Horowitz: Houston hit by plague of crime

Houston, we’ve got a problem.

Ultimately, there is a limit to how much we can stop a plague from God, once we neglectfully let it into our country with universal travel from China, before it runs its course. However, bending the curve of crime is all in our hands. Sadly, it appears that Houston and other blue-city politicians want to worsen the God-made plague with a man-made crime epidemic.

As I predicted, crime is spiking in Houston following the release of 1,000 prisoners. “Right now, burglaries have spiked 20 percent,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told Breitbart Texas in a phone interview. “Some people are seeing the shutdown of businesses as a target-rich opportunity. Habitual burglars should not be released.”

In a dynamic where business owners could be arrested for simply opening a business while following CDC health guidelines and criminals are told they won’t be arrested for burglarizing those stores, it doesn’t take a genius to foresee the results. And it’s not just “low-level” offenders being released. Some violent criminals, according to KTRK ABC13, have been released on bond as low as $10. So, they are both releasing existing convicts from prison and also trying as hard as they can not to incarcerate new criminals.

This is why, according to Chief Acevedo, in addition to the increase in burglaries, aggravated assaults similarly increased by 19.3 percent.

It’s truly hard to overstate the impact of jailbreak policies. With the universal fear of going outside due to the virus and the fact that so many people are off the streets, without jailbreak policies, you’d expect crime to be close to zero. Yet the jailbreak and lack of deterrent against new criminals is so strong that it’s increasing crime by 20 percent above the baseline of normal day-to-day activity!

Isn’t it a shame that the criminals didn’t take the advice of Mayor Sylvester Turner to “chill” and “stay home”? What, in fact, the mayor was really conveying is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to commit crime and get away with it.

What’s interesting about the coronavirus jailbreak is that it is the perfect case study for the entire criminal justice debate. The bipartisan de-incarceration movement is telling us that our prisons are filled with a bunch of “nonviolent, low-level offenders,” and that if we would just release them, we’d save money and society would be fine. Well, if such “low-level” offenders are willing to go out and steal when the media has convinced everyone they will die of the plague, you can imagine how much crime they’d commit under normal circumstances.

Meanwhile, we have coronavirus fascists like Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins sending officers down to Hobby Lobby to shut them down. Well, would he have the officers arrest people for looting the store?

Where is Congress? Where are our legislatures? As governments move closer to more draconian versions of martial law against everyday Americans, is it too much to ask that they lock up the criminals?