By Monica Matthews
Around the nation, murder and violent crime rates are skyrocketing. Property damage is into the billions. Despite this fact, the final presidential debate did not include any serious inquiry into how either candidate would end the devastation. As innocent children die, the media-government complex remains in either deliberately ignorant or devoted to distraction.
In what appears to be a struggle to find a politically correct explanation for the mayhem, as well as laying cover-fire for politicians turning a blind eye, the AJC seemed toattribute the murder rise to first responders, entitling and article: “Atlanta’s violent summer coincides with officer exodus.”
Missing yet another opportunity to improve public safety and encourage positive change, like other mainstream media sources, the AJC instead chose more brow furrowing, head scratching, and handwringing, much less expose how the issues being propelled as priorities today have done nothing to save lives. This is the opposite of what victims and would be victims need.
In a wide-array of venues, a host of Insider Advantage columnists have demarcated the causes and cures of the escalating violent crime crisis facing the Georgia and the U.S. Demonstrating rank indifference, the government-media complex remains unmoved. People keep dying.
Perhaps another approach is needed. Why not look at the initiatives that did not prevent Georgia-American murder rate surge?
So, let’s take a look at priorities that were overpoweringly pushed while murders went up—way up—in Atlanta and a host of U.S. cities:
- Mass release of gang-members from prison and jail in the name of criminal justice reform;
- Tolerating minuscule levels of charging of gang crime;
- Decimating Governor Brian Kemp’s 2020 anti-gang package;
- Eliminating police characters from toys and cartoons;
- Embracing pro-communist organizations;
- Deceitful mischaracterizations of cross-racial crime rates;
- Passing hate-crimes laws;
- Adhering to phony mischaracterizations of police-civilian encounters;
- Refusing to pass a federal anti-gang prosecution law;
- Blaming COVID for violence crime;
- Falsely claiming murder, assault, and burglary are means of “mostly peaceful protest;”
- Opposing Amy Comey Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination;
- Falsely purporting that “hate-groups” outnumber criminal street gangs;
- Taking knees and washing feet on command; and
- Removing Confederate monuments.
We need to be clear. Murders exploded while the foregoing initiatives thrived.
Those victims, many of which are children, don’t come back. Their futures are gone.
Was there a causal connection? No one can say that murders, assaults, and property damage got better. All are horrifyingly worse.
Where then, is, “speaking truth to power?” Why has the AJC not confronted Georgia politicians about their skewed priorities? How many children must get mowed down and cities are incinerated, literally and figuratively, before the media demands a step away from PC and into public safety?
And it doesn’t take much to demonstrate just how off-the-mark these faux political priorities are.
For instance, violent crime was already on its way up prior to COVID. As incarceration and supervision rates dropped over the past few years, violent crime has precipitously escalated. Let’s not forget, DeKalb County broke its own murder record in 2019—prior to the pandemic. While things have worsened, the pattern was already there.
What about the connected statistic of low gang charging? As percentage of gang crime and membership, nationally and in Georgia, anti-gang charging has been almost non-existent for years.
And getting worse. According to Georgia Gang Investigators Association, already abysmal Georgia gang charging rates are down even further in 2020, especially Metro Atlanta. Big surprise.
While Governor Kemp has experienced challenges in keeping his campaign promise to eradicate Ga of criminal street gangs, one recent announcement leaves metro areas without much excuse for the blatant disregard of Ga’s criminal gang statute.
Just this week, 46 Upson County individuals were indicted for their involvement in criminal gang activity. This leaves law abiding citizens wondering why the use of one of the nation’s toughest criminal gang statutes is all but ignored by metro areas. When can all Georgians expect to be kept safe?
Do hate crimes laws help? Georgia passed its wannabe, not-really-a-hate-crimes law, earlier this year to much AJC fanfare. Murder rates climbed.
Illinois has a hate-crimes law, too. How is that going on the streets of Chicago?
And for anyone who says that this criminal unrest is not gang motivated, they should be asked if they can differentiate the Myrtle Beach South Carolina gang riots of 2020 from any of the others. They can’t. Significantly, the mayhem in Myrtle Beach occurred weeks before Georgia Floyd was killed in Minnesota. Therefore, the rise in murders nationally is gang—not protest—related.
What is at the epicenter here? Black Lives Matter, an avowedly Communist organization. Because the foregoing agenda items are part-and-parcel with Black Lives Matter’s philosophies, they are coddled by the government-media complex, regardless of how many children are murdered while the psychosis gets indulged.
No governmental system is responsible for more death and destruction than Communism and Communist leaders. Nothing is close.
How, then, could anyone be surprised that while Communist priorities are promoted and honored, death and destruction follow? Expecting any other result would border between deluded, ignorant, and downright deranged.
What was the universal symbol of these murderous regimes? The upraised fist!
So why doesn’t that trigger anyone or get anybody banned from Twitter?
For Atlanta, there is at least some promise. Atlanta District Attorney elect Fani Willis earned a strong reputation as a hard-hitting prosecutor. Fulton Sheriff Elect Paul Labat has promised more patrols. A recent lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a 8-year-old Atlanta girl murdered in the midst of what looks to many like tolerated criminal unrest.
Georgia’s 6th Senate District offers another ray of hope with the candidacy of Harrison Lance. Representing what should be a bi-partisan issue, he’s made his platform crystal clear regarding the need for effective criminal justice reform that involves the prosecution of criminal street gangs.
Echoing the efforts of Governor Kemp, Mr. Lance brings not only a youthful exuberance that speaks to all ages, but wisdom that states the very obvious truth that the goal of his opponent, Jen Jordan, to defund policing efforts is not only negligible, it is derelict.
Lance’s public safety platform very clearly outlines what most law abiding citizens would consider elementary- not partisan. When did safety become optional?
Those hopes notwithstanding, the gang crime denying media appears just fine with allowing the carnage to continue, no matter how many children and slaughtered.
Political leaders are not held in account. More people die. And the Communist agenda prospers.
These are much greater media failings than not reporting on Hunter Biden.
Monica Matthews is a radio personality, freelance writer, and ordained minister working in Atlanta, Georgia.