Washington, DC, May 2, 2023 --  

America's urban retailers are suffering from a surge in crime. Politicians who fail to confront this challenge face ouster by angry voters.

Such brazen criminal behavior is inspired by a culture of impunity. Criminals know that police response times are slow, driven by a a decline in staffing in DC's Metropolitan Police Department. The MPD is down to 3,400 officers, well below the mayor's target of 4,000 officers, despite $25,000 recruitment bonuses.⁴ Recent recruitment has struggled to keep up with attrition, largely fueled by resignations and retirements.

This is not a local phenomenon. In San Francisco, the police department workforce is nearly 30 percent below the target staff level of 2,132,⁵ hurting response times and allowing similarly brazen cases of mass looting of businesses. The city's Whole Foods grocery on drug-plagued Market street closed last month after a series of confrontations between staff and criminals made it clear that management could not provide sufficient safety in the store.⁶

A similar safety-based closing Starbucks in Washington DC's Union Station took place last July⁷. The historic beaux-arts train station has been hit hard by the twin blows of a dearth of commuters following the Covid pandemic, a surge in addicts congregating in the area from the opioid epidemic. It is not uncommon for addicts and those suffering mental health problems to be a majority presence in a station once busy with commuting office workers.

Tragically, many of America's civic leaders have more sympathy with criminals and people living on the margins who are dragging cities down than the businesses and upstanding citizens who once made these cities vibrant places to live and work. In Washington, the immediate reaction to the closure of Union Station's Starbucks was to blame the victim. Labor leaders and their allies on the city council accused Starbucks of closing the store because of employee attempts to unionize. City Councilman Charles Allen, one of the politicians who accused Starbucks of being disingenuous about reasons for closing⁸ is also a backer of soft-on-crime initiatives like funding "violence interrupters" at the expense of the police.⁹

Fortunately such nutty ideas are starting to face pushback from voters, even in ultra-lefty places like San Francisco. Last June, 60 percent of San Francisco voters chose to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin who had been widely accused of being soft on crime.¹⁰ Washington, DC has yet to see such pushback at the polls, but faced a stinging rebuke in March when the U.S. Senate, backed by the President of the United States (a Democrat) blocked a criminal code reform including a reduction in some penalties.¹¹ While the DC mayor (also a Democrat) had vetoed the legislation, 11 of 12 city councilmen made the politically brain-dead move to overturn the veto in a January vote, including Charles Allen and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson.¹²

To be sure, rising crime in America's cities is not the fault of politicians. Surging street dealing and use of fentanyl and other opioids has fueled more criminal activity. Meanwhile, righteous public outrage of police abuse of Black Americans led to increased police scrutiny. This scrutiny, while deserved, has hurt police morale and willingness to perform what are unquestionably very difficult jobs. Given a rise in people prone to engage in criminal behavior and a reduction in law enforcement, it's not surprising when crime goes up.

While politicians can't be blamed for causing this situation in 2020 or 2021, their failure to respond to it in later years is deserving of voter response. When they continue to focus on increased fairness for criminals while their constituents are increasingly fear being victimized by crime, their behavior is every bit as brazen as the robbers clearing out the shelves at a Washington CVS. While criminals on the lam may never face justice, politicians who defy their constituents most certainly will.

Notes:

1. WTOP News, Group of Shoplifters Empty Shelves at 2 CVS Stores in Northwest DC, May 1, 2023

2. Ibid.

3. WJLA, Suspect slashes CVS employee's neck during attempted theft in Southeast DC, October 5, 2022

4. DCist, Bowser Boosts D.C. Police Hiring Bonuses To $25,000 Amid Recruitment Struggles, April 7, 2023

5. CBS News, SFPD Recruitment Bonus Proposed to Avoid 'Catastrophic' Shortage of Police Officers, January 23, 2023

6. Ibid

7. Axios, Union Station Starbucks Closing Sunday, July 28, 2022

8. Washington Post, As Starbucks Exits, Union Station Struggles With Safety, Empty Stores, July 29, 2022

9. DCist, D.C. Lawmakers Vote To Restore Funding To Violence Interruption Efforts, July 28, 2022

10. CBS News, San Francisco votes overwhelmingly to recall progressive DA Chesa Boudin, June 8, 2022

11. Associated Press, Senate votes to block DC crime laws, Biden supportive, March 8, 2023

12. DCist, D.C. Lawmakers Override Bowser’s Veto Of Criminal Code Rewrite, Decry ‘Fear-Mongering’ Around Bill, January 17, 2023