When a police chief is at a city council meeting or a press conference and has to say, “We have never been soft on crime. We are not soft on crime,” you can be damned sure they are soft on crime.
Dallas City Council committee Chair Adam McGough challenged Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall. “There’s a feeling that if someone wants to commit a crime, they can get away with it,” cbslocal.com reported. This is a common phenomenon in leftist cities across America today.
When defending herself, Chief Hall said she was “focused on crime of all levels in this community.” But is that true? In April, I wrote a story about Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot and his quest to “decriminalize crime in his city.” Creuzot is on a crusade to let street crooks off on most “petty” crimes. He also refuses to prosecute first-time drug offenders and is “reforming” probation to the detriment of the community.
While Chief Hall is on the proverbial hot seat —reports say her job may be threatened because of a spike in violent crimes— a city’s permissiveness at any criminal level affects crime at all levels. And when you have a police chief who rationalizes that ex-cons are “forced to commit violent acts,” can a city expect anything other than for crime to spike?
This year, between January 1 and May 31, Dallas recorded 97 murders. At this pace, they are on track for a possible 230 murders by the end of the year.
Chief Hall expressed her concerns about low police staffing and not being able to keep up with officer attrition. The chief needs to understand high crime, low staffing, and attrition go hand-in-hand with bad law enforcement policies. While they’ve had some issues, I found no examples of Chief Hall criticizing DA Creuzot for his policy of leniency on “petty” crimes.
When municipalities refuse to allow cops to do their jobs and otherwise make those jobs more difficult —more dangerous— officers bristle in a variety of ways. They may consciously and unconsciously “de-police,” suffer a significant drop in morale, and eventually many cops simply leave their departments prematurely.
I don’t envy the chief’s critics in Dallas. When they show a police chief evidence of a problem, but that chief becomes defensive and refuses to acknowledge a real problem exists, there’s not much chance of finding a remedy anytime soon. And with leftist mayors responsible for hiring and firing big city police chiefs, chances are if the new mayor, Eric Johnson, a progressive Democrat, replaces Chief Hall, it’ll be with another version of…well, Chief Hall.
