Tag: urban crime

Trump is Onto Something

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I was watching some news stories today.  In both cases a white woman was assaulted by a black man.  Now if the ethnicities were reversed and a black woman was assaulted by a white man it would not be less criminal but it would be astonishingly more unlikely.  And the two assaults had very different outcomes.  In the first instance a middle-aged woman working in Chicago was knocked unconscious by a thug who has made a criminal career of doing this exact thing.  In the other case, a dangerously deranged homeless man took a knife and plunged it into a young Ukrainian woman who was sitting in front of him on a light rail train in Charlotte NC.  She died from the attack.

So very different details, but the same cause.  These two women were attacked because in 2020 George Floyd died of a drug overdose and the people of Minnesota decided to export their white guilt to overrun all the Democrat run cities with black rioting.  And during the rioting they forced the police to stand aside while crime was normalized and dysfunction became the rule.  Democrat district attorneys and judges eliminated bail and just let the offenders out of jail almost as quickly as the police brought them in.  They even decriminalized theft (less than a thousand dollars) in places like California.  Slowly some cities have tried to end the madness.  But criminals get used to running amok.  So, levels of crime have never returned to pre-2020 (pre-George Floyd) levels.

So, these two women were attacked because two dangerous repeat-offending criminals were on the streets instead of in prison because, post-George-Floyd, black criminals are not incarcerated as they should be.  And, of course, the largest victims of these repeat offenders are other black people living around them.  But black voters keep returning Democrat politicians to office regardless of how much crime they allow to flourish in their cities.  So, the present tsunami of urban crime continues unabated.

But somebody finally decided to “notice.”  And that somebody is Donald Trump.  As his ICE agents descend on the various Democrat run “sanctuary cities” he has decided to use the National Guard to protect the ICE agents from Antifa and while they’re there he has the soldiers preventing street crime just by their presence.  And of course, when this happens, it’s a revelation to the residents of these cities.  People start walking down streets without fear of being robbed or assaulted and cities feel like they did five years ago.  Even the Democrat mayor of Washington DC was excited by the change in her city.  Shocking!

And according to the pollsters it’s popular with normal people.  So, here’s another 80/20 issue that Trump can beat the blue mayors and governors over the head with; urban crime.  And of course, places like Chicago and Portland are so impossibly blue that no permanent solution is possible.  But blue cities in red states like Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City and many others can benefit from a partnership between the governors and the federal government to show these cities what it’s like when crime isn’t tolerated.  Even the most corrupt mayors and city officials will be affected by their operations coming under scrutiny from the Department of Justice.  After all, abandoning Americans to the mercy of street thugs is a form of civil rights violation.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can’t exist in a crime ridden hellhole created by lawlessness that’s sponsored by the local government that’s supposed to be preventing it.

So, Trump is once again attacking every American problem simultaneously and kudos to him for it.  Now how do I get him to clean up Dunwich?  First Selectman Cthulhu is a tough nut to crack.

We Have Some Good News and Some Bad News

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It’s very rare that New York City newspapers can trumpet good news about crime in the city.  But last week they could:

“Major crimes in the subways, including robberies and felony assaults, declined 18 percent from Jan. 1 through March 31, to the second-lowest level in nearly three decades, police officials said at a news conference last week. There were no murders during the same period for the first time in seven years, the officials said.”

Unfortunately, this good news was nestled near the end of a crime story that was entitled:

“Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”

For the non-New Yorker, the R Train (or RR as it used to be known in my day) is a local subway line that plies the underground between Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan.  The details were sparse but sufficient:

“The police were searching on Thursday for a man investigators believed violated a dead man Wednesday night on a train in a Manhattan subway station, according to an internal police document.

The person who died boarded an R train at around 8 p.m., according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter and the internal document. It was unclear on Thursday when or how the person died.

A man entered the same train car at around 11 p.m. at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the Financial District, according to the official.

Within 45 minutes, the man saw the dead man and began to rummage through his pockets, the official said. The man then began to have sex with the body, according to the official and the document.

The sexual acts were captured on surveillance cameras inside the train car, the official said.

Soon after, the man got off the train and fled, the police said.”

Well, at least it’s good to know that the surveillance cameras were doing their job even if no one else was.  So, a man can drop dead and be lying there for three hours in a subway train without anyone including the crew aware of the fact and in fact another patron can take the opportunity to bugger the departed at his leisure without fear of interruption.

So, this 18% reduction in subway crime is being touted as a great success by the Mayor and the Police Commissioner’s offices but the fact that corpses are being sodomized on the R Train is to be taken in stride.  Call me a glass half empty kind of guy but somehow the 18% crime reduction rings a little hollow when necrophilia has surfaced in Gotham City.

I used to live in New York City during the time when crime was considered at its worst.  I can remember several gruesome murders and some aberrant behavior but I will say I’ve never heard that anything like this ever happened on the subway.  And the fact that the New York Times is trying to paint this “reduction in crime” as a triumph in law enforcement can only be described as Kafkaesque.

I like how the New York Times article describes the crime, “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”  “Who they say” as if it’s in dispute.  What else could it be?  Could he have had prior consent from the deceased in the event his corpse happened to be found on the train?

I have friends and relatives who still live in the city.  I can only assume it would be too expensive for them to relocate.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine anyone who can get out, not doing so.  The public schools have become a sad joke.  The streets are covered with filth and the homeless and crime is at the point that you probably have to fear for your life on a regular basis.

But up until now you never had to consider that after you were murdered your corpse might be sexually abused by your attacker.  This does seem like an inflection point.  Or am I being oversensitive?

An Object Lesson in Civics

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I was getting together with some New York City friends.  We were at a local Chinese restaurant that we have been known to frequent.  Full disclosure, I had the chicken chop suey because the kung pao chicken is too spicy so soon after my Christmas gorge fest.

We eventually got around to talking about Daniel Penny and his surprise acquittal by a New York City jury.  And then we talked about mayor Eric Adams and his trouble with the FBI.  It was agreed that he was being targeted not because he was guilty of the crimes he probably did commit but because he had complained about the outrageous scourge of illegal aliens that the city was being forced to house and feed.

I said I thought that maybe after Trump takes office, he might cut a deal with Adams to have pressure put on the judges and prosecutors persecuting Trump in exchange for a pardon on the charges the FBI has brought against Adams.  Of course, I said this tongue in cheek.  New York Democrats will never stop attacking Trump until he cuts off federal funds to New York.  So, if he helps Adams, it will only be because he wants to make a deal with Adams to deport the New York illegals.

And then we talked about New York City’s future.  Basically, the crime and dysfunction has gotten so bad that even “safe” neighborhoods like Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn were experiencing levels of violent crime never seen before, even in the 1990s.  And outrages like the illegal alien who set a female subway rider on fire and watched impassively as she burned to death.

I asked whether it seemed likely that the disastrous conditions would elicit a powerful reaction to restore law and order and save the city.  The answer I got was no.  They felt there wasn’t the will to fix things.  The elites who sponsored Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams as mayors wouldn’t change course no matter the consequences.  The were intent on enforcing progressive policies regardless of the consequences.  Of course, my friends freely admit that these elites will eventually abandon New York City for safer suburbs once their families are at risk in the city.  And once the people with the money abandon New York City it will begin to look like Philadelphia and Newark and eventually Detroit.  So that was their take.  New York City is in its death spiral.  The crime that the Democrats unleashed after the summer of George Floyd will be the cancer that kills Gotham by the sea.

It’s a funny thing.  Several years ago, I returned home to my old neighborhood.  And it was basically unrecognizable.  The new immigrants there had taken over and made the place their own.  Well, even if it made me a little sad to see my childhood memories thoroughly erased, I could understand that it was the nature of cities like New York.  But knowing that the city would be utterly destroyed is different.  It’s completely unnecessary.  A city full of immigrants from all corners of the earth needs law and order even more than some homogeneous ethnic enclave.  Everyone needs to feel like the law is there to protect them from chaos.  The fact that the progressives have declared law and order racist is proof that they don’t deserve to govern.  But it may take the destruction of every blue city to prove to everyone in this country that fact.  Oh well.

That is the Takeaway

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Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny.  What do they have in common?  They’re the two luckiest white men in America.  Somehow both of them managed to get an honest jury in the face of relentless anti-white propaganda and incredibly hostile media coverage.

So, what is the takeaway from what these men went through?  I think the important point is the miraculous nature of their acquittals.  And the fact that clearly innocent men attempting to defend themselves and the public at large from rioters and lunatics that the police have been forced to ignore were brought up on murder charges proves that we have been thrown to the wolves by the governments in the blue jurisdictions.

The truth of the matter is the police in New York City and Kenosha should have been the ones to stop rioters and lunatics from turning the streets of their cities into war zones.  New York City subway cars are now as dangerous to innocent people as the streets of Beirut.  Any day of the week you can see footage of gangs of marauding urban thugs victimizing law-abiding people on YouTube, X or TikTok.  And it’s the thugs themselves who put the video on-line.  They’re proud of it!

After four years of this madness, I’m beginning to hear of voters in blue jurisdictions voting out mayors and prosecutors who are responsible for the carnage.  Even in Los Angeles and San Francisco this is happening.  And a state-wide question in California succeeded in cancelling the recent law that said that shop lifting $900 or less of merchandise was essentially unpunishable.

Could this signify a restoration of law and order in these cities?  I’m going to say no.  The baby steps currently taken will not convince the police that the government has their back and will demand that the crime be throttled back to pre-George Floyd era standards.  That would take a consensus among city leaders that doesn’t exist and maybe never will exist again.  At least not under the present party coalition.  What it would take would be something along the lines of the Trump working class coalition coming into power in the cities.  But it would need to be large and durable enough to weather the blowback that would occur when the prisons would begin to fill up again with the large criminal element among the urban underclass.  There would be video that people would say looked like the George Floyd arrest.  And unless the coalition could stomach that kind of pressure nothing would improve.

No, I don’t think we should expect that kind of turnaround, maybe ever.  The real lesson is that cities and other areas that want to remain livable cannot allow law enforcement to be turned into a chew toy for race hustlers and the media.  They need to be defended against any amount of pressure by their mayors and governors.  And they must be willing to go toe to toe with the Justice Department and the FBI if they come meddling into local jurisdiction.

Florida has seemed to be working in that direction.  I’m sure other jurisdictions are doing the same.  For regular citizens, use whatever evidence you can to live where the crime doesn’t happen.  That is the takeaway.

Culinary Justice

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Recently there have been multiple stories in the news about citizens that are in revolt against leftist incompetence and ideologically driven lunacy by the very leftist mayors and city councils that they themselves recently elected.  Chicago and Portland are the prime examples that have been in the news.  And that doesn’t even count New York where the FBI has finked on Mayor Eric Adams and has set him up to be convicted of bribery in the near future.  In fact, in his case, it seems that he’s being persecuted for not going along with federal leftist incompetence and ideologically driven lunacy (understand, flooding New York City with illegal alien felons).

Someone might think I’d be happy to see these citizens awakening from their stupor and embracing moderation and practical solutions to their problems.

Hah!

Places like Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and New York haven’t learned anything.  They will take a tiny step back from the abyss of leftist madness and then double down on it shortly after.  They’ll hire a left-wing moderate and then harangue this victim day in and out every time he tries to solve a problem.  They’ll discover racism, sexism and transphobia anytime realism intrudes on their make-believe vision of their city and its problems.

No, I’m not seeing their pain as a wake-up call for a return to sanity.  They can’t possibly return to something they’ve never experienced in their lives.  It would be like expecting Massachusetts to respond to an enormous Democrat produced state budget deficit by electing an actual conservative.  No, what they do is elect a RINO like Mitt Romney who works at producing fiscal restraint while being endlessly attacked for his “heartless” cuts in human services.  And as soon as the budget is back in decent order, they’ll kick him to the curb and find some blue haired wack-job to come in and start the whole cycle all over again.

No, I don’t care a bit what halfway measures the Leftists take to stave off bankruptcy and prevent their cities from being literally sacked and burned down by barbarians.  Truth be told I want them to be sacked.  My favorite fantasy is imagining Portland burned to the ground and all of its hipsters eaten by Haitian gangs who run out of dogs and cats.

That would be poetic justice.  More than that, I think it might be the only thing that could make the rest of the American leftists really sit back and think about their devotion to “the cause.”  I mean, there’s nothing like seeing your brethren char-broiled over an oil drum full of scrap lumber and munched on by the local gang lord to give someone a new perspective on what the reality of decolonization might look like personally.  Of course, to different people there could be a nuanced range of reactions.  After all there are urbanites that thrive on discovering new cuisine choices.  Afghan, Ethiopian, even Mongolian cuisines have each made a stir on the foodie scene.  Well, pulled long pork or blackened hipster just might be the next chic menu item.  Who knows.  For the well-heeled diner one day it might be possible to get Kim Kardashian Ham and Eggs.  Or Nancy Pelosi Jambalaya.  The mind boggles at the culinary possibilities.

San Francisco Debates Whether to Sue Stores that Want to Leave

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That’s right.  If you have a store in San Francisco, you might get sued for trying to close down or relocate it outside of the city.

Now if I had a business in San Francisco that was only getting by marginally and I heard about this law being debated, wouldn’t I shut it down immediately to protect myself from litigation?

Of course the city could decide to restore law and order and begin prosecuting shoplifters and make the streets safe again for law abiding citizens.  But that wouldn’t be progressive.

Good work San Fran.  Way to shoot yourself in the foot.

 

 

The Daniel Penny Lesson

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Cop-bashing NYC Councilwoman Amanda Farías suddenly sees why we need the NYPD

As many as a few dozen women have been sucker punched while walking down the streets of New York City.

““Where are the men calling this out?” asks City Council Majority Leader Amanda Farías, retweeting a council Women’s Caucus’s post on the sick “sucker-punch a woman in the face” TikTok trend that urges victims to contact the NYPD.”

Now this is the same woman who said the city should, “significantly divest from police precincts” and vowed to “support “the reduction of NYPD’s operating budget and partnering alongside the community to create real solutions and justice for New Yorkers.””

And as far as men who aren’t in the NYPD but should be doing something about this?  I guess this is different from the Penny incident.  Last year, “Farias bemoaned the “lack of justice” for Jordan Neely, the violent homeless man accidentally killed when Daniel Penny stepped up to protect other straphangers.”

So Penny is going to trial for manslaughter and this dopey hypocritical woman wants to know where are all the men stepping forward to subdue psychotic street thugs who punch women for fun.

If only Farias could be one of the victims maybe that would allow her to get her head out of her butt.

Matt Walsh did a nice segment on this too.

Murdered NYPD Cop’s Family Refuses to Let Gov Hochul Intrude at the Funeral

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This was the funeral that Trump attended.

This is the moment Democrat Kathy Hochul was turned away at the wake for slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller.

Here’s where the real toll from the blue city madness impacts the innocents.  You can bet that the families of the police aren’t the ones voting Democrats into office.  But as long as the majority of NYC voters are Democrats that city will continue its descent into lawlessness and violence.

ZMan’s Farewell Tribute to Baltimore

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In ZMan’s parlance Baltimore is Lagos on the Chesapeake.  And today he wrote his swan song to residency in that troubled urban hell.  He moved to the country.

Missing Lagos

Now he jokingly titled it “Missing Lagos.”  But in a real way, he is feeling a loss.  Obviously the overwhelming emotion you feel when you escape a hellhole like Baltimore is relief.  All of the large and small problems and even existential dangers are essentially gone.  And with them goes the tension and stress that takes a continuous toll on your body and mind.

But you can’t live somewhere for decades without it becoming a part of you.  Leaving it produces something like that “phantom limb” experience that amputees experience.  There’s a feeling that something isn’t right.  Of course that eventually subsides but never entirely disappears.  I remember when I moved out of New York City.  It took me months to get used to the sound of frogs and crickets.  It took me a couple of years to stop locking all the car doors.

But reading his account which was mostly disparagement of the dysfunctional residents of his former residence, I could still detect a certain pride in being a member of a club.  The pride is that he has proven that he can survive and even thrive in a war zone.  It’s an odd kind of a badge but a real one none the less.

Congratulations on your escape ZMan.  Enjoy the crickets.  They’re very soothing.