AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Guest EssayHow to Talk About Crime Like a Regular PersonAug. 21, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ETCredit...Danielle Del PlatoListen · 6:33 min By Rotimi AdeoyeMr. Adeoye is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of American Pursuit, a newsletter on politics and policy.Democrats seem incapable of connecting with voters on crime. In the 2024 election, Republicans stoked fear of violent criminals running amok, and since then, Democrats have responded mostly by avoiding the subject, leaving voters to conclude that they don’t care about crime or don’t believe in law enforcement.Democrats don’t need to cede this ground. They have models in local offices across the country that show how they can win voters’ trust on public safety.Joe Khan is one of them. This past fall, when Mr. Khan ran for district attorney in Bucks County, Pa., he toured families’ basements, seeing — and smelling — the water running through their filtration systems. It resembled jet fuel. A pipeline belonging to Energy Transfer, a large company that moves oil and natural gas, had contaminated their water supply. Mr. Khan called out the sitting district attorney, a Republican, whose office had declined to prosecute the company, deferring to state and federal authorities.Mr. Khan won in Bucks County, one of the most politically contested areas in the country, in a Democratic sweep of local offices last November that made him the first Democrat elected district attorney since 1891. In a county that swung from Joe Biden in 2020 to Donald Trump in 2024, he and Danny Ceisler, an Army veteran who was elected sheriff, promised to protect people better than Republican counterparts would, with fairer and less politicized law enforcement. It worked.When Mr. Khan became district attorney in January, he made good on his promise to pursue street-level assailants as well as white-collar wrongdoers. He prosecuted a man who used Roblox to prey on children, then expanded a lawsuit against the platforms that enabled it, making his one of the first district attorney’s offices in the country to sue the social media platform X. “I’ll go after the bad guys who want to prey on kids,” Mr. Khan said, “and I’ll go after the Silicon Valley companies that make that possible.” The message was simple: No one should feel free to flout the law.Mr. Ceisler, too, imposed a different balance in his new office. His predecessor had signed an agreement to have sheriff’s deputies assist federal immigration enforcement, which Mr. Ceisler argued diverted them from local duties. “We have over 5,000 outstanding bench warrants in Bucks County,” Mr. Ceisler said. “I asked voters, don’t you want your deputies focused on that?”Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT