Across the nation, America’s 50 largest cities have experienced a scarcely fathomable 24% rise in murders so far this year.

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Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, the city’s first Black chief, finally had enough and walked away this week.  

On Monday, the Seattle City Council had responded to Chief Best’s plea against proposals to cut the department’s budget by as much as 50% by hitting her with a $20,000 salary cut, and slashing $4 million from the city’s police budget.  That will mean reducing the city’s police force by 100 officers, or approximately 8%.  

“It really is about the overarching lack of respect for the officers,” Chief Best said.  “Targeting my command staff and their pay, it just felt very vindictive and very punitive, and I don’t want them to be affected by that type of animus.”  

One can easily sympathize with her.  In a city plagued by murderous rioters who occupied entire blocks downtown and declared an “Autonomous Zone,” one would logically expect city leaders to increase police budgets to address the intolerable lawlessness.  Instead, the City Council chose the opposite path and affirmatively invited more of it.  

Meanwhile, just to Seattle’s south in Portland, Oregon, police this week were forced to officially declare the ongoing mayhem as riots.  That had to come as some surprise to the Washington Post, which ran a July 31 headline, “Trump Ordered Federal Forces to Quell Portland Protests.  But the Chaos Ended as Soon as They Left.”  

You see, only the presence of Trump’s “stormtroopers” – in the words of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D – California) – was perpetuating the destruction and assault.  

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who made a name for himself nationally by prostrating himself before the rioters and excusing their behavior, offered a particularly savory denunciation after finally getting fed up in the same manner as Seattle Police Chief Best.  “When you commit arson with an accelerant in an attempt to burn down a building that is occupied by people that you have intentionally trapped inside, you are not demonstrating, you are attempting to commit murder,” Wheeler admonished.  

Perhaps Mayor Wheeler and the Portland City Council can slash police department funding as well.  That ought to show them and quiet things down.  

It was the same story in Chicago this week, where mobs of rioters coordinated via social media and looted shopping and tourist districts downtown.  As The Wall Street Journal poignantly reported, the looting ended up terrorizing people like 61-year-old Pakistani immigrant Mohamad Ashiq:  

Looters struck businesses on the South Side first and then raced north to the Magnificent Mile and into Lincoln Park, a high-end residential neighborhood, according to police.  Jewelers’ Row, tucked under the L tracks in downtown with its expensive and easily transportable merchandise, was also targeted.  

Mohamad Ashiq, 61-year-old owner of Watch Clinic, a watch repair shop, said his entire inventory, valued at nearly $1 million, was cleaned out.  “They hit this case, that case, that case,” he said Tuesday, pointing around his small shop as he paused from working on an item someone had brought to him that day.  Mr. Ashiq, who immigrated from Pakistan 45 years ago, said he can’t afford insurance and isn’t sure whether to retire or just keep working.  “Forty-five years of business – what I have is gone,” he said.  

That’s really sticking it to The Man.  

Across the nation, America’s 50 largest cities have experienced a scarcely fathomable 24% rise in murders so far this year.  In New York City, the New York Post reports that the year 2020 on its current pace will witness as many murders as the years 2018 and 2019 combined.  As a result, according to a Post story headlined “A Mad Rush for the Exits as New York City Goes Down the Tubes,” United Van Lines reports a stunning 95% jump in moving inquiries since last year.  

These cities share some conspicuous similarities, but heavily pro-Trump voting precincts aren’t among them.  

Indeed, Portland Mayor Wheeler lectured rioters that they’re aiding President Trump’s reelection prospects.  “Don’t think for a moment that if you are participating in this activity, that you are not being a prop for the reelection campaign of Donald Trump, because you absolutely are,” Wheeler said.  “You are creating the B-roll film that will be used in ads nationally to help Donald Trump during his campaign.  You don’t want to be part of that?  Then don’t show up.”  

If this keeps up, Trump may even win Wheeler’s Oregon and indigo-blue Illinois.