(Daily Mail) San Francisco, Cleveland and Portland have the most deserted downtowns in the US as soaring crime rates in the Democratic cities scare away workers and tourists.
In a recent study by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco’s downtown area was found to be only 31 percent active over the spring of 2022 when compared to pre-pandemic levels, with Cleveland at 36 percent and Portland at 41 percent.
Meanwhile, cities like Salt Lake City, Utah, Bakersfield, California and Columbus Ohio are enjoying the fastest comeback, seeing their downtown activity go up by more than 110 percent since 2019.
San Francisco’s downtown area was found to be only 31 percent active over the spring of 2022 after the city finally agreed to shut down its controversial open-air drug market by the end of the year
Cleveland’s downtown activity was down 36 percent compared to 2019 as the city suffers a slow pandemic recovery
Portland ranked the third-lowest city in downtown activity as the city contends with soaring homelessness and crime after years of protests calling to defund the police
According to the latest available FBI Unified Crime Report, San Francisco had the highest overall crime rate of the 20 largest cities in the United States, recording 6,917 crimes per 100,000 population in 2019.
That was more than double the crime rates in New York and Los Angeles, and well above the rates in the next largest US cities: Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix.
A year later following the Black Lives Matter protests, the call to defund the police grew among Democratic leaders.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed demanded cities defund the police last year, announcing that the Golden Gate City would be one of the first to do so and promising to slice $120million from the budgets of its police and sheriff’s departments.
The city also greenlit its first open-air drug market in San Francisco’s civic center, which spurred vagrants in homeless encampments across the city to use illegal substances out in broad daylight.
Breed has since made a screeching U-turn and announced she was asking the city’s Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the police to stamp out drug dealing, car break-ins, and theft.
After initial calls to defund the police, San Francisco Mayor London Breed (pictured) has made a screeching U-turn and announced she was asking the city’s Board of Supervisors for more money to be given to the police to stamp out crime
San Francisco has the highest overall crime rate of the 20 largest cities in the United States, easily exceeding the crime rates of the five largest cities (seen above)
Chesa Boudin (left) was ousted from his position as District Attorney in June, after critics accused him of not doing enough to keep residents and business owners safe amid a crime wave. Brooke Jenkins (right) has since taken over and fired 15 members of Boudin’s team
Assaults are up nearly 12 percent, and robberies are up 2.4 percent. Thefts have spiked by 17.5 percent compared to last year, and rapes have also increased by 9.5 percent.
In June, citizens fed up with the state of their city voted to oust woke District Attorney Chesa Boudin, whose anti-incarceration policies have been widely panned as causing the ongoing crisis.
He was originally elected on a platform of criminal justice reform, but his notoriously progressive laws have been widely blamed for rising crime and homelessness in the Bay Area since the start of the pandemic.
During Boudin’s time in office, ‘smash-and-grab’ robberies became commonplace, with thieves brazenly raiding store shelves in broad daylight, only to avoid charges thanks to Boudin’s lax policies.
He has since been replaced by Brooke Jenkins, 40, who cleaned house after taking her old boss’ job as both she and Breed vowed to crack down on soaring crime and increasingly prevalent open-air drug markets in the city.
The city’s open-air drug market project was terminated and would be shut down by the end of the year.
Breed called for progressive policies that have allowed criminal behavior to make a mockery of the city’s famed tolerance and compassion to be replaced with ‘more aggressive policing.’
Breed said she plans to introduce legislation that allows law enforcement officers real-time access to surveillance video in certain situations, as well as measures that would make it harder to sell stolen goods.
‘It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,’ she said. ‘And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies.’
Vagrancy has run rampant in San Francisco, where drug use in broad daylight has become exceedingly common
In the California city, homeless encampments line the streets despite the official’s efforts to clean up the area
Pictured: homeless individuals lining up outside a liquor store in July as the city cracks down on vagrancy
Meanwhile, in Cleveland, the city is urgently trying to recover from its historically high crime rate, which saw an average of 10,435 arrests in the past three years.
As of the first half of the year, the city has only reported 3,764 arrests, with weapon charges sinking by 51 percent since last year, with police reporting a 49 percent drop in guns confiscated.
Drug arrests have dropped by 32 percent since the same time last year, and there were 29 percent fewer arrests for grand theft auto.
But police are still condending with high homicide rates, reporting 90 killings as of August, only slightly down from the 101 murders reroded by the same time last year.
In 2021, 169 people died in homicides, more than double the figure from a decade earlier. In 2020, 179 people were killed, a marked increase over 2019’s number of 122.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has helped with the turnaround in the city and is currently looking to end a federal court oversight of the city’s police force in order to allow officers to crackdown on violent crime.
‘The quickest we can get out of this decree, the better it will be for the police department and the taxpayers,’ Bibb told reporters on Tuesday. ‘I am working as quickly as I possibly can to get out of it.’
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb (above) is moving to allow more freedom for the city’s police force to crack down on crime as it finally sees a decrease in decade high crime rates from last year
Despite dropping crime rates, Cleveland is still seeing a high murder rate as downtown recovery suffers
Portland’s federal courthouse and Apple Store, the sites of two large confrontations between protesters and police during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, remain closed off.
John Tapogna, a policy adviser to Portland economic research firm ECONorthwest, told The Oregonian, that the empty buildings serve as a lingering warning over the state of the city.
‘It certainly sends a signal to anybody who just passes by that something’s still off in this downtown,’ he said.
‘You don’t have to look very hard beyond toward those gates to see numerous blocks, still with a lot of plywood.’
And along with shuttered businesses, homeless encampments have grown severely in certain neighborhoods throughout the city.
One realtor in the area said that she’s seen a surge of residents moving to the suburbs over the past two years.
‘Most people don’t want to have to worry about if they can leave their car parked in their driveway overnight without maybe having it broken into,’ Lauren Iaquinta told KGW8.
The real estate broker said it’s a ‘testy subject,’ and said the issue can be unpredictable due to homeless people settling down wherever they want.
The drug crisis in Portland, especially among homeless communities, has become unmanageable for authorities in the area.
