Unhinged

“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” — George Orwell

America has become a nation where political hysteria is, or aspires to be, normalized. The national reaction to the recent Uvalde school shooting provides an example. Before the bodies were cold, Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, were in the pulpit poisoning the airways with venal or self-serving partisan rancor. Both liberal Democrats, ironically, currently find themselves underwater with their voters.

Worse still, local police brass tried to spin the carnage too, holding a premature press conference to get ahead of media shaming. A press conference is now the standard bravo sierra platform for local and national spin. Alas, Uvalde police commanders were quickly called out by parents for their hesitation and inertia, or maybe cowardice. In the available video coverage, a polyglot battalion of cops seems to be milling around, more concerned with taking down distraught parents than taking out the shooter. Subsequently, the media blame game erupted into an orgasm of indignation as the body count went viral. 

In short order, Texas lawmen decided to change the subject and punt.

Locals imprudently called for the feds and an FBI investigation, hopefully to be followed by new gun laws – which, to be sure, would chastise and demonize those same “hick” cops, but do little to change the vectors of schoolhouse mayhem. If the truth be told, most calls for “impartial” study are motivated by a desire to change the subject believing that “justice delayed is justice denied.”  

So let’s audit the bizarre backstory for the latest national public safety hysteria so far.

First, there’s the totality of gun violence elsewhere, in charnel houses like Washington, D.C. –  home base for the Department of Justice and the FBI, where gun morbidity and crime in general dwarf the numbers of any rural Texas town. In any recent year, thousands of D.C. citizens were killed or maimed exclusively by handguns, not rifles. To boot, the District has more cops (both federal and local) and military per city block than any other jurisdiction in the world. Yet, more folks will be killed by handguns in D.C. this year, than any jurisdiction of similar size in America. A small city, Washington, D.C. has a gun morbidity rate equal to, or higher than, all but three states nationwide. 

If Washington was populated by real crime solvers, the District of Columbia would be a civic model, if not Shangri-La. Alas, the homicide case closure rate in D.C. is 40%. If you kill in D.C., more than likely, you will get away with homicide.

In contrast, Salvador Ramos found appropriate, albeit belated, justice after an interaction with the Border Patrol. Dead men don’t reoffend.

In less than two years since Joe Biden usurped executive power, Washington, D.C. has had over 150 homicides and over 3,000 violent crimes. Death by handgun is a growth business amongst all urbane Democrat sinecures from coast to coast.

Over 90% of gunshot victims in D.C. are black, so those numbers probably don’t matter much to Democrat demagogues. If you combined morbidity rates of black Americans from drugs, crime, lifestyle choices, and abortion – the death rate is genocidal. Yet, the rare copycat shooting in rural America is the stuff that provokes public safety hysteria.

The human slaughter in all those knee-jerk, liberal, urban, sierra hotels, apparently, is just another statistic.

And the immediate remedy proposed so far is yet another FBI or DOJ investigation? Do we need dirty cops – from D.C. of all places – to educate Texas about public safety and proper policing practices? The same corrupt Justice Department that subverted the last administration for four years and now ignores threats to Supreme Court justices is supposed to assist Texas with investigative integrity and “law” enforcement?

If the FBI goes to Texas, the federal posse should include Robert Mueller, James Comey, and Adam Schiff. The FBI is as likely to help in Texas as they are to bring Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, or Hillary Clinton before the bar in D.C. 

Ironically, suicidal policies on public safety come from the same woke demographic most likely to be victimized by guns and crime. Indeed, the anti-cop, BLM, defund-the-police mob is the community most likely to be in a punk’s gunsights. Social hustlers like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, politicians like Muriel Bowser and Lori Lightfoot, can take a bow here too for all those municipal cops now unwilling to go in harm’s way.

Why risk your life to save children when any collateral damage means demonization, career suicide, financial ruin, and civic ignominy? The urban political left may have your city, officer; but surely, they do not have your back.

If social media misfits were shooting up newsrooms and city council chambers, instead of school rooms, the Fourth Estate and the American urban left would have a very different take on guns and crime.

There are many things that local police can do without any puerile advice from clueless federal drones. For starters, try rotating real cops off of patrol and into schools – real police officers not “school resource officers”. ‘Resource officer’ is an urban euphemism for old, fat, retired, or marginal. Real lawmen do not aspire to be resource officers – anymore than they aspire to be mall cops. The gun crazies and their potential victims need to know that real cops are on the job. Pubescent internet creeps need to know, if you threaten kids or teachers, real cops might just blow you away.

Good proactive lawmen at school, or anywhere else for that matter, are the answer, not the problem.

Appearances matter to those lunatic or homicidal adolescents among us. Indeed, when you put a dozen or more cops on a media dais these days, it looks like a weight watchers club. 

Withal, state and local police do not need corrupt or politicized federal cops, or their advice, to improve local public safety. Woke Washington can’t define a woman, or a fat slob, no less a real lawman. Nevertheless, a little common sense and courage from national politicians and state police brass might make a world of difference for the thin blue line. 

Active crime scene commanders and cops need to be real warriors – with the balls and the backing to go in harm’s way. Alas, none of us is safe as long as common sense is the null set in our public safety equation.

The author comes from a family of cops in the Bronx, two uncles on the job with the NYPD, one of whom, Ed Varley, was killed in the line of duty.