According to the Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force, Washingtonians reported 41,330 vehicles stolen between January and November of this year. You can thank Washington Democrats for the state’s culture of lawlessness. Everyone saw this coming.
Every day, roughly 123 vehicles are stolen after Democrats passed a law banning vehicular pursuit. The stolen cars and trucks are often used in smash-and-grab crimes as criminals take advantage of defunded, demoralized, and understaffed police departments and a law that guarantees police won’t chase them.
The only time police can pursue a vehicle is if they suspect impaired driving or have established probable cause — a much higher standard than reasonable suspicion – that the driver committed a violent crime, sex offense, or are an escaped felon. In cases where this standard is met, they must still determine whether a chase outweighs the risk to the public should their pursuit cause an accident.
There’s little doubt that this law has directly led to the recent surges in car theft and quick robberies where the criminal can quickly drive away, knowing even if an officer happens to arrive in time, they can’t chase. In Gig Harbor recently, there was yet another example of the law’s consequences.
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Democrat law forced cops to let suspects go
Police responded to a burglary as an SUV and U-Haul truck were speeding away. An officer briefly followed the truck and attempted to “light it up”; with sirens on, the officer hoped the driver would pull over. Of course, the driver did not because the suspect didn’t have to. The officers was forced to stop the pursuit.
Gig Harbor Police chief Kelley Busey told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH that these incidents aren’t unique.
“We have people that as long as they can get from the store into their car, they’re kind of home safe. They take off. Sometimes they’ll even give us an obscene gesture on the way, and they know that we can’t stop them,” Busey explained.
Busey directly blames the vehicular pursuit ban.
“I think the 2021 police reform movement went a bit too far. I think that there needs to be some reasonableness. We need to go back to a place where police officers can weigh the risk of the pursuit versus the reward in catching that suspect. People are frustrated … And I think people largely want us to be able to chase them [suspects] at 3:30 in the morning with no other vehicles on the road.”
Will Democrats change their anti-police posture? While there may be enough pressure to change this law, it may be replaced with an equally dangerous plan to ban nearly all traffic stops.
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Now Democrats want to ban most police stops
The Tacoma News Tribune reports that State Senate Joe Nguyen (D-West Seattle) is sponsoring a bill to “end low-level traffic stops for expired tabs, broken tail lights and similar violations that don’t have safety ramifications.” In partnership with the anti-cop Washington Coalition for Police Accountability (WCPA), Nguyen is pushing a dangerous claim that cops pose risks to black and Latino drivers. Per the TNT, the WCPA claims this bill would “reduce disproportionate impacts on communities of color and low-income people.” What are those impacts? Murder.
At a press conference announcing their plans to continue to dismantle police departments, activists with the WCPA made their hateful views on cops clear.
“If they [black drivers] get pulled over, are they going to make it back home?” activist Tonya Isabell. “Because if they reach in the glove department to get their insurance paper, or if they reach for their wallet, are they (the police) going to say they have a weapon and they end up dead? To me, it’s very important that we get these laws in place to protect the lives of the children that are coming up in this world behind us.”
The TNT notes that Isabell’s cousin, Charleena Lyles, was shot and killed by two cops. The reporter leaves out the details leading up to Lyles’ death: She falsely reported a burglary and, when police arrived, tried to murder them with a knife. But to some activists, all police use of force is wrong, and it’s better to have a dead cop than a dead would-be criminal.
That these activists have the ears of so many Democrat lawmakers is alarming. That they’ll move forward pushing even more legislation that will hurt Washingtonians is disturbing. That they all refuse to see what their policies are doing to this state suggests delusion or ambivalence.
Listen to the Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast. Follow @JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently for more news and analysis.