As The Left’s Crime Crisis Worsens, America Needs Its Police Now More Than Ever
During National Police Week, we take a moment to pause and honor the men and women of our law enforcement community who have given so much to keep us all safe. To don the badge is one of our nation’s highest honors, but one that comes with unique dangers that so few of us experience firsthand.
For those who risk their lives to protect our safety and the values we hold dear, thank you for all you do.
This year’s National Police Week events are particularly poignant, as the law enforcement career faces challenges unlike any we’ve seen in our history before. Amid two of the most violent years on record for public safety, murders of law enforcement officers hit an all-time high in 2021, with murder rates up 59% from 2020.
These tragic deaths included unprovoked attacks and brazen officer ambushes that fly in the face of the very law and order our men and women in uniform live to protect.
In progressive cities that have championed anti-police, anti-law-and-order rhetoric over the last several years, murder rates have skyrocketed, with a 30% increase in murders in 2020 — the single largest annual increase since the 1960s. These new homicide records shouldn’t surprise us: it’s what happens when you take police off our streets.
In the last two years, we’ve witnessed dozens of brazen attacks against innocent civilians in these cities, making headlines as liberal outlets blame the horrific crimes on anything other than dwindling police forces resulting from defunded departments.
In just the last couple of months, Americans will remember horrific attacks across the country — young women pushed in front of subway tracks in New York City; armed robberies and lootings in Los Angeles and San Francisco; a suburban mother brutally stabbed and carried down the street from her home in New York — the list goes on.
These crimes don’t have to happen, but anti-law enforcement rhetoric peddled by the progressive Left and the Biden administration has created and spurred this crime crisis. While Biden and the White House falsely claimed Republicans “defunded the police,” the American people are smarter than this administration gives them credit for.
Adding onto the dozens of other crises this administration has created, like the border, Afghanistan, inflation and beyond, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats hope to shift the blame for something for which they’re singlehandedly responsible for.
The Left’s war against our law enforcement officers has affected policymaking on Capitol Hill and in cities across the country. City leaders, encouraged by the Defund the Police movement, cut police budgets dramatically in 2021. These cities with reduced budgets are the same ones struggling with some of the most severe issues: record crime, poor officer recruitment and retention, and low morale.
Include lax prosecutors, low funding, ineffective bail reform and our revolving-door criminal justice system and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Strong law enforcement is needed now more than ever. With rising crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking growing, well-trained forces with committed officers are in high demand. This administration’s border crisis has only made matters worse when safety should be a top priority.
The good news won’t come until November, however, when Republicans take back the House of Representatives and secure an overwhelming majority that won’t stand for public safety as an afterthought. These dangerous ideas from the Left won’t see the light of day again and we’ll work hard to return law and order to American cities in desperate need of safety, security and prosperity.
This National Police Week, I hope you’ll join me in thanking your local law enforcement officers for the harrowing job they do. When they don the badge, it’s not just their own lives at risk, their families pray for their safety and hope they’ll see them home again at the end of the day.
On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for all you do to keep us safe, we’ve got your six.
Congresswoman Kat Cammack is the youngest Republican woman in the 117th Congress. The wife of a firefighter, she serves on the House Homeland Security and Agriculture Committees.
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