After just three largely disastrous years on the job, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw will be resigning later this month. I’ve long argued that she was one of the better examples of nominative determinism to ever come along because she always seemed to operate far more like an outlaw than someone seeking to reduce crime. She got her start in leadership when she was named the Chief of Police in Portland, a city that has long since descended to be a crime-infested hellhole. Her time in Philadelphia hasn’t been noticeably different, with the city seeing record levels of violent crime as well as property crime. Now, having left two cities in ruins, she will turn her attention to the Big Apple where she will reportedly accept a position with the Port Authority. (You might want to avoid the subways for a while.) The following is from Matt Vespa at Townhall.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has decided to get a new job, resigning her post later this month. Outlaw, previously Portland’s police chief, made history by becoming the first female commissioner for the City of Brotherly Love in 2020. It’s been a tumultuous three years, however, with violent crime engulfing the city.

For most of her tenure as Philly’s top cop, the headlines portrayed the city as a warzone. Residents wanted more police officers, which makes sense since 2022 was the deadliest year in Philadelphia since 1990, with more than 500 homicides. In 2023, crime seems to be dropping, notably homicides, but there’s nothing worth popping champagne over. Some crimes, like aggravated assault, increased while rape in the city has marginally decreased, along with armed robbery. Any Philly resident would agree that more needs to be done.

Mayor Jim Kenney had nothing but praise for Outlaw as she prepares to move on. But what was he praising her for? Was it the way she locked up criminals and kept the crime rates low? Of course not, because that never happened. Instead, he lauded her ability to bring “long-overdue reform to the Department after years of racism and gender discrimination.”

Yes, Outlaw was only interested in going after her own police and emptying the jails from the moment she arrived in Philly. As soon as she got there, the BLM riots were already getting underway. She made her mark early by ordering the police to not arrest any looters during the riots. She began emptying the jails with abandon, with one of the beneficiaries of that policy turning around almost immediately and committing a double murder. By Mother’s Day of the following year, shootings in Philadelphia had skyrocketed by 40% and they continued to rise after that.

Philadelphia is a mess at this point, just as many other large, blue American cities are. And I’m not suggesting that we can or should lay the blame entirely on Outlaw’s shoulders. She too is simply a symptom of a much larger problem. The people of Philadelphia, much like the citizens of Portland, have had a choice to make every time they go to the ballot box. They opted to put a soft-on-crime person like Jim Kenney into the mayor’s office and filled the City Council with like-minded people who would support those policies. That’s how they wound up with someone like Danielle Outlaw in charge of the force that had previously been tasked with upholding the law, locking up criminals, and protecting the law-abiding public. So in a way, Philadelphians are getting precisely what they asked for.

I don’t even have a guess as to how much longer this can continue to go on, not just in Philadelphia, but in so many other cities. I had foolishly assumed that after a year or two of obvious decline, rising crime, and plummeting property values, some sort of self-preservation instinct would have to kick in. But in too many places, that simply hasn’t been the case. I’m not a psychologist, but just from a layman’s perspective, it seems as if we may be witnessing a rather depressing peek into the human psyche. When the living conditions in people’s surroundings rapidly and dramatically deteriorate to the point of being almost unrecognizable (which is a thumbnail description of San Francisco today), do humans simply accept this as “the new normal?” Do they just trudge forward in their lives while trying to avoid the worst parts of town and staying off the streets at night? Or will they still reach a point where they stand up in unison and demand a return to what they had before? The optimist in me certainly hopes that’s the case, but as time drags on, I’m really beginning to doubt it.