“Do we have the KKK infiltrating the police departments throughout America?” tweeted St. Louis-area Sen. Jamilah Nasheed in 2014, milking her 15 minutes of fame in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson.
Nasheed was sufficiently peeved by the “semi-criminal” behavior of the police in the days after Ferguson that she staged her very own protest in the middle of the street and got herself arrested. She was carrying a loaded weapon at the time and was believed to be drunk.
That was then. This is now. On Tuesday, Nasheed sent a letter to Gov. Mike Parson demanding a greater law enforcement presence to deal with the “unyielding and deadly public health threat” of crime in greater St. Louis. In fact, she wants a “state of emergency” declared for the area, and the problem is not the KKK.
The murder of a cab driver and the shooting death of another man outside of a pizzeria earlier in the week prompted Nasheed’s demand. “To date, there have been 79 homicides in the St. Louis area in 2018. By the time you receive this letter, that number will almost certainly have gone up,” Nasheed wrote to Parson.
In fact, the 79 murders were in St. Louis proper, but it is understandable how Nasheed could lose count. St. Louis has, in fact, become the deadliest city in the country. Nasheed, however, does not begin to understand the role she and her fellow demagogues played in causing the “deadly public health threat” about which she now complains.
From 2006 to 2014, homicides nationwide declined steadily save for a minor blip in 2012. This trend resulted in 3,000 fewer murders in 2014 than in 2006. In August 2014, Ferguson blew up. In the front ranks of the furor were Nasheed and activists like her.
The police, not keen on being compared to the KKK and worse, pulled back to protect themselves from physical harm and legal jeopardy, and the thugs moved in to fill the void left behind.
After August 2014, the downward murder trend abruptly reversed itself. In 2015, murders rose at their fastest pace in a quarter-century. In 2016, America experienced 17,250 murders, 3,086 more than in 2014. In sum, from 2014 to 2016, homicides increased 21 percent.
Not surprisingly, the so-called “Ferguson effect” has had its most dramatic impact on Missouri. In 2013, there were 120 murders in St. Louis. In 2015, post-Ferguson, there were 188. In 2017, there were 205, a 71-percent increase from 2013. Kansas City went from 76 homicides in 2014 to 149 in 2017, a 96-percent increase.
In 2017, St. Louis had the highest homicide rate in the country. In second place was Baltimore whose numbers spiked after a comparable anti-police jihad following the death of Freddie Grey. In 2017, Kansas City had the sixth highest homicide rate in the country.
Upstaged not too long ago by fellow St. Louis Senator Maria Chapelle-Nadal, who famously called for the assassination of the president, Sen. Jamilah Nasheed apparently wants the spotlight back.