Great news! Bret Stephens figured out crime.

He did it! He figured out crime. Bret Stephens finally turned his sparkling intellect to crime, and what causes it, and he totally figured it out.

“Undeterred Criminals Plus Demoralized Cops Equals More Crime”

So …. I guess we should start deterring criminals and moralizing cops more?

Stephens starts off strong, defending an officer who fatally shot a 13-year-old.

But aha! Look at this masterful rhetoric—first, he fakes you out with the “progressive” take, then he comes right back at you with what really happened:

Two years ago, a white Chicago police officer named Eric Stillman fatally shot Adam Toledo, an unarmed 13-year-old Mexican American with no criminal record, while the boy was complying with the officer’s orders following a late-night foot chase. The killing brought greater awareness to police brutality in Latino communities, yet no charges were filed against Stillman. Since then, Chicago has been able to turn a corner on violent crime, thanks partly to investments in after-school youth programs. Murders are down by 20 percent from two years ago.

That’s one version of events, the version favored by the progressive left.

Another version goes like this. On March 29, 2021, at 2:36 a.m., Stillman and his partner responded to a call that shots were being fired. Stillman pushed Ruben Roman, a 21-year-old with a criminal record, to the ground and chased Toledo, who was holding a 9-millimeter handgun, down a dark alley. Stillman yelled “drop it.” Toledo tossed the gun behind a fence and turned toward him. The officer fired the fatal shot less than a second after Toledo got rid of the gun. Stillman then immediately jumped to Toledo’s aid and called for an ambulance.

Oh wow, instead of letting the 13-year-old he just shot just bleed to death on the ground, the officer called 911. Now that is top notch policing.

Stephens then parrots the baseless idea that police can’t do their jobs because they’re demoralized, which is somehow the fault of protestors protesting George Floyd being suffocated to death by a cop who somehow didn’t know that you’re supposed to flip detained suspect on their sides.

It does seem like there’s been a lot of resignations in police departments. But has anyone maybe considered that all the cops we hired in the 1990s during the tough-on-crime splurge are just like …. retirement age now?

A recent academic analysis found that 11 out of the 14 cities it studied suffered from higher-than-expected losses to their police after the George Floyd protests of 2020, with Seattle losing the highest proportion of its force. One possible unfortunate result, the study suggests, is that, as good cops depart, the quality of newer recruits also suffers. That may help explain the appalling police brutality in the killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in January.

This fucking asshole makes my blood boil—he can just kind of say whatever and rake in the cash. Where is his evidence that the cops in the Tyre Nichols case were recruited due to a shortage of more competent police officers, due to low morale? This argument would get an “F” on a High school paper.

In New York, where major crimes rose by 22 percent last year, complaints of shoplifting have nearly doubled over the past five years — while the arrest rate since 2017 fell by almost half. A report by Hurubie Meko in The Times notes that a mere 327 shoplifters accounted for one-third of all arrests and that they had been “arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times.” Why? “Law enforcement and trade groups have blamed a proliferation of organized shoplifting crews, repeat offenders and the new state bail law that they argue has enabled such offenders to avoid jail time.”

More top-notch reporting. Law enforcement and “trade groups” might not be the best sources for a story about law enforcement. And does Stephens know what bail is? It’s pre-trial release. Why would someone commit more crime, while on pre-trial release, that will lead to more time behind bars post-trial? (post guilty plea actually). The data show that levels of violent reoffending by people out on bail are miniscule.

In other words, lax enforcement when it comes to petty criminality has led to big-time criminality. And the consequence of supposedly “victimless” crimes like shoplifting has created a palpable sense of disorder, menace and fear — each conducive to the anything-goes atmosphere in which crime invariably flourishes.

Wait—did Bret Stephens just come up with broken windows theory? Brilliant. Bretlliant.

I love how conservatives (and conservatives posing as Democrats, like Eric Adams) imbue “disorder, menace and fear” with sentience and agency, like they’re Greek gods. If you’re scared of shoplifters, get therapy. If the existence of shoplifters encouraged you to commit more serious crime, well, get committed to a mental hospital.