By Newt Gingrich
Crime and chaos have overtaken the streets of many American cities. Shootings and gun violence have increased. Reported homicides are up 24 percent so far this year among the nation’s 50 largest cities, according to the Wall Street Journal . Riots and anarchy continue to rule the day in so-called progressive areas like Portland and Seattle, where spineless politicians have submitted to mobs and enfeebled the police.
The case of New York City is especially tragic for my guest on this week’s episode of my podcast “Newt’s World.”
While Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1994 through 2001, all forms of crime in the city plummeted to a degree — and at a speed — that few thought possible. The crime rate continued to drop throughout the 2000s.
The trick was a focused form of policing that dramatically transformed law enforcement in this country for the better. Giuliani and then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton applied the “broken windows” strategy, according to which law enforcement police minor crimes strictly in order to prevent major ones. The theory is that tolerating too much minor crime and disorder creates a permissive environment in which dangerous, violent crime becomes more likely.
Today, America’s largest and most iconic city is experiencing an alarming surge in violent crime. Over the first half of 2020, homicides soared by 21 percent and shootings increased by 46 percent compared to the same period of time last year. Over the first seven months of 2020, meanwhile, murder jumped 30 percent.
Amid this chaos, New York City’s radically left-wing mayor, Democrat Bill de Blasio, sided with the criminals over law enforcement, cutting $1 billion from the police department’s budget. It’s no coincidence that violent crime continued to surge.
In short, de Blasio is repudiating all the sound principles that Giuliani applied, recreating the disaster that was in New York in the early 1990s. Indeed, the current mayor is basically saying to everyone: Break the law and nothing will happen to you. To quote Giuliani, de Blasio seems to be “pro-criminal.”
I hope you will listen to this week’s episode to learn from one of the greatest leaders of our generation how to combat crime in our current moment of chaos.
