Once upon a time, there was a charming leafy well-to-do suburban county just outside Washington, D.C.\u00a0 And then it got taken over by people with some very bad ideas, and much of it became a poverty-stricken, crime-ridden disaster area.\u00a0 To be sure, the problems of Montgomery County, Maryland, didn\u2019t start overnight, and they aren\u2019t all due solely to illegal immigration.\u00a0 But that\u2019s undeniably been a huge part of it, and it\u2019s still only getting worse.<\/p>\n
The statistics are pretty shocking.\u00a0 Comparing the first six months of this year to the first six months of 2017, the county\u2019s police reported<\/a> at the end of July that \u201cviolent gang-related crime is up 67 percent, gang-related robberies are up 36 percent while gang-related assaults are up 43 percent.\u201d\u00a0 Additionally, \u201csex offenses have risen by more than 53 percent,\u201d which Montgomery County Police Chief Tom Manger aptly described<\/a> as \u201c[o]ne of the things that is most alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n In December of last year, with gang crime already surging, Manger may have been trying to downplay the impact of illegal immigration yet inadvertently highlighted it when he said<\/a>, \u201c[t]hese kids are born and raised in the U.S., and then the other half of our gang activity is the ethnic-based gangs who align themselves with folks from their country of origin[.]\u201d<\/p>\n Half?\u00a0 While Manger may have been speaking figuratively or exaggerating, that sure sounds like as much as \u201chalf\u201d of the county\u2019s gang members could be illegal aliens.\u00a0 We know for sure that at least some of them are<\/a>.\u00a0 So maybe as much as half of the county\u2019s gang crime is by people who shouldn\u2019t even be here.\u00a0 It may not literally be half, but it\u2019s clearly some significant percentage.<\/p>\n What has the county actually done to get to this point?\u00a0 They\u2019ve poured gasoline on an already raging inferno.\u00a0 From 2014 to the present, they\u2019ve ratcheted up one reckless sanctuary policy after another.\u00a0 Their latest scheme was a proposal to fund lawyers to fight the deportation of illegal aliens in the county, with the money coming from the county\u2019s remaining law-abiding taxpayers of course.\u00a0 That fortunately (and surprisingly) got shot down after it met with fierce resistance<\/a>, but one can only assume it\u2019ll be back.<\/p>\n And not to be outdone, of course, the county\u2019s municipalities have been jumping on the sanctuary bandwagon, too, with disastrous policies of their own.\u00a0 Takoma Park became Maryland\u2019s first sanctuary city all the way back in 1985<\/a>.\u00a0 Rockville, the county\u2019s largest city, passed its sanctuary ordinance<\/a> in June of last year.\u00a0 And now Gaithersburg, its second-largest, looks to be on that path as well, with a \u201cFreedom City\u201d ordinance<\/a> in the works inspired by lawless Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the violence by these gang members, particularly MS-13, is completely out of control.\u00a0 From stabbing to decapitation<\/a> to beating teenage girls with baseball bats<\/a> to prolific armed robberies, it\u2019s obvious who really has free rein of Montgomery County\u2019s streets, and it isn\u2019t the police, let alone law-abiding citizens.<\/p>\n Albert Einstein is supposed to have said that \u201cthe definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.\u201d\u00a0 The same line has also been attributed to the equally quotable wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and probably others.\u00a0 But regardless of who said it, it\u2019s true, and Montgomery County is doing practically everything possible to prove it.\u00a0 If they actually want to change things for the better, maybe it\u2019s time to try something else.