Violent criminals seem to be everywhere. I say that because we find ourselves in the middle of a violent crime surge. The homicide rate is sky high, as are the rates for other violent offenses.

Clearly, steps need to be taken to address this, particularly in our major cities.

One such city is New York, where the district attorney seems to think more lenient sentencing is the answer and where the media headquartered there are surprisingly silent.

While the broadcast networks were busy spending Wednesday hyping the anniversary of January 6 for political gain in the midterms, they were intentionally overlooking the violent chaos in their own backyard in New York City. There, newly minted District Attorney Alvin Bragg promised to allow violent criminals to walk free as part of his progressive Democratic criminal justice reform plan; at a time when the city was already experiencing a wave of violent crime.

Instead of reporting on how Bragg was going to let drug dealers, armed robbers, burglars, and more walk the streets of New York unabated, ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News spent a combined 22 minutes and 16 seconds on January 6 and topics stemming from it.

Broken down, ABC gave it the most at a whopping 11 minutes and 17 seconds, NBC was next at 6 minutes and 52 seconds, and CBS had 4 minutes 7 seconds.

The Newsbusters report linked above also goes on to quote Bragg as saying he doesn’t actually view these violent criminals as criminals.

People get the government they voted for, and sometimes they get it good and hard.

This is interesting because the new mayor ran on promising to get tough on crime. I’m sorry, but making arrests won’t get much accomplished if the offenders end up right back on the streets.

Look, while I disagree with some of the criminal justice reform efforts out there, I at least understand where they come from. You can make the case that someone might steal things because they’re poor. You can argue that people engaged in drug use or sex work are victims and shouldn’t be treated as criminals.

I can get where they’re coming from on that, even if I don’t think any of that should make a damn bit of difference.

But this? There’s no way this should be tolerated by the people of New York.

These are violent criminals. They’re not just people struggling to get by. They’re actively engaged in trying to hurt people, for crying out loud. Bragg says he was the victim of a violent crime, so he should get that, but clearly, he doesn’t.

Instead, he wants to help initiate more people into the violent crime victim fraternity. That’s all this lenient attitude will accomplish. Part of punishment is to deter future misconduct. If you screw up at work and get fired, you’re unlikely to make that same screw-up at your next job, for example.

Yet by making the punishment more lenient, you lessen or eliminate any deterrence factor from the law.

Violent criminals are already a problem, and Bragg just wants to make them more of an issue.

But what about the media’s silence? Well, what do you expect? Even they can’t try to spin it into anything positive, so they’re just ignoring it because Bragg is one of their guys and they don’t want to admit that their guy is going to get people killed.

At least, not so long as they think they can get away with ignoring it.