Leftist policies do nothing less than destroy human beings. If you’re skeptical of this, evidence of it is not hard to find, particularly if you live in one of America’s once-great cities. In New York City, and in numerous other one-party cities in which the far left has had its way for decades, there are people whose lives have been destroyed by leftist soft-on-crime policies.
In addition to the victims of crimes, there are numerous people who have utterly wasted their lives and become career criminals because the left made doing so have so little downside. What these people have made of themselves is entirely their own fault. A healthier society and better government, however, might have led them to make better choices.
The New York Post profiled a few of these people on Saturday, and it makes for harrowing reading. One man, Anthony White, is 63 years old, and according to the Post, he has “made larceny a career.” He has been arrested no fewer than 254 times, and by the time you read this, that number may be higher, for one simple reason: every time he gets arrested for theft or burglary, Anthony White knows that nothing much is going to happen to him.
254 arrests means that Anthony White knows the routine. When he gets arrested, he will spend some tedious hours at a police station going through some bureaucratic rigamarole. But almost immediately, he will be back out on the streets and will face absolutely no further consequences for his actions. So what’s to prevent White, and so many others like him, from doing it again, and making his living by means of theft, when he knows he will face no serious penalties for doing so?
White was “allegedly ripping off stores where he had already been banned for theft — but was set free by judges after his arraignments on the latest offenses.” It because of people such as Anthony White that so many stores have become nervous, guarded affairs in which law-abiding customers have to ask a bored, unhelpful clerk to unlock a cabinet so that the shampoo or deodorant can be had. People can’t be trusted anymore to choose their items and walk up to the front of the store and pay for them.
But people haven’t changed. Human nature is the same as it has been since we were reading cuneiform wedges instead of news and commentary websites. What has changed, in New York City and elsewhere, have been the laws and practices regarding dealing with thieves: “Critics and cops complain that the petty thieves are routinely released back to the street as soon as they’re arrested.”
This has placed a massive roadblock in the way of the NYPD’s efforts to bring crime rates down. “The NYPD blames the problem on a lax criminal justice system that keeps trying to get the culprits — often dogged by drug addiction — into treatment programs that don’t stick, creating a cycle of criminality.” One cop said, with admirable directness: “They keep getting out and going back and shoplifting again.”
And why? Because there is no reason for them not to do so. There is no inducement for them to change their behavior and not be career criminals, as they never experience any significant punishment for what they’re doing that would make them think that maybe getting a job would be better than going through that again.
In Anthony White’s case, he was arrested a couple of months ago for petty larceny, and “prosecutors asked for $3,000 cash or $60,000 bond, but Judge Kacie Lally set him free on supervised release.” The following week, he stole some items from a convenience store he had hit before. Nothing was done. Four days after that, he stole some more items from a store that had already banned him from entering. Back in court again, “prosecutors requested $20,000 cash bail or $60,000 bond, but this time Judge Louis Nock set him free on supervised release.”
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A “police source” asked: “When is enough enough? He’s got 254 arrests. This is probably a guy who should be locked up for a long time.” But he won’t be. Nor will Davaghn Gethers, who is much more of a straight arrow than Anthony White: He has been arrested only 235 times. “His most recent arrest was on May 27 for thieving in Midtown. He was released the same day without bail.” When Gethers is arrested, he says, “I don’t care. They’re just going to let me go.'”
There may have been a time when these men could have made something of their lives. But leftist policies gave them an easy way out, and a road to personal ruin.
And there are so many others like those two. When New York City was governed by sane people, they would have been deterred from theft in the first place, or given such a long stretch in prison that they didn’t regard reoffending with such nonchalance. But those days are gone, and New Yorkers are about to vote for more crime and more societal decay. Hey, if that’s what they want, they’ll most certainly get it.
