecutors to win their cases. Soft-on-crime district attorneys like Alvin Bragg stopped prosecuting many minor crimes.The lax approach to crime is costing taxpayers and impairing the quality of life for countless New Yorkers. Roughly half of bus riders no longer pay a fare, these columns have lamented, and turnstile jumping is costing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority some $800 million a year, its chairman says. The state’s leftist attorney general, Letitia James, put the kibosh on efforts to police fare evasion back in 2020 by suggesting that enforcement is racist.Yet now Mrs. Hochul has the chutzpah to suggest that she is leading a crime-fighting renaissance across the Empire State. So far this year, she crows, retail theft at New York City is down 12 percent. Statewide it’s down 5 percent versus last year. Isn’t this likely traceable to retailers locking up nearly everything of value on their shelves to shield it from shoplifters? Plus, too, mark the vacant pharmacy shorefronts across Manhattan, victims of rampant theft.The ominous presence, at Upper East Side luxury boutiques, of security guards and bulletproof shop windows belies, too, Mrs. Hochul’s dubious declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” Politico pours cold water on the governor’s cheerleading, pointing out that despite some improvement in the shoplifting statistics, “incidents in New York are still above pre-Covid levels.” At least Mrs. Hochul concedes “the work is not done yet.” No kidding.California in 2014 induced its own crime wave via a proposition that downgraded to a misdemeanor any retail theft of goods valued up to a whopping $950, opening the door to widespread shoplifting. Ten years later, Californians were so fed up with the disorder that the state rolled back some of the proposition’s worst excesses. Governor Gavin Newsom’s tough talk — “an arrest isn’t enough,” he’s muttered — rings as hollow as Mrs. Hochul’s. Governor Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker depicts Chicago as an oasis, but for 13 years the Windy City has had the most murders of any American city. No wonder crime is “an issue that favors Republicans ahead of the midterms,” per Politico, and the issue is “backing Democrats into a corner.” Mr. Trump seems to have the Democrats on the ropes over law and order, making the most of their soft spot for criminals. Marxism aside, it’s no laughing matter.As we made our way through the news on this beat we were struck by a headline about how Mr. Trump is threatening to send the National Guard to Chicago. “Threatening?” we thought. It’s hard to see how bringing in soldiers is a threat. It’s a source of hope for law-abiding voters from New York to Los Angeles. New York and other blue states remind that the crime scourge is of their own making as they fail to faithfully execute their own criminal laws.______________Correction: $800 million is the annual cost to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of fare evasion. An earlier version misstated the amount.

What Will Voters Believe on Crime?

What Will Voters Believe on Crime?

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