Cities, Governments, and the Seeds of Destruction

Illinois Review ^ | May 5, 2015 A.D. | John F. Di Leo

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Reflections on the burning of Baltimore...

Imagine that your boss assigns you to a research project. You work late nights for a month doing research; you present your findings on time, and your boss rips it up and directs the I.T. department to scrub all your research from your computer. And then he tells you to start from scratch and do it again.

Or imagine that your boss assigns you to design an advertising campaign. You hire the models and photographers, write the copy, build the storyboards, film the commercials and print ads… and present them for his consideration. He not only nixes them all, he destroys all that film and says to start from scratch again; you can’t use any of the work you’ve already done on the case.

Or imagine that your boss assigns you to hire and train a team to market a product line in distant Alabama. For months, you work full weeks and weekends, traveling throughout Alabama, interviewing people, scouting locations, doing market research. You lose connections with your kids as you miss their baseball games and their choir or theater performances, you miss a cousin’s funeral and a niece’s graduation, you have long distance fights with your spouse over the phone, all because work took you away. And then you return to the office, proud of your work, and your boss says “Ah, I’ve lost interest in the Alabama idea. Forget it. Do the same in Montana and Idaho, though, instead.”

How would you feel about that job? Would you stay?

And if you did, would you put the same effort into the next project your boss gives you? What if he did it to you again and again, making you spin your wheels on project after project, still paying your salary, sure, but continuing to put your family at risk, tying you up 24/7 on a job you took because it sounded rewarding – it sounded like a job where you could make a difference – but instead, it’s turned out to be anything but.

THE MODERN AMERICAN POLICE FORCE

One hopes that the above examples are entirely fictional. While many projects are certainly abandoned due to market forces, the private sector at least makes a conscious effort to make the most of employees’ time, and to appreciate the commitment of employees who work long hours and go the extra mile. Private sector management is certainly not as destructive and thoughtless as in the above examples.

But this is EXACTLY what happens in the modern American big city police force. Exactly.

Police work long hours, available 24/7, miss family events, work two shifts in a row, day after day when crises arise.

Police risk life and limb trying to catch criminals. They strive to catch the rapist who assaulted a mother, a daughter, a neighbor. They strive to catch the pusher who tried to addict your child, your nephew, your niece. They strive to catch the burglar who broke into your apartment or house, and the thug who robbed your neighbor’s convenience store or your friend’s jewelry store or your cousin’s clothing shop.

Police do their best to catch the criminals who infest our cities, who turn schools into war zones and drive customers out of malls. Police do everything they can, to not only pull these demons off the street, but also to complete the arrest process while adhering to ever-more-challenging rules of engagement. You can’t check their houses or cars without a warrant… you can’t detain them and search them without probable cause… you must read them their rights… you must moderate your level of force at all times, even when they’re shooting at you, lunging toward you, charging into you…

All this is par for the course; our police knew the risks when they joined up. They knew that Baltimore and Chicago and St Louis and Los Angeles and Atlanta are big cities, and being a policeman there would be dangerous. They knew that their chosen career would make them miss their kids’ baseball games or ice skating shows, but this dedication to helping build a safer society would make up for it. They knew what they were getting into.

But there’s something they didn’t know, something they didn’t realize when they signed up: modern cities, and the federal government in cahoots with them, are conspiring to undo every effort the police attempt.

THE REVOLVING DOOR OF THE MODERN AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

We have only to look at the rap sheets of the highest profile thugs of recent media frenzies to see that our system is broken, not by accident, but by intent.

Michael Brown of Ferguson, Ricky Chiles of Milwaukee, Freddie Gray of Baltimore… these criminals all had a rap sheet a mile long – robberies, assaults, drug crimes, gang involvement. All had been caught, prosecuted, and convicted of crimes. The police had caught them without incident, without injury to the perps, time and time again, and turned them over to the criminal justice system to deal with them – to punish them for their crimes and remove them from society for the ten or twenty or thirty years that their crimes deserve.

This is for the protection of the community, first and foremost, but it’s for the protection of the criminal as well. Removal from the community means three squares and a cot for free… an opportunity to study in the prison library… removal from the influences of gang recruiters and crime bosses, removal from the temptation to fight or rob or rape.

Committing crimes is dangerous to the perp as well, after all. Criminals have to know that they can be injured or killed when committing a crime; that’s one of the ways that society dissuades criminals from doing what they do. We must not remove this risk; it’s the only thing keeping a lot of borderline people from becoming criminals themselves.

But what has our country done over these past fifty years? We’ve stopped locking them up. We’ve virtually eliminated the death penalty and we’ve begun to let convicted criminals go with “time served” or no time at all, at an amazing rate. No citizen reading the stories of the criminals named above can understand why they were on the street at all to commit the crimes that resulted in their deaths; shouldn’t they all have been in jail for at least another ten years for assault, robbery, gang leadership, drug peddling?

Our revolving door is to blame, more than any other single error. It’s hard to catch, and hard to convict, yes… but once convictions are obtained, there is NO excuse for failing to lock them up for the mandatory sentences our legislators have passed.

But we have an entire movement dedicated to setting criminals free. The American Democratic Party long ago made common cause with the crime gangs of our cities, the pedophiles and individual burglars, the race hustlers and rabble rousers. The Democrats infested our judicial system with judges who believe that long sentences are wrong and that everyone deserves a second chance – and a third and a fourth and a thirtieth and a fortieth – preferably as soon as possible, preferably as soon as the ink is dry on their latest conviction.

We can talk about the relative benefits and faults with the concept of plea bargaining… we can discuss the intentional destruction of the nuclear family and the inherent violence of the welfare state… and all these are worthy subjects, well worth exploring.

But more and more, as we watch cities like Ferguson and Baltimore burn, we see that one single problem rise above all others; when, against all odds, we finally do obtain a conviction, we still turn them loose.

There is no excuse for that. Just as there is no excuse for a thug assaulting a shopkeeper, raping a girl, beating a classmate, dealing drugs, or attacking a policeman in the course of an arrest, there is also no excuse for a criminal justice system releasing a violent criminal after obtaining a conviction.

There are judges – and activists in the system, in the press, and in the Democratic Party and its allied NGOs – who believe that cramped conditions in a jail warrant immediately releasing monsters back into the community to terrorize their neighbors again.

This is unforgivable, and is in itself a crippling indictment against the Democratic Party and the modern Left. They side with the reprobates over law-abiding citizens. It is a violation of their oaths of office and of their obligation as fellow Americans. For a civilized society, the intentional release of convicted violent offenders is an abomination.

THE COP ON THE BEAT

Let’s return for a moment to the employee whose boss callously destroys and devalues his hard work. If the employee can get out, he probably will. But some have only trained for this; they know no other job. Some depend on it for health benefits today or pensions to come, and are too far along to dare making the change right now. Some look at an economy in which ninety million are already outside the work force, and reason that they couldn’t get anything else if they tried… so they stay.

Would we blame them if they have a chip on their shoulders? Would we blame them if they get frustrated, and tired of risking their lives, day after day, week after week, year after year, to catch the same criminals, and testify and obtain convictions, only to see the convicted thugs back on the street in no time?

Would we blame them if they look at a criminal whom they’ve arrested time and time again, and they can’t help but skip a few steps because they KNOW who it is, and what he’s guilty of, and what he’ll do again if given the chance? Not to say it’s right, not to say it’s legal, but just to ask: as fellow human beings, can we blame them?

There are certainly some bad cops, and this isn’t meant to deny the fact that the minority of police who take advantage of their position to solicit bribes, deal drugs, or mete out their own unsanctioned punishment are indeed criminals themselves. Nobody is supporting such criminals, who hurt the case of law enforcement more than anybody by their crimes.

But those “bad cops” are a minority.

The important thing is that we have hundreds of thousands of citizens in this country – dedicated, honorable men and women – in cities and suburbs and rural areas alike – who have chosen law enforcement as a noble career, and who risk their lives every day to try to protect the communities that they serve.

And yet… a huge and growing movement has spent the past fifty years trying to undermine the good police at every turn. Tying their hands, voiding their accomplishments, putting them back in the sights of the same criminals again and again.

Can we wonder that some of the best potential police may choose a different career today, now that they realize the society is against them? Can we wonder that cities are burning, as criminals flood the neighborhoods and as hogtied police bound by “Stand down!” orders are powerless to stop it?

The words of a fool mayor and a fool prosecutor have made the news this month – concerning their conscious choice to give the protestors “room to destroy” – but should this have been newsworthy at all?

The Democratic Party and its allies in the war against the criminal justice system have been giving the criminal element “room to destroy” for half a century… and there will be no end to the destruction until the Left’s corrupt and demonic influence is purged from our society.

Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based writer and international trade lecturer. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has now been a recovering politician for eighteen years.

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