Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is Ralph Manguel. He's a contributing editor to City Journal, a senior fellow at the Manhattan

Institute, and he's been on the podcast before. His latest piece for us, which appears in the

winter 2021 issue of the magazine, and was released online just this past week is called Soft on Crime.

And it details how a Biden administration policy toward policing and law enforcement could

spell a real problem for American cities. Ralph, thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks so much for having me back,

Brian. Always a pleasure. As most people who paid attention to the election will recall,

President Biden, when he was running in the primary, was attacked pretty ferociously by his

Democratic colleagues, including his Vice President Kamala Harris, for his previous support for the then-popular,

but now infamous crime bill. But as you write, the Joe Biden of 1994 is, unfortunately, gone,

and he's repudiated his role in the great crime decline of the 90s and 2000s.

Can you tell me what you expect from the Biden administration when it comes to policing,

law enforcement more broadly? What worries you the most?

Well, one of the things that worries me the most is where the country finds itself on the

policing front with respect to the number of police

on the street for a couple of years now, police departments around the country have been

pretty consistently reporting really serious retention and recruitment issues. And of course,

the protests in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, they've really exacerbated that, right?

There's been just a much more pronounced anti-police climate

that is kind of bubbled over in a lot of American cities,

and that has caused a lot of police officers near retirement

...