White Liberals Are Clueless About Crime

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

Paul Pelosi gets hit in the head with a hammer and everyone is going bonkers. Those who habitually condemn crime are not the hypocrites. No, that honor goes to those who hate cops, promote cashless bail, elect Soros-funded District Attorneys, want to defund the police and empty the prisons. And according to their ideological leanings, that makes them classists—they discriminate in favor of the upper class. Had Paul Pelosi been the mailman they wouldn’t have cared.

White liberals just don’t get it. Want proof? Read the latest Pew Research Center survey on violent crime.

When asked is violent crime very important in making your decision to vote in the midterm elections, 56% of whites said yes. The figure for Hispanics was 65%. For blacks, 81% say violent crime is a very important issue.

These results dovetail with who is the most likely to be a victim of violent crime. Blacks are victimized the most and whites the least. This is not due to racism: most of the victimizers of blacks are black.

The white liberals who work at Pew are among the clueless. They delight in telling us that recent data show no recent increase in violent crime (though admitting that murder is increasing). Thus do they play into the narrative, promoted most visibly by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, that the perception of increasing crime does not match the reality of it.

This is all nonsense. Most white liberals do not know cops, much less speak to them. They should. They would learn that if cops do their job they may lose it, and if they don’t do their job they will keep it. That’s not an exaggeration.

Think of it this way. Let’s say a cop is three years from retirement (most are taking early retirement due to the anti-cop environment), and he comes home to his wife explaining that he was called on the carpet for a minor infraction while apprehending a dangerous criminal. Is she not likely to advise him to just look away the next time he sees trouble brewing? Why risk their livelihood?

That’s just how pro-criminal the criminal justice system is these days. During the 2020 riots, cops were told to stand down. Nothing has changed since. The number of arrests that are not made—but should be made—never show up in the official statistics, the data that so impress white liberals. In other words, less arrests may give the appearance of less crime, but they mask what is going on in the streets.

Moreover, in places like New York City there are no more undercover cops. The thugs know it, which is why they do what they do. They can get away with it. If they are caught, they are back on the street before the arresting officer completes the paper work. They then go back to doing what they do.

Shooting victims are up 71% in New York City from 2019 to 2022, the years when Kathy Hochul was lieutenant governor and then governor. Larcenies are up 29%, murder is up 32%, felony assault is up 24%, burglary is up 49%, and auto theft is up 148%. Yet Ms. Clueless has the audacity to ask why crime is considered so important.

Hochul should go into black neighborhoods and berate them for being so hyper-sensitive about crime. In fact, she needs to look them in the eye and tell the 81% who say crime is “very important” to them that they are delusional. Then she needs to ride the subway at night all alone, without security detail.

Crime statistics are important, but they don’t tell it all. What is driving the fear these days is something which doesn’t show up in official statistics, namely the increase in totally random attacks.

People who are walking down the street minding their own business are having their faces ripped open with box cutters, for no reason whatsoever. We understand muggers who rob a woman’s purse. We understand gangs. We don’t understand total strangers pushing innocent people into oncoming trains.

Hochul should ask all those black New Yorkers who are now taking the Long Island Rail Road to work. Why did they switch from taking the subway? After all, the LIRR is so much more expensive. She has much to learn.

What happened to Paul Pelosi was despicable. What is happening every day to blacks is worse, and that is because the crime wave is a function of policy: The crime policies that white liberals have instituted are directly responsible for the spike in violent crimes.