Cities across America are becoming ungovernable as Democratic mayors and governors concede to the left-wing mob.
It took 70 nights of unrest for Portland’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler to admit that if rioters lock police officers in a building, intend to trap them there and use an accelerant to commit arson, those rioters are indeed trying to attempt murder. It took a full 70 days for the liberal mayor to acknowledge what was happening in his city wasn’t just peaceful demonstrations, but riots.
“You are not demonstrating — you are attempting to commit murder,” Wheller said on Thursday during a press conference. A riot was again declared by authorities Sunday night when so-called protesters marched to a police union building, blocked a road and set dumpster fires.
In Chicago, officials closed part of downtown this morning after violence and looting the night before. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Hundreds of looters descended on Chicago’s upscale Magnificent Mile and other shopping areas overnight, breaking windows and clearing out brand-name stores and mom-and-pop shops alike in what appeared to be orchestrated attacks that came hours after a suspect fired at police who then shot him on the city’s South Side, police said.
Police raised downtown drawbridges, closed freeway ramps and made more than 100 arrests in the chaotic early morning hours. Officers arresting a suspect with a cash register looted from a business were fired upon by a passing car and returned fire, police said.
“This was not an organized protest, this was an incident of pure criminality,” said Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown in a Monday briefing, noting that the police had uncovered multiple social-media posts urging looters to converge on downtown in a caravan of cars. Police deployed 400 officers downtown.
Superintendent Brown ordered a downtown curfew and said he would deploy officers to other neighborhoods to prevent further looting. Police were placed on 12-hour shifts and time-off was canceled.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr, in a Fox News interview over the weekend, called out these radical leftist rioters, whose goal is “tearing down the system” and pursue absolute victory as “a substitute for religion.”
Barr said Democrats had pulled away from classic liberal values and now were akin to the “Rousseauian Revolutionary Party” aimed at destroying the institutions upon which the country was built.
“They’re not interested in compromise, they’re not interested in dialectic exchange of views. They’re interested in total victory,” Barr said of the left. “It’s a secular religion. It’s a substitute for a religion.”
The Trump administration is doing its best to quell the violence. The Department of Justice has put in place Operation Legend which has so far succeeded in arresting 250 individuals on civil unrest. It also sent in federal officers to protect federal properties in Portland, until the mayor stepped up with the city’s own policing. Federal agents have also been deployed to Chicago.
As the radical-left demand cities defund the police, or redirect its funds to social services, a vast majority of Americans covering all races and ethnicities agree with law and order and say they want police patrolling their neighborhoods to protect their safety.
According to the Washington Examiner:
A new Gallup poll, conducted between June 23 and July 6, shows that 81% of black people want the same amount or more policing in their neighborhoods, which breaks down to 61% wanting the police presence to stay the same and 20% saying they would like an increased police presence.
Nineteen percent of African Americans polled expressed the belief that police should spend less time in their neighborhood. That percentage trails only Asian Americans, 28%, as the minority group with the highest percentage of desire for less policing.
The American public as a whole supports the policing status quo, with 67% of U.S. adults responding in favor of current policing, including 71% of white people.
Despite wanting the police to remain in their neighborhoods, fewer than 1 in 5 black people polled feel “very confident” that the police will treat them with respect.
he poll comes as prominent Democratic politicians and media figures are calling for the disbanding or defunding of police departments in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Large cities across the country, including New York City, Los Angeles, are slashing police budgets, while Minneapolis is moving to disband the police department.
Defunding the police has become an issue in the 2020 presidential race as President Trump has voiced his opposition to defunding the police several times, while former Vice President Joe Biden has said he supports “redirecting” some police funds.
The poll was based on a web study completed by 36,463 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points.
Related Stories:
President Trump Is On A Path To Victory
Four Years Of Historic Accomplishments
Great American Comeback: Record 3Q GDP Growth
