You can find example after example of violent crimes committed by known criminals who would have been in jail if progressive prosecutors hadn't gone easy on them. Unfortunately, the man who shot and killed a Chicago police officer is just the latest on the list.

Officer Andres Vasquez-Lasso was shot multiple times while responding to a call of an armed man pursuing a woman. The suspect in his murder is 18-year-old Steven Montano. Last summer, Montano was in a car with two other people when they pulled up next to another man and opened fire on him. The other two people in the car were charged with various crimes, including aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and aggravated battery by discharging a firearm. One of the two was just 15 years old.

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And yet, when it came time to charge Montano, prosecutors ignored the requests of police detectives and charged him with just one misdemeanor count of resisting police. Prosecutors could have and should have hit him with felony charges. Considering what he did, they should have thrown the book at him. Instead, they actually ended up dropping the lone misdemeanor charge a few months later. There were zero consequences for his actions, and now he stands accused of killing an officer.

Lest you think he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the police report from Montano’s arrest last year named him as a member of the Latin Kings.

This makes Vasquez-Lasso at least the sixth police officer killed this year by men with criminal histories or a history of violence. Six police officers in just nine weeks have been killed because of weak prosecutors and Democratic legislators who believe incarceration is worse than crime and have made it their goal to ensure that criminals see as little jail time as possible.

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The dangers are not just reserved for police officers, either. Violent career criminals have been terrorizing residents in several major cities run by woke prosecutors, including Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Congressional Democrats found this out the hard way when Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) was attacked in her apartment complex by a man with a criminal history stretching back to 2015.

The left-wing desire to fight “mass incarceration” leads directly to career violent criminals receiving little-to-no time behind bars despite multiple serious infractions. This emboldens them to become more violent and more brazen. They are treated as numbers on a spreadsheet instead of violent individuals who pose a threat to public safety. Law-abiding citizens and police officers are paying the price for this attitude, and it will continue until the prosecutors, mayors, and legislators who support it are run out of office.