Graffiti and petty crime are rampant again, as the mayor denies the justice system’s legitimacy
By Eugene O’Donnell
The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2019
New York
The mayor of this city occupies one of the most vital law-enforcement jobs in America. He commands the nation’s largest police force, with three times as many officers as the Federal Bureau of Investigation has special agents, in the world’s pre-eminent urban center. He therefore needs to be a voice of reasoned leadership about the balance between individual liberty and security in the city’s five boroughs.
Five and a half years into the job, Bill de Blasio refuses to embrace the duty to secure and defend the city’s millions of residents, commuters and visitors. As he did as a candidate, the mayor denies the legitimacy of the justice system—the only place individuals and communities can turn when they are harmed by criminals.
He propagates the smear that the majority-minority NYPD unjustifiably targets minorities when conducting street investigations. He knows there is nothing racially proportionate about reported violent crimes in the city, which in the busiest precincts affect only minorities. His posturing and gamesmanship provide fuel for the worst kind of conspiracy theories and hate speech against officers. Never has a mayor been more disdained by his police.
His factionalist, unserious approach to public safety might have paved the way for the ascent into the Queens district attorney’s office of a defense lawyer, Tiffany Cabán, who insists that the cause of crime and disorder in the city is the criminal-justice system. Her 20-point platform did not mention victims, violence, community decay, punishment or even guns. Instead, she vowed to keep as many offenders as possible free—even some of the most serious recidivists. There are exceptions: she pledges to prosecute landlords who fail to provide heat, business owners who don’t pay employees—and cops. At last count she trailed Borough President Melinda Katz by only 16 votes in the primary, with a recount under way. Only 10% of registered Democrats voted.
This impulse to explain away and excuse crimes is not, as elected activists such as Mr. de Blasio often claim, limited to minor offenses against the quality of life. Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, whom Ms. Cabán has called her role model, has been under fire for his lax and lenient handling of gun cases—even as homicide is spiking in his city. When a man robbing a store shot the owner in the groin with an AK-47 rifle, Mr. Krasner’s sentencing offer was 3½ years, though the victim, who was forced to shutter his business, will suffer a lifetime of trauma. In response, federal prosecutors brought their own firearms charges against the shooter.
With violent crime on the decline for decades, many New Yorkers take their safety for granted. Yet many city residents and businesses, especially outside Manhattan, tell of disorder in the streets. Neighborhoods are immersed in graffiti (or what the New York Times calls “street art”), and noise complaints are common. The city’s response to graffiti is to spend millions of tax dollars to remove it, while the vandals aren’t prosecuted, encouraging them to keep on tagging.
Subway fare evasion has become widespread, even fashionable. Some see it as a form of rebellion. Petty theft like stolen package deliveries is rampant. Crimes of all sorts go unreported. A cohort of elected officials seem to believe, even if they don’t say it, that shoplifting is a mere settling of scores, especially if the victim is an accursed big-box or high-end store.
Doubtless the criminal justice system needs dramatic reform. But sensibly rewiring such a large system requires getting beyond slogans and screeds. It calls for community engagement and truth-telling. Promising new technologies to track and monitor offenders can be used so fewer lawbreakers are exposed to a debilitating and potentially ruinous stint behind bars. Civil penalties can be used to correct and deter offenders, with ramp-ups for repeat offenders. Still, some very bad people commit very bad crimes, and no one has suggested an alternative to incarcerating them in a secure setting.
Elected officials must level with people about the consequences of criminal-justice reforms. The NYPD reports that calls about emotionally disturbed people have nearly doubled in the past decade, presumably because fewer people are under justice-system supervision. It is simply not true, as New Yorkers who traverse the city every day know well, that someone discharged from jail or prison will dependably show up and keep showing up for psychiatric care. Many will end up sleeping in parks, in subways and on sidewalks. Some will cause harm to others.
New York is not alone in seeing a breakdown in public safety. Particularly on the West Coast—all over California, in Seattle and in Portland, Ore.—residents are perplexed, angry and leaving as attentiveness to quality-of-life issues wanes, and “police” becomes a pejorative. San Francisco lost a 15,000-person medical conference last year because organizers didn’t want conventioneers to navigate streets where human waste is a health hazard.
What is most notable is that safety is an absolute prerequisite to the lives of many of the most vocal who have commandeered the conversation, and who demand that others settle for insecurity. “Safety for me, but not for thee” is the battle cry of many of these self-congratulatory visionaries.
New York has been dubbed “the world’s largest gated community.” Those inside the gates have doormen, elaborate security systems, underground parking, and unlimited Uber and taxi trips. Those on the outside must navigate commercial streets that shutter promptly at sundown, ride the subway late at night, feel defenseless when someone makes a noise on a fire escape or bangs on their apartment door, or shepherd their kids through open-air drug markets. They find their concerns are readily dismissed.
The big question in all this is: How did criminal-justice reform become synonymous with the silencing of victims and communities?
No comments:
Post a Comment