Rising Crime: Undermining Safety, Creating Chaos & Harming City Tax Bases- Why Is It So Political?

 

Rising Crime:  Undermining Safety, Creating Chaos & Harming City Tax Bases-  Why Is It So Political?

by Ken W. Good

This article was published in the Attorney at Law Magazine
October 7, 2024

Crime has become a political football, kicked back and forth across the electoral playing field. The public is receiving conflicting narratives about crime. One side argues that crime is increasing, while the other claims crime is on the decline — and that any belief to the contrary is driven by mere perception rather than reality.

“People will use crime data to say whatever they want,” said Jeff Asher, a criminologist and co-founder of AH Datalytics. “When you don’t have that certainty of having nearly every agency reporting data, it means that you need a lot of literacy to be able to combat items that are being stated in bad faith.”

In 2014, California passed Prop. 47, reclassifying a list of felony crimes as misdemeanors. The idea was that defendants would still face accountability, but with misdemeanors rather than felonies on their records, they could find jobs more easily.

However, in some California cities, district attorneys announced they would no longer prosecute theft under $950. In these jurisdictions, theft was no longer either a felony or a misdemeanor — from a practical standpoint, it was decriminalized. Career criminals, gangs and organized crime groups took it as a green light, regularly shoplifting upwards of $25,000 per store per day. Stores began to close because they could not withstand shoplifting at that level.

This past year, the NAACP’s Oakland chapter demanded local officials declare a state of emergency on crime. This demand, initially criticized as echoing Republican talking points, was later endorsed by the regional NAACP.

The impact of Prop. 47 has continued to have devastating impact on urban centers. Last year, federal government agencies in San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi Federal Building recommended that employees start working from home because it was no longer deemed “safe” to commute to the office. Commercial real estate values soon plummeted, with buildings selling for 30-50% of their worth just two years prior.

The plight of our cities is not limited to California. In Minneapolis, two office buildings that sold for $73.7 million in 2019 were sold for just $6.5 million recently — a sales price representing less than 10% of the buildings’ original value. The default rate for commercial mortgage-backed security loans has surged to 41.6% in June, up from just 5.7% a year earlier, according to data from real estate analytics firm Trepp.

The common thread is rising crime. 

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