FBI CHIEF ON RISE IN CRIME – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  Statements by FBI Director James Comey are taking on increasing significance.  The FBI is, after all, investigating Hillary Clinton, and people understandably want to know whether the director is a straight shooter, or someone who will bend to political winds. 

From everything I've seem, Comey is a straight shooter.  But that's no guarantee that the results of the FBI probe into Hillary will end appropriately.  The FBI cannot indict.  It can only provide information to the Justice Department.  In the case of a figure like Hillary Clinton, it's probably that Attorney General Loretta Lynch will make the decision on whether to seek indictments, if the FBI finds criminal wrongdoing.

But the stance of the FBI director is critical.  Will he stand for justice in the event of a cover-up, or will he just go along to keep his job?  I sense that Comey, in what could be the most important case of his career, will not go along.  I could be wrong.  

Comey is now speaking out about the rise in violent crime, and he isn't politically correct.  From the Daily Caller:

FBI director James Comey lent credence to a controversial theory Friday when he said during a speech in Chicago that violent crime has spiked in many big U.S. cities this year because police officers are worried that performing their policing duties puts them at risk of being accused of a crime themselves.

“I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year,” Comey said at a forum held at the University of Chicago Law School, according to news reports.

Violent crime — including homicides — have increased dramatically in many large cities, Comey said, pointing to Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Washington and Baltimore by name.

The cause of the spike is the center of intense debate. Some have dubbed the phenomenon the “Ferguson effect” — a reference to the fatal police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. on Aug. 9, 2014. The shooting sparked mass protests and violence in the St. Louis suburb.

Comey nails it:

He cited cheaper heroin, guns falling into criminals’ hands and street gangs’ turf battles as plausible theories but circled back to the explanation he hears from police officers. They tell him of the “taunting” they receive from youth when answering police calls, he said.

“They told me, ‘We feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars,'” Comey said, according to the Associated Press.

COMMENT:  Of course this is a major factor in the dramatic rise in crime.  And the taunting of police begins with snide comments from our left-wing president, Barack Obama, who started his administration by taunting the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department over an incident involving an academic friend of his.

I'm glad Comey said what he said.  It gives me confidence that he is no prisoner of political correctness.  Are you watching, Hillary?

October 24,  2015