As robberies rocket to unprecedented levels in some US cities, the only explanation for district attorneys refusing to prosecute criminals is that they’re conducting an arrogant, cynical experiment in the redistribution of wealth.
There are the occasional sociopolitical questions that prove surprisingly easy to answer. Today’s example?
If a big city district attorney decided to release violent criminals early, set them free with minimal or no bail, and refused to prosecute suspects to the full extent of the law, what would happen?
- Career criminals and first-time offenders alike would appreciate the second chance fate sent their way and make sure to turn their lives around for the better in good faith.
- Violent crimes would skyrocket as men and women already willing to break the law find no consequences for theft, assault, murder, etc.
I insist no sane, even minimally educated adult would consider any answer but the latter. The entire concept of crime and punishment in global civilized culture demands those who break the law must pay some sort of price for the transgression. To put it in 1970s detective-show parlance, “Do the crime, do the time.”
Still, there are DAs in multiple American cities who promote “progressive reforms” in their local criminal justice systems that check off all of that quiz question’s conditions.
They release thousands of convicted criminals early. They refuse to use sentencing enhancement (such as gun crime add-ons or hate crime considerations), failing to charge the perpetrator to the full extent of the law. They ask for minimal bail to allow the alleged felons the opportunity to get back on the street within hours of committing the acts that sent them to lockup in the first place.
Right on time, in a result that should surprise no one with even an inkling of human nature, the crime rate in those cities isn’t just skyrocketing. It’s climbing beyond levels crime statistics can measure as outright chaos rules streets that the terrified citizenry must now avoid.
This week’s prime examples come to us from California as Los Angeles and San Francisco fall victim to an endless series of home invasion robberies and flash-mob, smash-and-grab thefts stealing millions of dollars in expensive merchandise both day and night.
It doesn’t take more than a few keystrokes to call up videos taken during some of those Los Angeles gang robberies. If the perpetrators on screen strike you as brazen and patient – as though they have no fear of being caught or prosecuted – your powers of observation and knowledge of body language serve you well. They’ve been instructed by experience and stated public policy that they have nothing to fear from law enforcement in their given progressive enclaves.
Up in the Bay Area, while retail stores flee San Francisco over the city’s enlightened “take all you like” shoplifting policy, Oakland served up the funniest occurrence of unchecked primitive theft. A newspaper crime photographer for The San Francisco Chronicle crossed over to the East Bay to take shots of a violent robbery scene. In a twist worthy of Monty Python, thieves accosted him and stole his cameras. If anyone ever asks you to define irony, refer them to this story.
Sadly, there’s nothing ironic about the rampant criminal behavior in these cities. In California, it all falls on the smug, arrogant backs of Los Angeles DA George Gascón and his opposite number in San Francisco, Chesa Boudin. Outside the ever-darkening “Golden State,” you’ll find other champions of lawlessness in Philadelphia with Larry Krasner; New York with Cy Vance; and John Chisholm in Milwaukee (who released the alleged Waukesha Christmas parade killer on $1,000 bond days before the deadly attack).
While I doubt you’re sitting back and wondering if all of these municipal prosecutors lost their minds together at some drug-infused district attorney convention, it’s fair to ask how this failed collective managed to allow all of this to happen. There lies the answer. They deliberately let this criminal advancement occur as part of a grand social experiment.
The progressive movement within criminal justice and law enforcement holds that crime occurs not due to personal choice, deliberate bad character or cultural failure, but because the perps caught bad breaks in their lives that made crime necessary and unavoidable. They blame economic disparity or the vague pestilence of “systemic racism” for creating human lives that can’t function without breaking the law (even in times when underserved companies beg for warm bodies to take their wages in a severe labor shortage).
Essentially, the DAs are not prosecutors. They’re social workers and wannabe activists. They of the holy compassionate head-tilt look at the images of able-bodied men and women smashing windows and stealing Gucci purses only to say, “Aww. It’s not your fault. The system isn’t fair. You get to steal property that isn’t yours and harm innocent people just to balance the books a little.”
Unable to push through a Marxist concept of redistributing wealth through proper governmental or social policy, these pseudo-intellectual anarchists wormed their way into positions of legal authority to drain law enforcement policies away until institutions meant to protect taxpayers can no longer function in any purposeful way. Now, the have-nots can take what they like when they choose. If the thieves and villains injure or kill the haves along the way, all is fair in the name of utopia.
The prosecutors betraying the public trust are unabashed traitors as they willingly inflect criminals back on law-abiding citizens. Of course, in their deluded minds, the lawbreakers are just misunderstood and underserved. In their childish worldview, they refuse to admit that the bad guy gets a vote, too – and there are simply some people who need to be in prison.
Of course, whether they’re self-satisfied public officials or isolated academics, the lazy midwit intellects that come up with this kumbaya drivel tend to live in areas immune to its results. There are no subway stops in Beverly Hills or Pacific Heights. It’s the people least able to suffer crime that reap the pain and suffering from this lab exercise in naivety crossing the border into madness.
No doubt Gascón, Krasner, and Boudin know and worship the words of French anarchist and Marxist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “Property is theft.” I just doubt they’d let a robbery go without prosecution if it was their property headed over to Robin Hood’s tree.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.