Leadership Matters

The Washington Post accused President Trump of lying when he stated that “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats.”  The Conservative Treehouse posted a graph yesterday the shows that the President’s statement was pretty accurate.

Here is the graph:

The article notes:

A republican mayor was elected to Jacksonville in the last election; therefore the Washington Post has declared that President Trump’s claim: “the most dangerous cities are run by democrats”, is false. There is a top-crime city now run by a republican.

This level of FAIL is so ridiculous, it presents itself almost as if the Washington Post intentionally trying to beclown themselves.

In 1994 Rudy Giuliani became Mayor of New York City. Mayor Giuliani instituted what was referred to as ‘The Broken Windows Theory.”

Worldatlas.com describes The Broken Windows Theory as follows:

The origin of Broken Windows Theory can be traced back to a psychologist from Stanford, Connecticut, named Philip Zimbardo. He had set up a social experiment to test the theory in 1969. Zimbardo parked an old car in the Bronx, and another one of similar condition parked in Palo Alto, Califiornia. The car in the Bronx was vandalized almost immediately with all items of importance stolen. The other car in Palo Alto was left undisturbed for more than a week before Zimbardo himself went and smashed its windows. Within hours, other people came and vandalized the car as well. The hypothesis is that a community such as the Bronx, where city services may not have the resources to encourage the upkeep of its facilities, would be more apathetic than an upscale area like Palo Alto. This theory was later stated in an article in 1982 by James Wilson and George Kelling who stated that criminal activities in a community begin as small misdemeanors and gradually grow to become capital offenses. The authors also stated that the best way of dealing with crime was dealing with it in its infancy through making neighborhoods free of social ills such as prostitution, drug abuse, and other disorderly tendencies.

In the 1980s and 70s, New York City had seen an upsurge in criminal activity and the city’s municipal council was desperately seeking solutions to the menace that was tarnishing its reputation. The city’s Transit Authority then hired the author of the “Broken Windows” article, Mr. George Kelling as a consultant who then suggested the implementation of the theory. The Transit Authority’s leader, David Gunn implemented the approach by first clearing all graffiti from the city’s subway system which was conducted during his final term from 1984 to 1990. Kelling’s successor, William J. Bratton continued with the implementation of the theory through non-tolerance of fare-dodging as well as reducing leniency during arrests for petty offences. In 1993, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired Bratton as the police commissioner, and this gave Bratton a wider scope to implement the broken windows theory and was noted for arrests over public urination, public drinking, and other misdemeanors. Several studies in the past have linked the significant decline in criminal activities in the past decade to Bratton’s implementation of the “broken windows” theory. The impressive results of New York City’s implementation of the theory have made several other US cities implement the theory including Boston, Albuquerque, and Lowell.

Law and order makes a difference. When people understand that there are consequences for breaking the law, they tend to respect the law. When Mayors do not enforce the law, things will eventually become unruly. For whatever reason, Republicans seem to be more inclined to support the police and enforce the law than Democrats. The statistics posted by The Washington Post bear that out.