Ted Williams: Criminals are taking over amid calls to defund police
Former D.C. detective and Fox News contributor Ted Williams reacts to spike in crime across the country.
Fox News contributor Ted Williams, a former Washington D.C. police detective, told "Bill Hemmer Reports" Monday that "criminals are taking over" after major U.S. cities reported bloody weekends amid increased calls to defund and disband police departments.
"What in the hell is going on in our major metropolitan cities?" Williams told host Jon Scott.
MAJOR U.S. CITIES SEE DEADLY WEEKEND AMID GROWING CALLS TO DEFUND POLICE
"I can tell you it's as simple as this: The criminals are taking over," he warned. "Law enforcement officers are really in a pickle these days. They're scared to do their jobs because if they do their job they may see themselves either arrested or terminated from the police departments in which they serve ... this is the reason a lot of the criminals are running wild in these major metropolitan cities."
Wiliams pointed to a troubling Father's Day weekend in Chicago that saw 104 people shot, 14 of them fatally, according to Fox 32. Those killed included a 3-year-old and a 13-year-old girl.
In Minneapolis, the city at the center of the national outrage over George Floyd’s death, one person was killed and 11 others were injured in a shooting early Sunday morning while the New York Post reported Monday that 24 people were shot in that city on Saturday alone.
Williams said a solution to the troubling uptick in crime rests in the hands of local leaders who "have to got to put out clear guidelines that help police officers, and not hinder police officers."
"When you are making an arrest, so many of these incidents, police officers feel like they have to be very careful not to, come out on camera and all of the sudden lose their job," he explained. "It's a very dynamic mess that's going on in this country."
Turning to a pair of shootings in Seattle's Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone (CHOP) that left one dead and two others wounded, Williams urged city officials to step up and "do their job."
" You cannot have a functioning society without police," he emphasized. "The police department in Seattle needs to do their job. City officials in Seattle need to do their job. And that is to allow police officers to go in there and take over of the zone."
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.
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