The murders of four police officers in Oakland, California by a wanted parole violator with a long record has generated predictable reactions.
Naturally, there are calls for more gun control, like this plea for passage of a renewed ban on “assault weapons.” (California already has a draconian ban on “assault weapons” as well as strict laws making it a crime for an ex felon to be in possession of any gun. Advocates of tougher laws can’t seem to get it through their heads that laws are lost on lawless people.)
Another approach is to advance arguments like this that ex-felons are “desperate” — so employers must be made to hire them.
If you think this view is laughable (or hard core leftist fringe), think again. Oakland’s current Mayor Ron Dellums ran and was elected on such a platform. Many cities are busily implementing policies which amount to affirmative action hiring for felons, and there have been legislative attempts to make “discrimination” against people with criminal records illegal. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter pushed a plan promoting the hiring of felons, and President Obama is described as sympathetic to their plight.
I realize that no rule is right all the time, but isn’t it possible that not all of these felons are good people? I mean, what if some of them are just downright bad? Or is that not considered possible by the John Lennon Imagine crowd?
The problem here for me is that there’s nothing to debate. Some people think that there are bad people who should be locked up, while others don’t think there is such a thing as a bad person, and that prison is immoral. (In the words of the prison abolition group “Critical Resistance” the idea is to end “society’s use of prisons and policing as an answer to social problems.” Sorry, but if someone wants to break into my house to rob me, that is not merely a “social problem.”)
Oakland’s deliberate policy of not making arrests has only caused crime to go up.
My reaction (then and now) is along the lines of “What did they expect?”
There’s no real room for rational argument, though, between people who think the evil actions of an evil individual are society’s fault and those who think it is the blame and fault lie with the individual wrongdoer. Something like this happens, and it only causes them to re-emphasize and re-assert their beliefs.
Maybe a threshold question could be along the lines of whether there are bad people in the world.
What did they expect?
by
Tags:
Comments
8 responses to “What did they expect?”
Yes there are bad people in the world, but it seems some people think the bad ones are the ones who expect responsibility and accountability.
The lefties love victims and will come up with a way to victimize us all.
Greetings:
I wonder where the Mayor would be if you hired an ex-felon and he attacked one of his co-workers or one of your customers. I seem to remember some lawsuits about customers of house-cleaning firms in that regard.
Would the “policy” provide business insurance for the employer?
On top of that, most felons don’t come from the brightest, most efficient and responsible segment of the applicant pool. Although, who knows, that may make them better bureaucrats.
Sure, bad people need to be locked up. But if you’re not going to lock them up forever, then our own self-interest means we need to figure out how to give the discharged a way to reintegrate. I’ve always thought the Japanese were on to something with their requirement that no one gets paroled without demonstrating literacy. I’m all for GEDs, serious vocational training and even college courses. And if I don’t want affirmative action hiring for felons, I do want to see some way that those ready to work and make something of themselves will find some avenues open. I’d rather pay for halfway houses and job training than more prisons.
Something like the execution of 4 Oakland cops was bound to happen, after the filmed execution of a black man by a white BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cop who is now awaiting trial.
Was it coincidence that the black felon/killer got out of his car after wounding the 2 white traffic cops, stood over them aiming his weapon at their heads and finished the job?
The BART cop fired his revolver into the back of an unarmed black man laying on his stomach.
Eric, it was pay back. And that’s why flowers were left for the cop killer at the apartment building where he was killed.
As much as I would like to see this as right vs. wrong, it’s not that simple. There have been abuses of police authority in Oakland for years. I know, because I lived for some time in downtown Oakland in a flop house otherwise known as the YMCA on Telegraph Ave. at 21st, and witnessed it.
That doesn’t excuse either the cop killings, or the BART Police killer.
So Frank, let me get this straight.
This is just another battle in the ongoing war between cops and blacks in California?
Can we do something to trigger the “Big One” so California will finally just fall into the sea?
“the idea is to end “society’s use of prisons and policing as an answer to social problems.”
Hmmm.
Among other things, wouldn’t that have the effect of declaring open season on all bad guys?
Brian, no this is not just another battle. The police in Oakland have been virtually emasculated. What Eric is pointing out about the insane policies inflicted on them, and Oakland, is true.
I wouldn’t live there now on my life.
BUT, there have been years of police racism, back alley brutality, planted evidence, you name it.
In the days of the Black Panthers and Bobby Seal, the Oakland police were a click of white cops who thought they could get away with anything — and they did.
That history is what haunts the current force; that and the one sided drug laws which lock up blacks for crack, while letting white people off for powder cocaine.
So when the rare case of a policeman shooting an unarmed black man in the back is caught on camera, publicized repeatedly on the local TV Channel 2, KTVU, and the cop flees out of state while his comrades raise defense funds for him, and he claims he was just reaching for his TASER, what the fuck can you expect in a community where the police have gotten away with crap for decades?