A former police officer says he wouldn’t blame retailers for leaving cities that have been hit by rampant “smash-and-grab” robberies – a crime wave that a high-profile Capitol Hill Democrat has suggested is nothing but a hoax.
In an interview last week with The Washington Times, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) challenged reports that the organized thefts were actually occurring. “A lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not actually panning out,” AOC told The Times. “I believe it’s a Walgreens in California cited it, but the data didn’t back it up.”
A spokesman for the Retail Industry Leaders Association has taken issue with AOC’s remarks, stating in an email: “”Respectfully, the Congresswoman has no idea what she is talking about. Both the data and stack of video evidence makes fairly clear that this is a growing problem in need of solutions.”
And speaking earlier today on Fox News about the controversial lawmaker’s comments, former New York assemblyman Dov Hikind said the crimes, in fact, are being committed, leaving “real victims” behind. “Maybe [she] is blind. Clearly, she doesn’t see it,” he stated. “AOC doesn’t care about victims. She cares about the criminal.”
Most of the smash-and-grab incidents have occurred in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, prompting Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to call on mayors to “step up,” hold the criminals accountable, and prosecute them.
Get outta town? That makes sense
American Family News spoke with Jeff Katz, a former police officer in Philadelphia who is now a radio personality for WRVA in Richmond, Virginia. He says if retail businesses opt to pull out of those cities being hit by the robberies, he wouldn’t blame them at all.
“If I owned a store and this happened to me, or if I was a shareholder in a company experiencing this sort of nonsense, I think I would certainly close a store that I own,” says Katz. “And I’d expect a company that I had invested in to do the same thing.”
Katz, whose columns are featured in several major city newspapers, says he does not know how a business can maintain a presence when experiencing something like what retailers are facing with looters or “smash-and-grabs” like the ones that have been making national news.
“Ordinarily, you’d be able to pick up a phone, you’d be able to call the police, you’d expect people to be arrested and prosecuted,” he explains. “But if that’s not happening, what are you going to do except close the doors?”
Root cause? Leftists
Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed COVID partly for the situation going on at stores. “One of the root causes of crime in communities is guns and gun violence – and we’ve seen that statistically around the country,” Psaki stated. “… I think a root cause in a lot of communities is the pandemic, yes.”
Katz isn’t buying it. “There’s a reason that I refer to Psaki as Little Red Lying Hood,” he says. “I don’t think she has more than a tangential connection with the truth, and it’s never been clearer than this particular issue.”
The root cause of the looting and widespread criminal activity, according to Katz, is leftists who have adopted the phrase “Defund the Police” – and then acted on it.
“It’s leftists who have said they’re going to ‘reimagine public safety,’ which apparently – if you look at San Francisco – includes the district attorney saying ‘We’re not going to prosecute crimes’ – [and] New York City, where the mayor has attacked the police more than he’s dealt with the criminals.”
He cites the protests/riots in cities over the summer, the extensive damage that resulted, and politicians – including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris – encouraging people to donate to the defense funds for those who were burning the cities.
“I think that’s your root cause right there,” Katz concludes.
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Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
One must always remember that the treasonous, dishonorable, dishonest, socialist Democrat Party LIES!
To Democrats, GOD, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant,
If the Democrats do not WANT to believe them.
Democrats will just make up their own gods, Truth, Facts, Reality, History or voter tally to fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
AOC believes the spontaneous unorganized unarmed response to a stolen election at the Capitol on her own offices on January 6th was a preplanned attack by white supremacists, yet the actual BLM Democrat party organized burning and looting of the Democrat run American cities and stores was not organized at all, but nature just taking its course. Like most over-indoctrinated, hate filled, secular mind twisted foreign socialists, her brain just cannot connect the concepts of the real causes that lead to the actual effects. She would rather rule in the socialist hell of her own making than serve her people in American Constitutional protections. Social rebellion squads like hers ARE the problem and the birth mothers of all American crimes these days whose mouths are filled with social hate, envy and resentment of everything and all things American, where crimes become social justice, and socialist justice breeds more crime. Hate speech People like her need to be legally imprisoned and separated from peace loving American people who are as susceptible to the infections and ever-changing political forms of her pathological hatred of America as they are the latest COVID variance. The smash and grab of social theft she promotes on the streets is nothing compared to the COLLECTIVE social theft in the mindless social experiments in Congressional theft she proposes in the 3000-page bills, hidden in bills like a COVID in a crumb.
Remember, BLM and antifa were IDEAS not real things to cretins like her.
Leftist like AOC have actually endorsed such behavior, ‘reparations’ was the word they used to justify the theft. That the looters had never been slaves and the stores were not even in existance at the time just makes it ludicrous. By the way AOC, I enjoy the “My Pillow”s I use and buy Goya products when I need them!
OR they were described as “Redistribution of wealth”..
Deny, ridicule, divert. It’s what Left-wingers do.
SHE KINDA REMINDS ME OF mr.ed
No, although she looks looks him (a lot), Mr. Ed was much more intelligent and not prone to inciting violence.
Mr ed had MORE Common sense and intelligence than AOC COULD EVER possess..
Why should she care? Us taxpayers are paying her $175,000 a year PLUS per diem, free transportation to “special” political events, etc. AND she wants us taxpayers tom pay off her student loan! How many people in the US make over $175, 000 plus? No wonder she loves socialism. Soon she can buy her million dollar mansion on the Florida coast like Barry Obama. And cry about how Florida will be under water in 5, well maybe 10, maybe xx years due to her Global Warming! She is inspired by Socialist Bernie’s mansions.
I wonder, how many mansions SHE FEELS she deserves.
It wasn’t all that long ago, that I can remember minorities (and the Democrat politicians who seem to always represent them) that so many stores were leaving their neighborhoods (because of the rampant theft in their stores).
Fast forward to TODAY, and we see not just a REPEAT of that, but the “rampant theft” is going mobile (to the Nordstroms, etc. in the developed shopping centers)!
Hey, if the stores won’t come to where the CRIME is, then they take the CRIME to where the stores are!
Brilliant!
ALL because of 20+ months of DEMONIZING COPS, defunding law enforcement, and SOROS FUNDED DA’s saying the rule of law is nOT TO be enforced.
Just the Left’s telegenic Flavor of The Month; an actor, not a legislator. Not worth the electrons used to post this moron’s opinion on anything….
Never have I seen someone more in need of a good public spanking than AOC. Someone needs to wash her lying, socialism promotional spouting mouth out with soap, two bars should suffice, maybe three (it is a big mouth), then send her to her room for the rest of her term or until she publicly apologizes sincerely and promises to actually legislate in good faith for the Citizens in her District, and for the American Public in general.
Otherwise. we may be dealing with a new Kamala, who despite her limitations will be progressively promoted upward until she gets in a Position of Real Power and then, Oh Woe is Us, because unlike Kamala, AOC is not completely vapid. Maybe in her thoughts, but not in her ambitions. And as such, she stands as a real threat to the future of Our Country as it was Founded.
I really do not understand why the big name, high dollar stores put up with this. The only way things will change is for the victim stores to close their venues in these high crime areas. Close their doors and move out, that will get the Pelosi style politicians to support law and order rather than Marxist criminals.
OR start having ARMED GUARDS, who have the OK TO SHOOT.
Sadly the armed guards would be jailed for whatever action they take since those businesses are in the left wing liberal democrat cities. Those places coddle the criminals and hassle the real citizens of their cities.
HENCE the qualifier “THE OK TO shoot”…
That’s why i keep saying it is POINTLESS Flooding the streets with MORE COPS.. As the ones already out there, who arrest these crooks ARE POINTLESS, since its the JUDGES AND DA’s who REFUSE TO CHARGE and convict them.