You Might Think

You might think that police arresting offenders for whom there is probable cause of their having committed a crime, prosecutors prosecuting these individuals, and judges trying them on the crimes for which they are charged would not be controversial. Apparently it is as noted by Charles Love in City Journal:

The mayor has consistently said that mass looting, vandalism, and violence are unacceptable, but Chicago’s police seem confused about what is expected of them.

Protests have been going on in the city for 50 days now. The Chicago Police Department is not equipped to handle this level of continued, high-stress confrontation. Officers have had their workdays extended and off days canceled on several occasions. They are tired and overworked.

Foxx openly admits to ignoring “nonviolent” offenders. But where “nonviolence” used to mean “peaceful,” the new, more expansive definition of the word includes property crime, public disturbance, and looting. Under these terms, most of the people causing the mayhem are technically “nonviolent.” But under any definition, nonviolent crimes are not victimless crimes.

The solution here is simple: the police must arrest offenders, and the prosecutor must prosecute them. Foxx should put her personal feelings about drug offenses and “nonviolent” crimes aside and do her job. If Chicagoans want to ease criminal penalties for some crimes, they can push their legislators to do so, via statute—but having a state’s attorney openly ignore current law is destructive to the community.

Elected officials also need to call out bad behavior for what it is, without qualifying their views by saying that such behavior detracts from “the movement.”

Something else that should not be controversial but apparently is: these determinations should not be made be protesters, demonstrators, rioters, or however you’d like to designate them. When that happens let’s call it for what it is. It is not “anarchy”. It is mob rule.

3 comments… add one
  • Grey Shambler Link

    “protesters attack high-end retail stores that are owned by the wealthy and service the wealthy, that is not ‘our’ city and has never been meant for us.” At a rally in support of arrested looters, a BLM”

    Truth. Truth for myself and my family as well. Take my life savings to buy a shirt in one of those stores. But we’ve never been tempted to loot. We’d do time, we’d lose our shack. Without each other, my wife and I would probably die. Homeless, my daughter and her two daughters would face a bleak future. The reason these blacks loot is probably the same reason they ventilate each others children for fun. As they see it they got nothing to lose.
    It’s going to take force. And if we can’t drum up the resolve to use force we lose our society.
    People are not good pets, they’ll bite you. I suppose we have to wait for the woke to get bitten by their Bipocs.

  • People are not good pets, they’ll bite you.

    Sam Clemens wrote “The difference between a man and a dog is that if you feed a dog and make him prosperous he won’t bite you.”

  • jan Link

    This also reminds me of another saying: “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged.” If people live in a safe bubble, never having been violated, assaulted, threatened, had the community around them ravaged, then they can intellectually opine and justify violence happening elsewhere. However, once they have a personal experience with senseless acts, like what some metropolitan areas have undergone, it all becomes very real, and is often accompanied by a 180 degree perspective correction.

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