It's the economy, stupid, except when it's the crime, stupid. The horrific killing of the young Ukrainian refugee on the Charlotte rail system by a 14-time criminal offender is the latest high-profile outcome of Democrats' decades-long flight from common-sense crime policies.
Democrats replaced what worked to keep communities safe with a headlong sprint toward restorative justice and equity for the criminals. Victims rarely make their case. These policies in big blue city after big blue city have ruined untold thousands of American lives. And the latest video and what we now know of the alleged killer's history have turned this into a national story that the Democrat media establishment otherwise tried to bury.
Democrats have thrown open the crime lane for Republicans, and every Republican running for office should campaign on the issue. Policies that directly result in wreaking havoc on communities, via increasing murder, rape, assault, carjackings, robberies, burglaries, and shoplifting, are prima facie terrible policies. It's unclear where the economy will be in 2026 — although inevitable interest rate cuts and better trade deals could have it surging — but what is clear is that Democrats have gone too far down this road and are too beholden to their radical base to back off their insane policies, such as cashless bail and rapid release.
In the grisly killing that came to light Monday, after Democrats and media accomplices covered it up for two weeks, Decarlos Brown allegedly butchered a random young woman on the Charlotte light rail system. The woman was Iryna Zarutska, 23, a Ukrainian refugee. Brown had a rap sheet of 14 arrests over the past 15 years for crimes ranging from felony larceny and robbery with a dangerous weapon to breaking and shoplifting. It was a brutal killing caught on a security camera for the world to see.
And yet Charlotte Democratic Mayor Vi Lyles' first response hit every ritualistic Democrat crime note.
"This is a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society's safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place," Lyles wrote in a statement to WSOC-TV. She said Brown "appears to has suffered a crisis," and "we will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health." And finally, she added that people like Brown "need to be treated with the same compassion, diligence, and commitment as cancer and heart disease."
Because of backlash, she deigned to mention the victim and the crime in a follow-up statement, but her instinct was that of virtually all Democrat leaders. We failed the killer; more money is needed for healthcare, the killer "suffered" a mental breakdown (which she does not know), we need to treat deranged killers like your grandpa with cancer, and we can't "arrest our way out" of crime.
Republicans can run on the opposite of every part of that horror show of a response because she is not remotely a one-off. She went through the ritual of compassion for the criminal, which is in the Democrat DNA.
Further, Democrats fought for open borders to allow somewhere around 9 to 12 million illegal aliens — no one really knows how many — to invade our country and wreak more criminal havoc on communities. Laken Riley's murder while jogging was at the hands of an illegal alien who had a criminal record. Another killed a 15-year-old boy who was trying to stop the illegal alien from raping the boy's mother. They are still so committed to this that they are fighting to protect convicted felons from being deported.
Among the most horrible crimes of the open borders were an estimated 233,000 unaccompanied children who crossed the border, sent off to largely unvetted sponsors, and then were lost entirely by the horror show that was the Biden administration. The Trump administration has found more than 22,000 of the lost children, 27 of them dead, while 400 sponsors have been arrested.
"We found children who have been raped. We're talking about debt bondage, where children are being made to work off debt, trafficking debt. We're talking about children that were brought into situations and then treated like sexual slaves," John Fabbricatore, an HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement senior advisor, told Fox News.
The ads write themselves. These atrocities (and tragically, more will surely be coming) should be hung around the neck of every Democrat. And then Republicans should pivot to solid crime control measures, starting with restoring and expanding three-strikes laws. Multiple studies have shown that three-strikes sentencing laws have been hugely successful in driving down violent crimes. Common sense says fewer career criminals on the streets equals fewer crimes committed.
Americans are heavily in the Republican camp on this issue. Pew Research found that two-thirds of the public consider crime a major problem, while 81 percent believe it's a major problem in cities. Ninety-six percent of Republicans see crime as a major problem in large cities. And a shocking 68 percent of Democrats see it as a major problem.
Russian soldiers didn't kill Iryna. Starvation from war didn't kill Iryna. Democrats did, this time through a schizophrenic career criminal that their policies kept putting back on the street. There are tens of thousands of these people on the streets right now. Americans have had enough, and Republicans should heartily embrace the issue.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
