WASHINGTON—Hitting back at the highly misleading claim that “red states have a murder problem,” The Heritage Foundation is out with a new report today that shows the opposite—U.S. counties and cities primarily run by Democrat officials have a murder problem.
Heritage legal fellows Charles “Cully” Stimson and Zack Smith, along with Heritage chief statistician Kevin Dayaratna, dug into state murder rate data to find that even in states with Republican governors—or states that voted for President Donald Trump—a large portion of murders occurred in the state’s biggest cities or counties that were primarily run by Democrats.
Of the top 30 cities with the highest murder rates, 27 have Democrat mayors. Within those 30 cities, there are at least 14 rogue prosecutors backed or inspired by radical leftist billionaire George Soros.
Heritage’s analysis refutes a March report from Third Way misleadingly titled, “The Red State Murder Problem.”
“When you remove the crime-infested, homicide-riddled cities from the state murder rate featured in the Third Way article, you dramatically lower the murder rate for that state, upending their conclusions and exposing the article for what it really is: a straight-forward attempt at political projection dressed up as a ‘study,’” the Heritage authors write in their new report.
Another claim the Left makes is that COVID-19 caused or at least contributed to the general rise in crime. But the authors note there are no reputable studies that prove that crime increased as a direct result of COVID lockdowns. “What the data does show is that crime, including violent crime, was rising in cities with the toxic trio prior to the onset of the pandemic, and that the murder of George Floyd, which happened in May 2020, resulted in a rise in murders and auto theft in key cities,” they write.
Ultimately, local municipalities must push back against pro-criminal and anti-victim policies to have any impact on rising lawlessness in these cities. “Your public safety as a resident is dramatically impacted by your district attorney and whether he or she is a Soros rogue prosecutor or a law-and-order prosecutor, your police department, and whether the local politicians support and adequately fund the police and prosecutor’s office,” the report says.
Read the full report here.
