As I remain a happy resident of a small rural community in Alaska, it's still something of a curiosity that I'm still writing about the state of America's urban areas and Democrat/leftist (but I repeat myself) jurisdictions. If you've been reading my work over the last few years, you know I grew up in a rural community in Iowa and am now a content rural dweller myself. I have little time for cities, despite having lived in them for four decades. I find them unpleasant; crowded, noisy, and, to be honest, they stink. I like the clean country air of the Susitna Valley, and if that means I have to put up with the occasional pause to let a moose move out of our side road before heading out to the highway, that's fine.
So, why am I still worried about America's cities? Because our cities are the beating hearts of our nation. Much of the country's economic activity happens there. Urban areas host much of the country's industry and academia. What's more, our cities used to be the pride of the nation, but that's less the case now. Too many of our nation's cities, large and small, are beset with repeat criminals, and in some cases, those crooks are the people who are supposed to be protecting the people.
Case in point: Too many of our major cities are beset by crime, and the really bad part is that the people charged with dealing with the criminals once they are caught are not only too lax on the goblins, but in some cases are corrupt themselves. City Journal's Charles Fain Lehman has a few examples.
Earlier this week, a federal judge made a shocking charge: Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s district attorney for nearly a decade, may be guilty of “perjury, conspiracy, or obstruction of justice.” Judge Paul Diamond referred Krasner and one of his top deputies, Matthew Stiegler, to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate potential federal crimes.
Krasner is one of the nation’s most high-profile “progressive prosecutors”—the far-left lawyers who won election to address “injustice” in the “criminal legal system.” Remarkably, Krasner is not the first or only such progressive prosecutor to get the unwanted attention of the feds. At least four others have found themselves in the spotlight. Perhaps it’s worth asking: Why do these purported reformers seem to have so little respect for the system they’re trying to run?
That's a fair question, and the likely answer is that they have seen all too plainly how lax that system is — and in many cases, they have worked to make it so. Then, some of them take advantage of that laxness to perpetrate crimes of their own. Feature? Or bug?
Krasner isn't the only big-city progressive prosecutor to get caught up in things like this.
First is Marilyn Mosby, the former prosecutor of Baltimore, Maryland. Mosby’s progressive bona fides included her attempt to prosecute the police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray and to impose a categorical ban on prosecuting “low-level” offenses. None of that prevented her own run-ins with the law: she was eventually sentenced to 12 months of home confinement after multiple federal prosecutions, including for a charge of mortgage fraud and two counts of perjury.
Then there’s Kim Gardner, formerly the prosecutor in St. Louis, Missouri. Gardner didn’t go to prison because she accepted a “pretrial diversion agreement” for federal charges related to her misuse of public funds. That followed a number of other scandals, including a public reprimand from the Missouri Supreme Court.
There are several more examples. This appears, in many of our major and, let's face it, Democrat-controlled cities, to be part and parcel of the revolving-door justice system. Prosecutors who have little or no respect or regard for the liberty and property of the people of their jurisdiction are all too likely to run just such a revolving door system; is it any surprise that they take advantage of such a lax system for their own gain?
The revolving door is a problem in and of itself. Cases like this are becoming all too common.
A Houston man with a long record of violent arrests is back behind bars, accused of murder, reigniting debate over Harris County’s controversial bail practices and the release of repeat offenders.
Police say Gabriel Isaiah Menefee, 23, shot and killed Jaylon Ward, 25, during an argument inside a hotel room on Nov. 2. Menefee was arrested four days later and charged with murder in the 263rd Criminal District Court.
23 years old, a "long record of violent arrests," and there he was, back on the street, until he escalated into murder.
Here's the thing: This paints an unhappy picture of a top-down disregard for the liberty and property of the people whom these big-city, leftist prosecutors are charged to protect. They appear to have more regard for criminals than for the citizens that the criminals prey on; we see, time and time again, how a thug is picked up, passed around, his charges plea-bargained away to an annoyance, charges dropped outright, again and again, sometimes dozens of times over, until finally they escalate to the point where someone is dead.
Meanwhile, in the very lax system they helped to create, these people who are supposed to be running the show are committing crimes of their own, like Marilyn Mosby's mortgage fraud, like Kim Gardner's misuse of public funds, and all of the many and varied infractions we've seen from people like this over the years.
This is a major problem facing our big cities and even smaller ones. The real stinger is that prosecutors at the state and local level are generally elected, not appointed, and our urban areas are increasingly becoming havens for the "progressive" and even socialist/communist left. Why? Because the cities and their leftist governments have made the business environment so toxic that all the more moderate and productive voters are voting with their feet — and leaving.
This, then, is in large part another facet of the Great Sorting. And there are few options to fix this problem; the revolving-door justice systems and the corrupt people who administer them will probably remain in place until the victims of both crooks and the corrupt finally have had enough, and change their voting patterns. Sadly, at the moment, that just doesn't look likely.
