Progressive Denial Won’t Stop Violent Crime

In early April, Mahmood Ansari was working at his souvenir store in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when a pair of minors, one armed with a knife, robbed him. After a brief altercation, he collapsed. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was soon pronounced dead.

After Ansari’s death, I spoke with Rizwan Malik, one of his friends. Malik said that he and other business owners had unsuccessfully begged the city for additional police protection in the weeks leading up to the incident, in response to a spate of robberies. “If they were doing something about it, [Ansari] would maybe be alive,” Malik told me. (The police department has said that it was “aware of concerns and complaints” from the merchants, and that it will coordinate with them over the summer to tackle crime.)

I thought about Ansari’s death when I saw recent remarks by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York in which she appeared to downplay America’s recent surge in violent crime.

“We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” during a virtual event with Representative Jamaal Bowman, a fellow New York Democrat. “Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure