A horrific attack on a Chicago Blue Line train this week — in which a man allegedly doused a young woman with a flammable liquid and set her on fire — should jolt every city that has flirted with soft-on-crime experiments. Surveillance footage and federal filings paint a scene out of a nightmare, with the victim left badly burned and the suspect fleeing the car as riders watched in shock. This is not an isolated spectacle; it is a warning that violent men will exploit any fraying of law and order.
Authorities quickly identified 50-year-old Lawrence Reed as the alleged attacker and moved to charge him under federal terrorism statutes after harrowing evidence surfaced. Court records show Reed’s long criminal history and multiple prior arrests, and reporting indicates he had been on electronic monitoring and in shelter placements shortly before the attack, raising serious questions about how repeat offenders are handled. The notion that such a person “had no business being on the streets” has been echoed by federal agents and local officials investigating the case.
Against that backdrop, the national debate over “defunding” rhetoric and police staffing policies is more than academic — it is potentially deadly. Zohran Mamdani’s past social media calls to defund the NYPD and his more recent attempts to walk those comments back have been widely reported, and he now says he would keep headcount steady while reallocating responsibilities to community-based responders. Voters deserve clarity, not euphemisms; changing slogans do not erase the policy consequences that flow from years of weakened public safety institutions.
Even as Mamdani positions himself as a pragmatic mayor-elect and has chosen to keep the current police commissioner in place, rank-and-file skepticism is real and costly. The optics of a candidate who once promised to dismantle policing while simultaneously hiring private security during a campaign have not reassured officers or the public, and reports of uneasy morale and departures from within the force are unsurprising. If you hollow out trust and resources for police while expecting them to do the same dangerous job, the predictable result is fewer officers willing to confront violent criminals and more citizens left vulnerable.
Chicago’s tragedy proves a painful point: when the system repeatedly releases or under-monitors dangerous people, innocent lives pay the price. Conservatives have long warned that soft bail policies, understaffed departments, and an ideological contempt for traditional policing embolden predators and erode community safety; the Reed case is a grotesque illustration of those risks. Tougher enforcement, serious monitoring of repeat offenders, and clear accountability for failures must be nonnegotiable if cities are to protect their residents.
The nation needs leaders who put public safety above political theater and who will back the men and women who keep our streets and transit systems alive. Practical reforms can include better coordination between federal, state, and local agencies, honest assessments of which units and tactics actually reduce violence, and sensible investments in mental health and shelter systems that work in tandem with robust law enforcement. Now is the time for policymakers to stop coddling criminality with buzzwords and start delivering concrete protections for every law-abiding resident.
