“The police are simply going to stop policing.”

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, on his Daily Wire show, often argues that the left’s concerted attacks upon policing over the past several years have led to the recent rise in murder rates in particular and crime rates generally. Partial defundings of police departments and policing programs, and misguided checks on policing, have directly contributed to the rises in crime, Shapiro says.

“As soon as you start loosening the restrictions with regard to criminal behavior,” Shapiro asserted on Tuesday, “you get an uptick in violence.”

True enough?

Well, what if assertions of racial injustice and police bias encourage black criminals to resist arrest?

Black Lives Matter rhetoric sure looks like a case for interpreting all searches, traffic stops, and warranted arrests as oppression. And since oppression is bad, resistance is good. Sure smacks of a dangerous excuse to resist arrest.

It is in situations where suspects resist arrest that most shootings by police occur. Then the results of resistance get pushed through the corporate media’s propaganda mill as yet more evidence of racist cops, decreasing respect for lawful standards and law enforcement, which in turn leads to

  • protests, which have led to
  • riots and
  • general mayhem and looting and
  • more robbery and, yes, murder.

These social forces are not utterly mysterious. Mr. Shapiro’s repeated focus on the simplest analysis (more police=less crime) may be regrettable, for the wider-angle view that the left’s “institutional racism” mantra could have deeper effects with broad consequences.

What we may be witnessing is a cycle of violence and misinterpretation: more crime along with more dangerous police-suspect encounters that feed mistaken impressions to bolster the initial charge of racism: rinse, wring, repeat.

twv