Is there only a thin blue line separating U.S. cities from mayhem?

This gets at the heart of the Buchanan premise: when cops aren’t able to be in the neighborhoods, everyone is more at danger of getting murdered. Except it didn’t happen.

In the week of Dec. 13 through Dec. 20 — the week when most of these protests happened, dragging MPD away from the neighborhoods — no homicides were reported. Not a single one. Only one homicide happened in D.C. in the two weeks following the grand jury decision to not indict the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner with a chokehold — police say it happened on a Tuesday morning.

As a NYC cop pointed out to me, on Sept. 11, 2001, there was no upswing in crime. Nor immediately after Hurricane Sandy.