A new report from The Heritage Foundation finds that Democrats control 27 of the top 30 cities with the highest homicide rates in the country in 2022, due mostly to Democrat policies and soft-on-crime prosecutors.
"Starting in 2016, with the election of the first [George] Soros rogue prosecutor, Kim Foxx, in Chicago, cities with rogue prosecutors have imposed policies that all — each and every one of them — inure to the benefit of criminals, as we have detailed in our scholarship for the past two years," the report said.
The top three cities with the highest murder rates were New Orleans, Louisiana, with 36.8 killings per 100,000 of population; Baltimore, Maryland, with 29.1 killings per 100,000 people; and Birmingham, Alabama, with 28 killings per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by the Datalytics research firm.
With the exceptions of Republican mayors in Lexington, Kentucky, Jacksonville, Florida, and an independent mayor in Las Vegas, Nevada, the other 27 top homicide rate cities are controlled by Democrats. Of those, 14 have Soros-backed, progressive district attorneys that have enacted policies that favor criminals, including cash bail reform, releasing convicted felons, refusing to prosecute thefts, drug possession, shoplifting, and several other misdemeanor offenses, according to the report.
Homicides in the 14 cities with Soros-backed district attorneys accounted for 1,752 of the total 2,554 killings in all 30 cities in 2022, the report said.
According to Datalytics, the national homicide rate increased almost 30% from 2019-20.
The report refutes a March report by Third Way think tank, The Red State Murder Problem, that blamed Republican leadership in red states with high murder rates.
Its report listed Mississippi's 20.5 per 100,000, Louisiana's 15.79 rate, and Kentucky's 14.32 killings per 100,000 of population as proof that the "murder problem" was afflicting Republican-controlled areas more than areas controlled by Democrats.
"Five of the largest [President Joe] Biden-voting states by population, and those often in the news when it comes to crime, had much lower murder rates. New York at 4.11 per 100,000 residents, California at 5.59, and New Jersey at 3.70 were each well below the national average," the Third Wave report said.
"Pennsylvania (7.22) and Illinois (9.20) were higher than the national average. But Mississippi's murder rate was nearly 400% higher than New York's, more than 250% higher than California's, and about 120% higher than Illinois's.
"In fact, the five states with the highest murder rates, all [former President Donald] Trump-voting states, had rates at least 240% higher than New York's murder rate and at least 150% higher than California's, the homes to some of the largest cities featured prominently in the 'crime is out of control' narrative."
That report cited the states without breaking out the cities and their respective counties which were mostly run by Democrats, and dropped the rates significantly, The Heritage Foundation report said.
The Foundation's report, however, found that removing the Democrat-run counties in those states, like Orleans Parish in Louisiana, which includes New Orleans, would drop the rate almost 16%, from 13.39 to 11.302 murders per 100,000.
In Illinois, for another example, the homicide rate drops by more than half, 55.12%, from 7.746 homicides per 100,000 of population to 3.476 per 100,000 when Chicago's Cook County is removed.
"It is apparent that some states' homicide rates are determined heavily by crime in certain counties," The Heritage Foundation report said. "It is thus naïve and nonsensical to make partisan claims about states' overall crime rates while completely neglecting how various localities contribute to these rates."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.