Dr. John Lott has a new op-ed at The Federalist.
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Democrats insist that “Black Lives Matter,” yet many increasingly embrace policies that protect violent criminals at the expense of black victims.
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What these Democrats ignore is that criminals overwhelmingly prey on people like themselves. About 90% of Black homicide victims are killed by other Blacks, and 70% of Black violent crime victims are victimized by Black offenders.
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Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has argued that systemic racism shapes the criminal justice system and has advocated defunding the police and reduced imprisonment. In tweets and interviews in 2020 and 2021, he made comments such as, “I believe that we do need to defund the police.” “The police have become standing armies we deploy against our own people,” was among the thousands of his tweets he deleted.
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Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York City and appears likely to win the general election, campaigns on abolishing prisons and would not even say that murderers belong in prison. When asked why he supported Chevalier, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani replied that she represented the “politics of life.”
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Wisconsin State Rep. Francesca Hong, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, declared, “I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police” and “Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.” On July 22, 2026, Hong added: “We no longer can have a system that protects a power and a privilege that puts the pain and lives of armed officers over black people. We cannot protect a system that continues to rain harm and terror.”
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These politicians are far from isolated. In 2024, 61 House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning calls to defund the police and expressing support for law enforcement. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) stated her position plainly: “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”
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The number of politicians embracing those positions has continued to grow. “It’s not just a few people anymore,” as Bill Maher recently observed on ABC News. “I read every day about a new person in Colorado or Wisconsin saying some variation of: not defund the police—abolish the police, no prisons, no police.”
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Because violent crime is heavily concentrated in minority neighborhoods, reducing the likelihood that violent offenders are arrested, incarcerated, or deterred inevitably increases the risks faced by law-abiding black residents. Fifty-four percent of murders in the U.S. occur in just 2% of the counties, and within those counties, on average about 2/3rds of their murders occur within ten block areas. The harm in those areas goes well beyond the direct victims of the crime.
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Despite claims that these policies speak for blacks, surveys consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly want at least the same or greater police presence in neighborhoods with high crime. Even at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in August 2020, a Gallup survey found that 81% of black Americans wanted police to spend the same amount of time (61%) or more time (20%) in their neighborhoods. Gallup noted that “Only 22% of black Americans favor abolishing police departments.”
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A 2025 survey of Chicago residents by M3 Strategies indicated that 59% of blacks strongly supported hiring more police officers and another 27% somewhat supported that. Only 11% opposed the idea. Still another late July 2026 survey by Rasmussen Reports shows that blacks likely voters oppose proposals to abolish police by 58%-to-33%.
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These Democrats at least have a consistent philosophy. They demand eliminating prisons, abolishing or defunding police, weakening immigration enforcement, and restricting law-abiding citizens’ ability to defend themselves. Mamdani has declared, “We need to ban all guns.” Hong earned the endorsements of Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control organizations. Abdul El-Sayed, the leading Democratic candidate for Michigan’s U.S. Senate nomination, complains, “Too many elected officials are scared of a corporate gun lobby … I will never take a dime from the gun lobby,” and he supports virtually every major gun-control proposal now under debate.
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The same pattern extends to immigration. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that “an increasing number of established Democrats are calling for a dissolution of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.” More than 40 House Democrats support legislation to abolish ICE. During the Biden administration, at least 12.8 million illegal aliens either surrendered at the border, were apprehended after crossing illegally, or became known gotaways, and no one knows how many additional migrants entered without being detected.
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Recent data for New York shows that illegal aliens are overrepresented in the incarcerated population in the state compared to their overall share of the state population by at least 3.4 times. Of course, illegals harm minorities in other ways. Increasing the supply of low-skilled workers also intensifies competition for the same jobs and puts downward pressure on wages for the poorest, least-skilled Americans whom these Democrats claim to champion.
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While Democrats claim that “black lives matter,” their policies of defunding the police and getting rid of prisons means more people will die and be victims of crime, particularly blacks. If there are no real penalties for murdering people, there will be more murder. The common thread running through these policies is that they lower the costs of committing crime while making it harder for law-abiding Americans to protect themselves and their families. Democrats need to act as if black lives truly matter.
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