And the earlier period in which the influential sided with blacks over cops, from the end of the Kennedy Era to the end of the Carter Era, saw the murder rate double nationally, destroying many American cities.

Most notoriously, in New York City murders grew sharply in the early 1960s, from 390 in 1959 to 634 in 1965, before exploding under the new liberal Republican mayor John Lindsay, reaching 1,691 in 1972.

Lindsay, a handsome WASP, had sided with blacks against the city’s Irish policemen and Jewish school administrators.

As usual, the cops responded by slowing down on the job: the retreat to the doughnut shop. By one estimate, NYPD cops got down to doing about two hours of policing per eight-hour shift. After all, you can’t violate anybody’s civil rights while eating.

White residents fled many neighborhoods, such as the once-tranquil Bronx (where Ogden Nash had complained in 1930 about the lack of excitement with the couplet “The Bronx?/No, thonks!”), which saw reported burglaries increase by 1,559 percent from 1960 to 1969. In turn, the white population of the Bronx fell nearly 50 percent between the 1970 and 1980 Censuses.

Due to the crack wars, homicides peaked under New York’s only black mayor, David Dinkins, at 2,245 in 1990. Then murders suddenly fell under Republican Rudy Giuliani from 1,946 in Dinkins’ last year to 649 in Giuliani’s finale. It is said that Giuliani managed to get the NYPD to put in four hours of real work per shift.

Moreover, to the surprise of everybody, murders in New York City continued to steadily decline under subsequent mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio, although briefly blipping upward in late 2014/early 2015 while BLM was riding high in NYC. But then the NYPD more or less mutinied against the mayor; he backed down and murder once again started to fall.

Killings bottomed out in 2018 at 289, the lowest number since 1951, back when Joe DiMaggio played for the Yankees.

This incredible 87 percent decline in the number of killings is one of the great urban success stories in American history. It contributed to an enormous increase in property values. Although the Bronx has never recovered, most of Manhattan and then much of Brooklyn was gentrified.

Not surprisingly, this also engendered intense resentment, especially among blacks who feel entitled to live in some of the highest potential real estate in America. While it is polite to claim in public that whites unfairly wound up with all the Magic Dirt in the exurbs while blacks were forced to live on the Tragic Dirt conveniently close to downtown, the truth is that postwar black neighborhoods tended to be located desirably near jobs, airports, parks, and other amenities.

The Democrats do well with metropolitan whites who aren’t needing to flee for their lives. But safe streets depend upon arresting numerous black thugs, which is now out of fashion. It’s a difficult conundrum for Democrats.

Therefore, we are likely to see an increased Democratic effort to revive the Obama Administration’s Trump-canceled Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing scheme and other ploys to transfer ghetto blacks out of the cities to exurbs and small cities. This will be framed as not just good for the blacks, but bad for the small-town whites, who deserve it.