Cambria County District Attorney Gregory Neugebauer testified before the Senate Republican Policy Committee alongside other law enforcement professionals to illuminate what is driving up crime in the Keystone State and what can be done about it. The hearing, held at the Cambria County Courthouse in Ebensberg, was the first of several the panel is hosting this week to address crime prevention in conjunction with National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.
Committee Chair Mario Scavello (R-Mount Pocono) cited federal statistics at the hearing, showing that violent crimes increased five percent from 2019 to 2020 and homicides increased by 27.1 percent – the most significant year-to-year increase the commonwealth has ever seen. Pennsylvania experienced 1,009 murders that year, nearly 8 for every 100,000 people. No state saw as great a year-to-year jump in violent offenses.
Difficulties that Neugebauer mentioned regarding attracting people to the police profession include training costs and time commitments, both of which he said have been ongoing concerns. Yet a new challenge for recruitment and retention has been increasingly hostile public attitudes toward law enforcement.
“Once you are a police officer, you’re not always well respected,” he said. “I will caveat that. We are lucky here; our community does like our police [and] does support our police as a whole. We don’t have a lot of issues here relative to that.”
Since the wave of Black Lives Matter protests and riots across the country in 2020, radical anti-law-enforcement movements like police de-funding and prison abolition have gained support among many left-wing politicians and commentators…. (Excerpt from the Pennsylvania Daily Star)
