Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) made headlines for all the wrong reasons again last week, this time to deny what practically anyone with an Internet connection or a TV knows: Crime is spiking all over the country.
What she doesn't know or, at least, won't admit, is that the crime spikes are directly related to people who share her left-wing, Marxist ideology: 'Criminal reform' prosecutors bought and paid for by that chief anarchist, billionaire George Soros, who long ago should have been sentenced to busting rocks for the rest of his life for trying to foment the collapse of America.
"AOC," as she is known, was blasted by Republicans and business leaders after an interview in which she cast doubt on whether rampant so-called 'smash-and-grabs' are actually occurring.
"A lot of these allegations of organized retail theft are not actually panning out," Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The Washington Times last week.
"I believe it’s a Walgreens in California cited it, but the data didn’t back it up," she added.
The idiocy drew immediate pushback from Republicans and retail outlets, chains and organizations including Walgreens, whose businesses are frequently targeted in Marxist cesspools like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"Organized retail crime is one of the top challenges facing" the company, Walgreens told The Washington Times, going on to note that it "has evolved beyond shoplifting and petty theft to the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods online."
"I don’t know what data she is talking about," said Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.)
"But you don’t really need much data from someplace in San Francisco or California. All you need to do is walk down the street to the CVS in Eastern Market," he said, making reference to an area of Washington, D.C. about a mile from the Capitol. "I’ve seen on multiple occasions when I’ve been in there buying things, someone will come in and raid a shelf and walk out."
Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks said Ocasio-Cortez’s comments were "tone-deaf and offensive" to the family of Oakland security guard Kevin Nishita. The former San Jose police officer was shot and killed in November while defending a news crew reporting on a smash-and-grab crime.
The Retail Industry Leaders Association also took issue with her remarks in a comment to The Washington Times.
"Respectfully, the Congresswoman has no idea what she is talking about. Both the data and stack of video evidence makes fairly clear that this is a growing problem in need of solutions," Jason Brewer, RILA senior executive vice president of communications, told Fox News in an email. "If she is not concerned with organized theft and increasingly violent attacks on retail employees, she should just say that."
Meanwhile, as such crimes and violence have ramped up over the past two years, L.A. residents -- especially the liberal elite -- are finally starting to take notice, mostly because the crime is beginning to seep into their neighborhoods (and isn't it funny how problems become an issue to the left only when they are directly affected).
The Los Angeles Times provided more detail:
Crews of burglars publicly smashing their way into Los Angeles’ most exclusive stores. Robbers following their victims, including a star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and a BET host, to their residences. And this week, the fatal shooting of 81-year-old Jacqueline Avant, an admired philanthropist and wife of music legend Clarence Avant, in her Beverly Hills home.
“The fact that this has happened, her being shot and killed in her own home, after giving, sharing, and caring for 81 years has shaken the laws of the Universe,” Oprah Winfrey, expressing her grief over Avant’s killing to her 43 million Twitter followers, noted. “The world is upside down.”
The Times speculated: "Some wonder if this could be a turning point for California, which for decades has been at the center of the movement for criminal justice reform, rolling back tough sentencing laws and reducing prison populations."
It should be a turning point, but because most voters in the state refuse to connect the bad policies to a bad political party that enacts them, nothing is going to change.
It is astounding that residents of California can be ruled by a supermajority of Democrats and not blame them for bad policy outcomes.
Read more stories like this at Chaos.news.
Sources include:
Please contact us for more information.