Public safety The Social Order A few years ago, before homicide and violent crime began increasing nationwide, two leading social scientists, Patrick Sharkey and David Kennedy, sought to document the costs of homicide and violent crime, to explain why they had declined so precipitously, and to uplift suffering majority-black neighborhoods. But since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, some of their important policy insights have become politically inconvenient. They’ve responded by pursuing an elusive synthesis between these elements of their work and the positions of the anti-police Left. While Sharkey is a political liberal, some of his work has touched on themes no longer welcome in progressive circles. In 2018’s