Police Departments across the country are imitating the Californian model of failing to arrest certain criminals on the grounds that their crime isn’t bad enough to warrant manpower.
They are using the coronavirus alarm as the reason for suspending arrests for certain crimes. Here is the list from an email from Philadelphia PD, instructing officers to stop making arrests for what are considered non-violent crimes. Here is the email sent to city police officers telling them to just obtain arrest warrants for now.
Do you really think that the police and the DA are going to follow up on these thousands of arrest warrants (court summonses is probably what they mean as arrest warrants aren’t usually made by police. This is a “paper arrest.”) once this pandemic has passed?
And the $64,000 question is: How many crimes will repeat offenders commit before they are caught to only be released to commit more while waiting on a warrant?
Lock and load people, lock and load.