-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I have come to this floor before for the same subject, but I now come to express my concerns once again about the rise in crime in America. Now I want to express what that rise in crime means for everybody if we don't stop it. If we don't act soon, and don't reverse the trend of tolerating crime, a generation of Americans will see the greatest cities fall once again into decay. We have seen it before, and it is not something that we want to see again. To stop it, we must allow the police to enforce the law and demand that prosecutors do their job.

A couple of generations of Americans have now grown up not knowing how dangerous some of our biggest cities used to be. The two that come to mind are New York and Washington, DC.

First, let's look at New York 20, 40 years ago. When asked what they think of Times Square in Manhattan, most younger Americans would probably say that it is a tourist trap. But it wasn't always that way. In the 1970s, Times Square was an open sore, filled with adult theaters, drugs, and rampant crime. Back then, the New York City subway looked like something from some dystopian horror movie. In other words, you avoided New York City subways if you could.

Now, let's turn to Washington, DC, in the late 1980s. Its decay could almost be traced back entirely to one person. Just a few blocks from here where we are standing right now, a drug dealer named Rayful Edmond ran the most notorious crack cocaine operation in the country. By 1989, he was bringing 1,700 pounds of cocaine into DC every month. He used to put snipers on rooftops near his headquarters. Police suspected his operation was involved in 30 homicides. During that time, the city's murder rate doubled. Washington had the nickname the ``murder capital of the world.''

Then something great happened. Mayors and prosecutors got serious about dealing with crime. They sent Rayful Edmond to jail for life. People who lived in cities felt much safer. Businesses flourished. Pervasive fear gradually lessened because police took criminals off the street.

The crime rates in New York and Washington plummeted. Young families moved to urban neighborhoods that were far too dangerous just a few years before. This was wonderful, obviously. The block where Rayful Edmond once put his snipers on rooftops is now a very normal residential street.

Our cities, everybody knows, should be places where we want to live. We should enjoy going there to see other people. We shouldn't avoid cities because we are afraid of getting harassed on the streets or carjacked, at the worst. But that is what is beginning to happen again. All over the country, our biggest cities are starting to look dangerous and empty. History repeats and repeats.

Cities are devolving into what they were just a couple of decades ago. Homicides in 22 major cities have gone up 44 percent since 2019. Carjackings are up double, even triple, and worse in some cities. Thieves are stealing from stores with impunity. When that happens, those businesses shut down, leaving neighborhoods with empty storefronts and a recipe for urban decline.

Crime is up because of the permissive approach by too many so-called progressive prosecutors. One prosecutor in San Francisco has said that if you steal less than $950, you won't be prosecuted. No wonder people are committing more crimes. These prosecutors see criminals as victims, releasing them back into the streets shortly after being arrested. This sows fear in local residents. Common sense ought to tell everybody that. Common sense says it kills growth. Common sense says it hurt neighborhoods. Common sense says it endangers regular people who want to live their lives peacefully.

America is a nation of progress. We are a nation of progress moving forward. Our current backward slide to urban decays in the 1970s and 1980s is tragic. Working-class families and those who can't afford to move somewhere safer will bear the brunt of it.

The solution here is not very complicated. A recent poll showed two out of every three people know what some of these blue-city mayors haven't figured out yet: More police equals less crime.

When prosecutors list a whole bunch of crimes that they won't prosecute, it encourages lawbreaking. Also, we need to stop the crusade to defund the police. They need to stop progressive prosecutors. You know, I know there is prosecutorial discretion. We all know that not every crime can be punished or prosecuted.

But if you were a smart prosecutor who didn't want to encourage more crime, you wouldn't tell the whole world that certain crimes aren't going to be punished and others will be punished, because that is inviting those laws to be broken. That is why you see dozens of people rushing into a retail store, grabbing everything they can that is under $950 and leave.

Prosecutors ought to keep their mouths shut and just do the job; and if they use discretion, keep it to themselves not to punish some crimes.

So we need to make sure that repeat offenders and those who are a threat to society don't get bail. Otherwise, younger generations of America will learn all over again the harsh lessons about how quickly our greatest cities can fall into decay.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source