Shot at by reality

From the same article in today’s Washington Post. This:

Three people were killed during a spate of shootings in the District Tuesday into early Wednesday, including a 53-year-old man caught in gunfire as he walked near Logan Circle in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. . .The violence brought to 93 the number of people killed in the city this year, up 18 percent from this time in 2020. Homicides are rising in the District for the fourth consecutive year. . . .

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), appearing on “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday, said the city “is very focused on keeping our neighborhoods safe” with a spectrum of crime-fighting strategies.

And this:

The D.C. Council is considering Bowser’s budget proposal — approved this week by the public safety committee — for the coming fiscal year that cuts police funding 6 percent while increasing spending on violence interrupters and other similar programs.

So not only is more policing excluded from the mayor’s “spectrum of crime fighting strategies,” her strategies include less policing.

This view is out of whack with voters, even in overwhelmingly liberal jurisdictions. We saw this in New York, where the pro-policing candidate won a plurality of the popular vote and the “defund” candidate lagged well behind.

We are also seeing it in Seattle, Washington, of all places. According to the Seattle Times:

None of the six [mayoral] candidates who appeared at Tuesday’s [debate] forum openly endorsed cutting the police budget, let alone by 50%, as a majority of the Seattle City Council had endorsed during the civil rights protests last summer.

A number of candidates campaigned openly that what Seattle really needs right now is more cops — which is quite a political shift from a year ago.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “mugged by reality.” In Seattle, one candidate for mayor was just shot at by reality:

“I think the pendulum has swung against defund the police,” one candidate, Lance Randall, said after the debate had ended. “You can see it in these forums — the people who used to talk about it either don’t talk about it anymore or are now actively backpedaling.”

Randall stole the show a bit at this forum, hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association, when he told about how he’d been shot at by thieves just this past Saturday in his Rainier Beach neighborhood.

As first reported by KOMO News on Monday, Randall had been awakened at 4 a.m. by the sound of mechanical sawing. On the street outside, two people were cutting out a parked car’s catalytic converter. Randall went out and tried to get the license plate of the thieves’ car, but they spotted him and then fired five shots, some in the air and some at him, as they sped away.

Randall had crouched behind his own car — his headrest absorbed one bullet.

Randall is African American, so it hit home harder when he then upbraided the City Council and some of the other candidates for purporting to speak for minority communities about this issue.

“We’ve had several forums, and I feel as though there’s an assumption that people of color do not want police officers in their neighborhoods to protect them,” Randall said. “We need police officers.”

(Emphasis added)

Seattle is short of them. Nearly 300 officers have quit the city’s force in the past year. The Seattle Times sniffs: “It may not be related that the cops are down while crime’s going up, but it’s definitely shifting the debate.”

Yes, because, unlike the mainstream media and D.C.’s idiot mayor, voters understand that less policing means more crime.

Randall apparently is an outsider. He’s not expected to become mayor. However, several others at the forum argued for more police officers and none of the candidates present advocated cuts.

I gather from a late-May poll and from this article that the leading contenders are Bruce Harrell, M. Lorena Gonzalez, Colleen Echohawk, Jessyn Farrell, and Casey Sixkiller (son of legendary quarterback Sonny Sixkiller and deputy mayor). Harrell, who led in the late-May poll, agreed that Seattle needs more police patrols to get a handle on street crime downtown. Sixkiller did, as well.

Gonzalez and Echohawk disagreed but, as noted, did not endorse cutting the police budget. As far as I can tell, Farrell hasn’t done so either.

John Sexton concludes that the shape of the Seattle race “suggests ‘defund the police’ is no longer a winning message.” I agree. But was it ever really one?