Barr predicts progressive prosecutors will lead to ‘more crime, more victims’

U.S. Attorney General William Barr blasted progressive district attorneys as “anti-law enforcement” in a speech Monday to the Fraternal Order of Police.

“These anti-law enforcement D.A.s have tended to emerge in jurisdictions where the election is largely determined by the primary,” Barr told the organization’s 64th National Biennial Conference in New Orleans.

{mosads}“Frequently, these candidates ambush an incumbent D.A. in the primary with misleading campaigns and large infusions of money from outside groups,” he added.

Barr did not identify any of his targets by name but district attorneys such as Philadelphia’s Larry Krassner and Rachael Rollins of Suffolk County, Mass., as well as public defender Tiffany Caban, who lost the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney by about 60 votes, have made national headlines for their vows not to prosecute certain nonviolent offenses.

“Some are refusing to prosecute various theft cases or drug cases, even where the suspect is involved in distribution. And when they do deign to charge a criminal suspect, they are frequently seeking sentences that are pathetically lenient,” Barr said.

“So these cities are headed back to the days of revolving door justice. The results will be predictable. More crime, more victims,” he added.

Barr blamed high crime rates in the early 1990s, when he served as attorney general under then-President George H.W. Bush, on ” ‘reform’ that turned our criminal justice system into a laughable revolving door.”

The attorney general went on to condemn “increasing toleration of the notion that it is somehow okay to resist the police,” dismissing reports of police abuse as “sometimes bad apples” that are “very much the exceptions.”

Barr, like former FBI Director James Comey, has previously expressed belief in the “Ferguson effect,” or police becoming hesitant to enforce the law due to widespread demonstrations in recent years. Multiple studies have cast doubt on that theory.