San Francisco Mayor's "crackdown" just cleaning up her mess

(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

No one on the planet will be shocked to learn that San Francisco isn’t a conservative stronghold. After all, it really seemed to earn its leftist street cred during the 60s and has done nothing to shake that in the more than 50 years since.

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As such, no one should be surprised that the city’s leadership leans heavily to the left.

Which is why some might raise an eyebrow over the mayor’s announcement of an intended crackdown on crime earlier this week.

San Francisco’s mayor announced Tuesday even more initiatives aimed at curbing open drug use, brazen home break-ins and other criminal behavior that she says have made a mockery of the city’s famed tolerance and compassion.

Mayor London Breed said at a news conference attended by her police chief and other public safety personnel that she would introduce legislation to allow law enforcement real-time access to surveillance video in certain situations and to make it harder for people to sell stolen goods.

She said the efforts would help address “all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.”

She also announced the use of emergency powers to improve safety in the Tenderloin, one of the poorest and most drug-infested neighborhoods in San Francisco, where parents have pleaded for protection from drug dealers and violent street behavior. The neighborhood contains several government buildings, including City Hall.

“What I’m proposing today, and what I will be proposing in the future will make a lot of people uncomfortable, and I don’t care,” said Breed, a Democrat. “We are past the point where what we see is even remotely acceptable.”

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Sounds good, right?

Well, yeah, I’d say so. An attempted crackdown on criminal behavior is certainly something the city really should be doing and, frankly, should have done quite some time ago.

So, better late than never, I suppose.

However, I’m not willing to give Breed a pass on this. After all, this isn’t the case of a politician who is looking around and finally has enough of something that existed outside of her control.

No, Breed brought this on herself, at least in part, but defunding law enforcement earlier this year. That’s right, she took $120 million from the police budget and used it to “invest in black communities.” That’s a fancy way of saying she spent it to buy votes.

Things weren’t exactly great in San Francisco before that, of course. The city has become notoriously bad, as have most large cities in California, to be honest.

Yet when things are bad, taking money from your police budget when you don’t have to isn’t exactly a sign of brilliant thinking. If there just wasn’t the money, that would have been one thing, but it was there. Breed just wanted it to be somewhere else.

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Now, she’s trying to act tough in order to save her political career. She’s trying to position herself as San Francisco’s savior when she’s really the person who helped put it on this dark road in the first place.

There’s no way she should be allowed to get away with this, either.

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