Crime (sort of)
Last week I wrote about the bizarre policy in Portland, Oregon where they ban plastic straws except in the harm-reduction kits they give to drug users. Well, fresh on the heels of that revelation comes this headline from the New York Post: “Paper straws contain toxic ‘forever chemicals’—could be worse than plastic.” What! Thankfully, Portland’s drug users won’t have to worry about putting paper straw chemicals into their bodies, but it is quite the quandary for our sea turtle friends.
More crime
This week in Washington D.C., Mike Gill, a former administration official, drove downtown around 5:45 p.m. to pick his wife up from work. As Mike waited in his car outside an office building on K street, a man opened the car door and shot him. The shooter then fled and attempted another carjacking at 7:05 p.m. A few minutes after that, the carjacker encountered Alberto Vasquez, Jr. who was sitting in his car. The carjacker shot and killed Vasquez and stole his car. Later that night, the suspect attempted another carjacking in another part of the city. He also randomly shot at some police officers. Finally, around 4:30 a.m. the next morning, police in Baltimore shot and killed the carjacker, putting an end to the spree.
In response to this carnage, yesterday evening D.C. officials held a public meeting to address high crime concerns. At the meeting, angry D.C. residents rightly yelled at the officials about their failed policies. There were nearly 1000 carjackings in D.C. last year, a year when the D.C. City Council absurdly attempted to lower the penalties for carjacking. The progressive D.C. prosecutor, Brian Schwalb, told the justifiably angry crowd, “If we want to be safer in the long run we cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it. We need to be much more focused on surrounding young people and their families with resources.” Peter Moskos, a criminology professor, responded to that comment this way on X: “You can police and prosecute your way to public safety. Tried and True. But whether he’s right or wrong (he’s wrong) if you’re the prosecutor you’ve got to act like your job matters. Otherwise give it to somebody who believes in the mission.” Moskos is correct.
Our system of justice is adversarial. Prosecutors whose hearts are in social work should go be social workers. The prosecutor’s core function is to demand accountability. He or she is the only person in the criminal justice system that can do so. You are the prosecutor, Mr. Schwalb. Prosecute. Such abdication of prosecutorial responsibility is making our communities less safe.
Justice
An excerpt from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Justice:
Before we loose the word
that bids new worlds to birth,
needs must we loosen first the sword
of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
and the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A People and their King
through ancient sin grown strong,
because they feared no reckoning
would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
and we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate held at last
to answer to mankind.