Criminal justice ‘reformers’ know how unpopular their radical policies are
Zachary Faria
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Liberal criminal justice reformers know that their insane policies are unpopular. This is why they couch them in euphemisms and walk them back the moment too many people notice exactly what they are advocating.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors just dropped its “decarceration” proposal, which would have given a get-out-of-jail-free pass to criminals being held on less than $50,000 bail. Putting too many criminals in jail is a “humanitarian crisis,” according to the policy’s stated rationale, and so it would “prioritize decreasing the number of individuals entering the Los Angeles County Jails” over the safety of actual residents.
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Negative publicity caused the board to pull the policy (for now). After all, no one wants to see criminals, including those who committed “some felony offenses,” treat jails as turnstiles in the midst of the city’s current crime crisis.
A similar backlash occurred in New York City, where a parking garage attendant confronted a suspected thief. That thief shot the worker, Moussa Diarra, before Diarra wrestled the weapon away from him and shot his attacker. The thief was charged with several crimes, but so was Diarra, who was hit with attempted murder and even gun possession charges for defending himself from a criminal with the criminal’s own gun.
It appears that charging decision was made by the police and not by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. But only after media backlash were those charges against Diarra dropped.
Regardless of whose decision it was, Bragg got most of the blame for this because he has done such things so often before. When a violent parolee threatened, cornered, and assaulted 61-year-old bodega worker Jose Alba, Alba stabbed the man in self-defense. Bragg, appalled that a citizen should defend himself from a criminal, ordered Alba thrown in Rikers on $250,000 bail (after asking for a bail of $500,000) and charged him with murder.
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Once the surveillance videos of the attack on Alba went public, there was a national outcry. Bragg was forced to back down and drop the charges. But tellingly, the woman who allegedly stabbed Alba while aiding in her boyfriend’s attack was also allowed to walk.
In the country’s biggest cities, crime has become the dominant political reality. Even the Democrats that dominate those cities’ voter rolls don’t like the criminal amnesty programs that their elected Democrats are pursuing. San Francisco removed its weak district attorney through a recall election, and Chicago kicked out its mayor over rising crime. Politicians in New York City and Los Angeles are aware of this reality. That’s why, when the backlash begins to build, they all try to reverse course and pretend that they aren’t as radical as they clearly are.