No Justice

By 1990, the conventional wisdom had it that big cities were ungovernable.  Places like New York City were regarded as sinkholes of despair.  Festooned in graffiti, and plagued by crime, their mayors and police departments had lost control.

Two decades earlier, while a student at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, I watched my professors struggle with the task of rehabilitating Times Square.  Unfortunately, their social engineering did not help.

Then came Rudi Giuliani.  He decided to fight crime instead of surrendering to it.  The police were told to arrest people even for small infractions—such as turnstile jumping.  They were also unleashed to engage in pro-active interventions in violent neighborhoods.

The results were dramatic.  Crime plummeted.  The murder rate, for instance, fell by almost three quarters.  People again felt safe.  They even returned to the newly cleaned up Times Square to celebrate their liberation from squalor.

But this did not satisfy the liberal pundits who ran the New York Times.  They regarded Giuliani as the enemy.  He was perceived as a monster who was oppressing the poor.  Instead of being nice to the downtrodden, he insisted that they follow the law—or pay a penalty.

And so the Times fought back.  It ran hundreds of articles about police brutality.  Despite statistical evidence that police abuses had been reduced, aberrant cases, such at that of Amadou Diallo, were highlighted to demonstrate just how vicious the authorities were.

Today the clock has been turned back and Freddie Gray is the new poster boy for police cruelty.  Without knowing the facts, cries for revenge rose from Baltimore’s mean streets.  Worse still, the city’s elected officials echoed these calls.  They agreed that without justice there would be no peace.

And so the police were scapegoated.  Instead of putting down the rioters, they were asked to expose themselves to the brickbats of an unruly mob.  Meanwhile the officers suspected of injuring Gray were indicted for second-degree murder on the theory that they intentionally killed their prisoner.

The upshot: back on the streets there were celebrations.  Vengeance, disguised as justice, had won the day.  Now the Crips and Bloods were hailed as heroes for maintaining the peace.  It did not matter that they directed vandals to loot Asian businesses.  Hadn’t they, after all, protected their own?

This, however, was not justice.  It was a return to a State of Nature in which it is every person for him/herself.  Millennia have gone into developing the institutions that shield ordinary citizens from chaos.  Yet these were brushed aside as if they were the problem.

With the Al Sharpton’s of the world now dictating the terms of surrender, the worst is yet to arrive.  Baltimore is about to become Detroit East.  Legitimate businesses will flee the city, as will its respectable residents.  Nor will the cops do their job.  Why should they risk being sent to jail for apprehending evildoers?

So who is responsible?  It is none other than the liberal champion of justice in the White House.  Intent on vindicating his ideological convictions, Obama is determined to do what the New York Times could not.  He aims to dismantle law and order in favor of a squishy niceness.

Baltimore’s mayor decided to provide the looters space to foul their own nest.  This could only be achieved by disarming the police.  Yet this policy was well under way.  From Cambridge Massachusetts to Ferguson Missouri, our president had already condemned law enforcement agents for having gone wild.

Nevertheless, Obama and his allies do not know what a lack of control portends.  With the gangs and incompetent public officials in charge, there will be blood on the streets.  Once the law is fully dismantled, no one will be safe.

This is not justice.  It is insanity.  Ordinary police officers are not perfect.  They make mistakes.  Moreover, they should be punished when they do.  But destroying law and order is a far greater mistake—with more serious consequences.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University