Just the News:
Twelve U.S. cities broke annual homicide records in 2021 — and all were led by Democrats.
Philadelphia topped the list, surpassing 500 murders as of Nov. 26 — breaking last year’s numbers with a month left to go in the year. The last time there were this many people killed in the City of Brotherly Love was in 1990.
Rounding out the top five are Indianapolis with 246 killed, Columbus with 179, Louisville with 175, and Baton Rouge with 137.
Philadelphia, with a population of roughly 1.5 million, reached 521 homicides by Dec. 6, an increase of 13% from the previous year. By comparison, New York, with roughly 8 million residents, had 443 homicides as of Dec. 5.
Others in the dirty dozen were: Albuquerque (82 murdered), Tucson (80), Portland (72), Rochester (71), Toledo (62), Austin (60), and St. Paul (35).
Despite these cities seeing the sharpest rises in murder rates, Chicago still leads the nation in total homicides for the year, with 739 by the end of November.
An analysis published by ABC News suggests there’s “no clear answer” to explain the cities’ record-breaking murder totals, although the report fails to mention that all of the cities it lists are run by Democrats, who were disproportionately receptive to the Black Lives Matter defund-the-police movement pushed by progressives in 2020.
Policies to defund police contributed to increased crime, argue critics, including Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. While experts suggest there are a range of factors contributing to why people kill, evidence suggests that less cops on the street made these cities less safe.
In Philadelphia, for example, the City Council voted in June 2020 to slash police department funding by $33 million. “In addition to approving the budget with reductions in police spending — reversing years of annual police budget increases — Council voted to approve three significant reform bills addressing the police department in various ways,” the council announced. Seventeen months later, the city reported the highest number of people murdered since 1990.
