How the Morlocks Seized New York
If, in 1984, an inventive New Yorker set his time travel machine to the year 2023, the city in which he arrived would confound him. Although the New York City of today looks much like that of 1984, our time traveler would have a hard time understanding the people, almost as hard a time as H.G. Wells's "Time Traveler" did when his machine arrived in the year 802,701.
The public response of the average New Yorker to the arrest of former Marine sergeant Daniel Penny calls to mind the "Eloi" response to Wells's Traveler. The Eloi were the little, pretty people of the future whom the Time Traveler encountered. "Once the favored aristocracy" says the Traveler, "the Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility."
The passivity of the Eloi allowed the subterranean Morlocks, once their servants, to become their masters. "Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew," says the Traveler. "They were becoming reacquainted with Fear." Unfortunately for their future, the Eloi had lost their spines. Eloi males no longer had even the instinct to rescue one of their own from peril or to defend themselves from the creeping cannibalism of the Morlocks.
Enter the Time Traveler. Writing the The Time Machine in 1895, Wells endowed his protagonist with those many virtues expected of an Englishman in the age of Victoria and Kipling. Tempted to leave behind the chaos he found in the future, the Traveler feels honor-bound to intervene; to save the Eloi from extinction; and, in the process, to show them how to save themselves.
After serving four years in the Marines, the 24-year-old Daniel Penny arrived in New York City almost as innocent as Wells's hero and likely as brave. "I have always been inspired by the ambition and grit," he posted on social media. "After high school and unsure of my future, I enlisted in the Marine Corps in search of adventure." In the Marines, Sergeant Penny served as squad leader on two deployments.
Unlike most young men of this era, Penny pulled his inspiration from Cervantes's Don Quixote, a novel that at its most literal interpretation would have reinforced his Marine Corps values. As Penny learned during this past week, if not before, his values and those of his fellow New Yorkers were as out of sync as those of Wells's hero and the Eloi.
In subterranean New York, Penny came face to face with a modern Morlock, Jordan Neely by name. Neely had been arrested 42 times in the past 10 years and had a well documented mental health history. The NYPD knew he was dangerous. They had arrested Neely most recently in November 2021 on felony assault charges after he punched a 67-year-old female stranger in the face.
Two years later, Neely was roaming free. After 20 years of good governance, the left took over New York's City Hall with the installation of Bill de Blasio in 2014. Since then, the Morlocks of New York, armies of them, have been emboldened to terrorize the Eloi on the streets and on the subways. Hardly a day passes without some new video surfacing of a Morlock striking or threatening an Eloi while the other Eloi pretend not to see.
It seems somehow appropriate that Neely died on May 1, the ultimate feast day on the revolutionary calendar. Eleven days later, the Morlocks' enablers got their way. Manhattan's district attorney, Alvin Bragg, feeling the need to sacrifice a white man to the woke gods, charged Penny with manslaughter.
Penny clearly did not intend to kill Neely. He expected to restrain him until the police arrived. I suspect that from what he learned in the Marines and in the books he read, Penny had been trained to intervene when a madman threatens to kill the innocent people around him.
Penny's response was measured. According to witnesses, he did not leap into action until after Neely started issuing death threats. "I would kill a m-----------," said Neely. "I don't care. I'll take a bullet. I'll go to jail." However unintentionally, Penny helped Neely fulfill his death wish.
Penny certainly did not expect to be called a murderer, but he misjudged New York circa 2023. "Jordan Neely was murdered, tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "While many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected w/ passive headlines + no charges. It's disgusting."
This was not the New York of 1984. That was the year that the nerdy Bernard Goetz shot four teenage thugs on a New York City subway car. In watching news from that era, I am reminded of just how shabby New York City had become before the 20-year renaissance overseen by Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. I am reminded too of just how much New Yorkers have changed over the past 40 years.
Unlike the soft and spineless New Yorkers of today, everyday New Yorkers of 1984 were often bold and outspoken. I would encourage readers to search YouTube for "Bernie Goetz" and watch the news clips from that era. Although the white Goetz shot four black teenagers, New Yorkers, black and white, were not afraid to speak out in Goetz's defense. These were real New Yorkers, toughened by a life riding subways. They cared more about justice than race.
In 2023, radicals have no hesitance about speaking out, but everyday New Yorkers certainly do. Beaten down by years of oppressive political correctness, they come off as feckless as their Wellsian counterparts. That said, I suspect that the great majority of them, certainly the subway riders, are pulling quietly for Penny.
Like the Eloi, they are "becoming reacquainted with Fear." If that fear does not motivate them to champion Daniel Penny and acquit him, the Morlocks will own the city until it dies.
Jack Cashill's Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities is available for pre-order in all formats.
Image: Billie Grace Ward via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Alvin Bragg attacks self-defense by indicting Daniel Penny for Jordan Neely’s death
Daniel Penny, along with others on a New York subway, used a wrestling hold to subdue Jordan Neely after the latter’s behavior was “hostile and erratic.” The Democrat narrative is that a white supremacist murdered a Michael Jackson impersonator. Now, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s hard-left District Attorney, has indicted Penny for manslaughter. New Yorkers, though, may not take this indictment lying down.
The last time New York City was as violently out of control as today was in the 1970s and early 1980s. That’s why, when Bernhard Goetz, a white subway rider who had previously been violently mugged, pulled out a gun and shot four black teens who were demanding his money, many in New York City supported him. He was their everyman. The jury rejected serious charges against him, finding him guilty of carrying an unlicensed firearm, for which he served only eight months.
Giuliani restored order to New York, and Bloomberg maintained it. Things fell apart again under DeBlasio, a process that accelerated when BLM paralyzed policing. Today, in NYC subways, it’s déjà vu all over again for those who remember the 1970s.
Image: Neely being put in a recovery position. Twitter screen grab.
Subway crime goes beyond fare-jumpers, litter, and graffiti. It includes homeless people taking over subway cars and literally befouling them with urine, and crazy people shooting at passengers, pushing them onto the tracks, and otherwise assaulting them.
It was in this context that Neely, a homeless man with a long criminal record, including multiple assault charges, came into contact with Penny. According to witnesses, Neely behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” and threw trash at people (a form of assault), frightening passengers. That’s why Penny put Neely in a “chokehold,” while two other passengers helped.
For a chokehold, one person puts his arm around another person’s neck to control that person. I’ve had hundreds of chokeholds put on me, and I’ve put hundreds on other people. Nobody choked. If you apply hard pressure the correct way, though, you can either cut off someone’s air supply, suffocating them or the flow of blood to their brain. The moment you remove pressure, the suffocation stops, and the blood flow returns.
So, it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
Hypothetically, though, it shouldn’t matter if Neely had died. The self-defense principle is that you must neutralize the threat. People die because they thought that wounding someone was sufficient to neutralize them.
New York’s self-defense doctrine gives reasonable people the right to take whatever steps are needed to defend themselves or others. They don’t have to wait until they’re wounded (perhaps fatally) to act. Instead, the justification for killing someone kicks in when “a person reasonably believes it is necessary to defend himself/ herself or a third party when there is a reasonable belief of imminent use of unlawful physical force.” (NY Penal Code § 35.15.)
Leftists from D.A. Alvin Bragg to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though, hate self-defense because it makes people less dependent on the government. When a bodega worker killed a threatening robber, Bragg indicted the worker for murder. He wanted to do the same when a garage security guard wrestled the gun from a robber who shot him and fired back, killing the robber. Recall that, in Canada, Justin Trudeau has successfully eliminated self-defense:
Therefore, it was predictable that Bragg would indict Penny for second-degree manslaughter.
The real question is whether New Yorkers will resist, as they did with the bodega and parking garage workers. While the left is pushing the George Floyd narrative (white-on-black violence), New Yorkers are looking at a subway that functions as the city’s artery, but that is becoming too dangerous for them to use.
No wonder even left-wing outlets are worriedly writing about the number of New Yorkers who have come to Penny’s defense. (See, e.g., Vox, Daily News, Politico, and The Times-Tribune.) And no wonder that Bragg bypassed the grand jury because he feared they’d side with Penny and withhold an indictment.
New Yorkers understand that the government cannot and will not—and does not want to—protect them from violence. As happened with Bernie Goetz almost 40 years ago, this is when vigilantes become heroes.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
Jordan Neely’s murder on the New York City subway and the terminal crisis of capitalism
Ten days after the chokehold strangulation of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway train, Daniel Penny was finally charged with second-degree manslaughter in the homicide. Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of mental illness, was killed by the 24-year-old Penny, a former US Marine, who held Neely in a chokehold for at least four minutes, an action that was witnessed by scores of passengers and captured on video. Penny was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court Friday morning. He did not enter a plea, and was released after posting $100,000 bail.
This murder, just as graphically as the police killings of Eric Garner in 2013 and George Floyd in 2020, has provided a glimpse of the bitter reality of life in America. It reveals the risks that many millions of the most oppressed and vulnerable sections of the working class face on a daily basis. The death of Jordan Neely is a direct consequence of the historically unprecedented levels of social inequality and polarization in the glittering US capital of finance, the media and culture. Similar conditions exist in most urban centers, even if not quite as glaring. The glittering surface can no longer hide the reality underneath.
Penny, who was not even identified until his name was leaked to the media three days after the murder, is being represented by Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff. Kenniff ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for Manhattan District Attorney against Democrat Alvin Bragg, whose office is prosecuting this case. Penny’s lawyers issued a statement after Penny’s arrest, stating “their confidence that once all the facts and circumstances surrounding this tragic incident are brought to bear, Mr. Penny will be fully absolved of any wrongdoing.”
Whatever Penny’s political views, it is noteworthy that he is being defended by right-wing demagogues like Fox News host Laura Ingraham. A crowdfunding platform has raised more than $400,000 in right-wing circles for his defense.
Neely’s family, including his father, Andre Zachery, and aunt, Carolyn Neely, had been pressing for an arrest since the day of the murder. Dante Mills, a lawyer for the family, told a press conference on May 12 that the prosecutor’s office had telephoned to offer condolences earlier this week. “We said thank you for the condolences, but we want an arrest.”
On Wednesday, nine days after Neely’s death, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams was finally forced to go beyond statements about the need for investigation. Earlier, the family, addressing Adams, had said that his silence meant, “You seem to think others are more important than him.” Adams, speaking at City Hall, said, “Jordan Neely’s life mattered. He was suffering from severe mental illness, but that was not the cause of his death. His death was a tragedy that never should have happened.”
Much has been made of the role of mental illness in Neely’s behavior the day he was murdered. Formerly a Michael Jackson impersonator, he had struggled for many years; he had been arrested more than 40 times, including for violent behavior, and had been committed for psychiatric evaluation or treatment, both voluntarily and involuntarily, on numerous occasions. On the afternoon that found him in the same subway car as Penny, Neely screamed in psychological pain, complaining about hunger and thirst, and saying, “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison.”
Of course, none of this remotely excuses Penny’s action. Witnesses have reported that Neely, though clearly unsettling the passengers, did not directly threaten anyone. Penny was not simply restraining a troubled man. He used the chokehold technique that he had been taught in the Marines, maintaining it for at least four minutes, even as bystanders warned him to release Neely. “If you suffocate him, that’s it,” said one man. “You don’t want to catch a murder charge.”
Various capitalist political hacks, most prominently Adams and Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul, have suddenly discovered the need for increased mental health treatment. Hochul called the murder “a wake-up call.” She has been governor for the last two years and was lieutenant governor for the six years prior to that, however, and is thus fully responsible for the various budget-cutting programs and the overall economic disaster for the working class that is intimately bound up with the epidemic of homelessness as well as mental illness in New York City.
These elected officials are well aware that mental illness, whatever its genetic or biological components, is triggered or worsened amongst the more vulnerable. Appalling social conditions are a major factor. Neely was 14 years old when his mother was killed by her boyfriend, her body stuffed into a suitcase.
Mayor Adams and other law-and-order advocates exaggerate the crime danger, even as statistics demonstrate that the city remains one of the country’s safest, and that crime in the subways has in fact fallen this year. They nevertheless play on a generalized concern over the social crisis—the decline in living standards, the decay of the infrastructure and the gutting of social programs.
They stoke fear to divert attention from the underlying causes of social issues like mental illness and homelessness, just as the notorious Republican mayor (and more recently Trump coup lawyer) Rudy Giuliani did in the 1990s. The actions of Daniel Penny, in line with this demagogy, appear to indicate he regarded Jordan Neely as less than human.
The overwhelmingly working-class passengers on the New York transit system are well aware of the fact that there have been more public episodes of mental illness, including in the confined spaces of the buses and subways, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alvin Bragg didn’t trust a grand jury to indict Daniel Penny for the death of Jordan Neely
In New York City, everybody but the richest few percent rides the subway, and they know how bad things have gotten in the wake Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg treating arrests as inequitable since African Americans are disproportionately arrested.
Jordan Neely died in a hospital after being subdued by Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny with the help of two other passengers (who have not been charged).
Uncredited photo via The New York Post
Neely “avoid[ed] prison for allegedly slugging a 67-year-old woman in November 2021 during a psychotic episode” by agreeing to a plea deal. Despite a record of more than forty previous arrests, he was allowed to roam the streets, though he was to stay at Harbor House, where he could receive services. When he left there, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben signed a warrant for his arrest on February 23.
Perhaps because police officers realize that arresting any black person can cause enormous career grief, Neely evaded arrest, even while riding subways and being visible on the streets. The justice system, in other words, completely failed to protect the public from a deranged, violent man. So, when riding the subway on May first and threatening passengers with violence, and assaulting some by throwing trash, it was only Daniel Penny who first took action to protect himself and fellow passengers.
As Andrea Widburg noted in her excellent coverage of the incident:
it’s theoretically possible that a chokehold could have killed Neely. Except that we know from the full video, rather than the parts the media focused on, that once Neely stopped screaming and fighting, Penny put him in a recovery position. This is inconsistent with intending to kill a man or believing you have killed him. Several people involved (many of whom thanked Penny) were certain that Neely was alive—and, indeed, Neely was alive, dying only at the hospital:
When DA Bragg indicted Penny, he avoided taking the case to a grand jury. I suspect he realized that most members of a Manhattan grand jury are subway riders, and might have even experienced a situation of being threatened on a subway car while on their way to the courthouse. He had reason to believe that a grand jury would not have returned an indictment.
So, just as he did with “Jose Alba, the bodega clerk charged with murder for fatally stabbing an ex-con who was assaulting him in the grocery,” his office issued the indictment on its own. Alba was sent to Riker’s Island, a notoriously violent and unsafe jail, only to be released when the public uproar grew deafening.
Daniel Penny, perhaps because he is white, has so far only been publicly excoriated by “activists” as probably racist, simply because he was a white man subduing a black man who died later. The vast majority of New Yorkers who will make up the jury pool for his trial, most of whom are fellow subway riders, are remaining silent. Literally, a silent majority.
I am afraid it will take a jury trial for Penny to receive justice for his heroic acts that ended badly for the offender. He will need capable (and expensive) counsel.
You can contribute to Daniel Penny's legal defense fund here.
I’d like to see Bragg repeat what he did in the case of Jose Alba and simply drop the charges because of the obvious injustice or prosecuting an act of self-defense. Large demonstrations might help convince him, but so far, they have not taken place. Unless the silent majority wakes up and realizes it has to encourage, not punish good Samaritans who protect fellow passengers from scary and violent lunatics, the city and its transportation system will only get scarier and more hazardous.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
THERE IS NO GREATER THREAT TO AMERICA THAN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
This analysis is a crock. Democrats have been seeking to divide the country by race, sex and class for decades. They have sought to destroy anyone who got their way. It started way before Trump. (MORE BELOW)
Watch Live: House Holds ‘Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan’ Hearing over Alvin Bragg’s Policies
Crime Killed a Quarter of a Million Black People.
And the racist pro-crime Left wants more.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Over the last decade, BLM, and assorted leftist and libertarian groups dismantled our criminal justice system. Police forces were defunded, pro-crime prosecutors refused to lock up criminals, federal and state prison systems released tens of thousands of them, and a wave of legislative decriminalization legalized everything from shoplifting, to drug dealing and mugging.
The pro-crime policymaking that eliminated public safety and cost over 3,000 lives in 2020 alone was done under the guise of fighting racism. Statistics which showed that black people were more likely to be arrested, imprisoned or shot during criminal encounters with police were used to spread conspiracy theories falsely accusing the criminal justice system of systemic racism.
What all of these racist conspiracy theories popularized by politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry ignored was that black people were also far more likely to be crime victims. Even as the BLM riots got underway, black people in surveys were strongly opposed to police defunding. The opposition was so vehement that Democrats not only abandoned the issue, but claimed that they had always been opposed to it and ran against their own position.
Despite years of false claims portraying black people as victims of a biased criminal justice system whose police forces are descended from “slave catchers” who repress minorities at the behest of white suburbanites, surveys of black people continue to tell a very different story.
A Pew survey found that while only 33% of white Democrats wanted to reduce crime, 63% of Hispanics and 66% of black people thought that fighting crime should be a priority.
And that’s nothing new.
Leftists and libertarians lied that the War on Drugs was racist when it was actually pushed by black groups, including the NAACP, which demanded the death penalty for drug dealers.
That same Pew survey showed that while only 38% of white Dems answered that reducing the availability of illegal drugs should be a priority, 57% of Hispanics and 60% of black people believed that it should be.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey shows that black people are far more likely to suffer from crime than white people. The survey, meant to generate support for unconstitutional gun ban measures, instead unintentionally demonstrated that crime hurts black people more.
The KFF survey noted that “three in ten black adults (31%) have personally witnessed someone being shot”, “one-third of black adults (34%) have a family member who was killed by a gun” and (32%) say that they worry all the time about themselves or a family member being shot.
One in six of black adults say they don’t feel “safe at all” from gun violence in their neighborhood, compared to 2% of white adults. 1 in 4 also bought a gun to protect themselves.
Gun violence is just another way of saying crime.
Black people are disproportionately affected by crime. Pro-crime policies led to the deaths of an additional 2,244 black people in 2020. According to a Johns Hopkins report, “in 2020, one out of every 1,000 young black males (15–34) was shot and killed” and, “more than half of all black teens (15–19) who died in 2020—a staggering 52%—were killed by gun violence.”
CDC numbers showed that homicide is a leading cause of death among black men under the age of 20, and from the ages of 20 to 44. White men are killed by guns at the rate of 3.15 per 100,000 while black men die at the rate of 48.16 per 100,000. Pro-crime policies increase crime and kill thousands of black people. That’s what a real disproportionate impact looks like.
Every time pro-crime politicians free criminals, pro-crime prosecutors refuse to prosecute violent offenders, and legislatures eliminate bail, the impact is felt most strongly in the black community.
Law enforcement isn’t racist, but getting rid of it is. When a community depends more on a particular service, losing it has a clear disproportionate impact. Keeping the peace, arresting offenders and dispensing justice is one of the few primal duties of government. The breach in the social contract when the government fails to provide peacekeeping services is devastating.
Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders. The only way to interrupt the cycle of violence is to lock them up. Successful tough on crime policies in the 90s made cities safe once again and led to an economic boom in inner cities. Manhattan’s Harlem went from a danger zone to hosting Bill Clinton’s office, but in 2022, crime increased 44%. The Clinton offices have mostly moved down to the Wall Street area, but where they remain in Central Harlem, crime is up 32%. Next door in West Harlem, it’s up 133%. That means Bill is less likely to tour the Apollo Theater, but it also means that the mostly black residents are the ones feeling the worst of it.
Pro-crime activists have spent years regaling us with the suffering of convicts while caring very little about the shattered lives they have left in their wake. Foundations, protest groups, activist organizations and even PACs have spent hundreds of millions lobbying for criminals, fighting for their release and remaking our system to favor perpetrators, not victims. Their political success has come with a very high cost. And much of that burden has fallen on black people.
It is hard to think of any single policy in the last generation that has done more harm to black people or claimed more lives than the pro-crime agenda. Pro-crime activists have falsely claimed that police shootings of black men are a form of genocide. They’re not. Crime is.
One study counted 286,075 firearm deaths among black people from 1990 to 2021. That’s over a quarter of a million deaths. Some of them are due to suicide, but suicides are much lower among black people than white people, and the majority of black gun deaths were homicides.
And seeing a quarter of a million deaths, the pro-crime Left wants even more bodies.
Those quarter of a million deaths have been largely self-inflicted, but, much as with the welfare state, they were aided and abetted by white liberal policymakers who had come to believe that what the black community really needed was for the government to enable its criminals.
Racist liberal condescension continues to destroy black communities, families and lives.
2020 demonstrated that tough on crime policies can save thousands of black lives and, over time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of black lives. Pro-crime policies are a racist disaster which reduced black people to criminals and then set out to free criminals to help black people.
That’s why 1 out of every 1,000 young black men are dead.
Pro-crime policies are racist. They enable a crime epidemic that has killed more black people than the total number of battlefield casualties for all races in the Civil War. More black people died in the year of Black Lives Matter than our entire death toll in the Iraq War.
Can it get worse than this? In 1991, 12,226 black people were murdered. For the first time, more black people were killed than white people. The numbers are trending that way once again. While the Left claims that highways and dress codes are systemically racist, their pro-crime policies are a racist program that promises liberation but offers only mass death.
Daniel Greenfield
Reader Interactions
As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…
Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%
Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312
— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021
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