thependulumswings

For over forty years the one constant in fighting crime on a national level is McGruff the Crime Dog.  He debuted in 1980 with a series of public service announcements educating citizens on personal security measures, such as locking doors and putting lights on timers, in order to reduce crime.

McGruff did and continues to serve loyally.  But, by 1994, America felt the need to take yet another bite out of crime.

Democrat President Bill Clinton signed HR 3355-Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 into law.  The bill was sponsored by Democrat Representative Jack Brooks out of Texas and Democrat, now Socialist, Bernie Sanders even voted yes along the way to the president’s desk.

The bill is better known as the “three strikes and you’re out” law.   It provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes.

Over time, studies and sentiment have deemed certain aspects of the stringent guidelines with the law too harsh.  Judges, states, and DA’s have eased up on its presumed punitive measures.

The slippery slope to lower bails, lighter sentences, plea bargains, and outright indifference to certain crimes has accelerated in the last decade.  NY and its mayor Bill DeBlasio told cops to stand down time and again.  It stopped its “stop and frisk” policy.

Social injustices and Soros’ money created movements in the streets.  Mostly peaceful protests weren’t mostly peaceful.  Cities, like Portland, worked by day and burned by night.

And, then George Floyd was killed.  And, the US was incensed and nearly incinerated.

Defund the police became the cry heard around the world and measures in some of the US blue states did just that-defund the blue.

So, now where do we stand?

Well, if you’re Cali Governor Gavin Newsom you stood in the trash of the opened boxes of stolen property on the rails of the Union Pacific railroad late last week.  There you took to the microphone (for the photo op) and blamed these railroad robberies on gangs.  Then you apologized in the next sentence, called your words pejorative, and said that you should have called them “organized groups of people.”  That’ll show them.

If you’re the newly elected NY DA you go down the rabbit hole of outlining in a penned memo that most crimes in his jurisdiction wouldn’t be prosecuted and if they were, criminals wouldn’t face jail time except for offenses committed with a gun.

Over the last two weeks, an LA officer was shot and killed, two cops in NY were shot, leaving one dead and one severely injured, a Houston officer was gunned down, and a border patrol agent in Texas was murdered.

And countless others, out on light bond money or none at all, have committed more serious crimes than their last offense.

So, now where do we stand?

McGruff has proven quite loyal, but right now his bark is far worse than his bite.  Our law enforcement has no teeth and the outlaws sense it.

If the three-strikes bill long ago was too far one way, is today’s mess too far the other?

The pendulum always swings.  Doesn’t it?   One can hope.