For months, Democratic mayors, governors, and prosecutors have looked the other way as rioters, vandals, and looters have turned their cities into war zones.
President Trump and other Republican officials are about to teach them that letting leftists literally get away with murder has consequences.
Police, who have been hampered in their efforts to put the riots down and denied the federal assistance President Trump continually offered, quickly learned the score.
Even if they did arrest the people assaulting officers, lighting fires, and closing off public streets, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., endorsed bail funds and Democratic district attorneys eager to drop the charges would have them back out there rioting in a matter of days, if not hours.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa radicals learned their own lessons from the status quo that Democrats created.
They knew that if they took what they pleased from stores, lit cars and buildings on fire, knocked cops out with bricks and high-powered, cornea-wrecking lasers to the eyes, they would face zero consequences.
They didn’t even get a single word of reproach throughout the whole four days of the Democratic National Convention.
So, they decided to push things further to see where the limits were.
In New York, they began mass looting of the city’s ritziest shopping districts.
In Washington, D.C., they began mobbing and screaming at diners who refused to stop eating and raise the Black Power fist. In Seattle, they declared their own "autonomous zone" and shot people to death whom they felt were intruding on it.
But the worst violence came inPortland, Oregon, culminating in the organized murder of Trump-supporter by a violent, Black Power fist-tattooed street-brawler who described himself as "100% Antifa."
Despite strong evidence that the killing was an organized, unprovoked hit, Portland authorities didn’t bother to arrest the killer for more than a week. Instead Mr. "100% Antifa" did softball interviews with the liberal press while his supporters laughed and cheered about how the "fascist" murder victim deserved it.
If it weren’t for the fact the Portland killer died in a shootout with U.S. Marshals as he made a run for the border, it seems as though Portland Democrats would be okay with letting Antifa get away with murder. They might have even repeated the absurd lie that "Antifa has never killed anyone," which has been parrotted so often over the last few months.
The jig is up, as the Democrats enabling these criminals are now learning.
On Sept. 2, President Trump issued an executive order commanding his administration to identify cities that are actively "permitting anarchy, violence, and destruction" and start choking off their federal subsidies.
On Monday, the Justice Department identified New York City, Seattle, and Portland as the first of these anarchy-permitting jurisdictions, paving the way for a different kind of "defunding" than their leaders had in mind.
"We cannot allow federal tax dollars to be wasted when the safety of the citizenry hangs in the balance. It is my hope that the cities identified by the Department of Justice today will reverse course and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens," U.S. Attorney General William "Bill" Barr said while announcing the determination.
These proactive steps are being echoed at the state level, as well.
The same day, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., announced legislation designed to discourage Democrats in his state from going down the path followed by their allies in New York and the Pacific Northwest. The bill would increase penalties for the kind of mass violence seen around the country this summer and slash state funding to any municipality foolish enough to "defund the police."
That’s exactly the right way to stop the violence: create laws imposing harsh penalties for anarchist violence, then rigorously enforce them. If the prosecutors do their jobs, the police will undoubtedly do theirs.
Woefully misinformed and misguided Democrats believed they could score political points by standing with the mob instead of their own citizens and property owners.
Again and again, the same rabble rousers whose favor they courted spat in their faces and laughed at their weakness. They’re about to learn that there can be even graver consequences to their fecklessness than that.
As New York City’s 40th Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik was in command of the NYPD on September 11, 2001, and responsible for the city’s response, rescue, recovery, and the investigative efforts of the most substantial terror attack in world history. His 35-year career has been recognized in more than 100 awards for meritorious and heroic service, including a presidential commendation for heroism by President Ronald Reagan, two Distinguished Service Awards from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, The Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and an appointment as Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Commissioner Kerik hosts a weekly radio show, Behind the Badge, on 77 WABC Radio New York. Read Bernard Kerik's Reports — More Here.
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