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| Justice -- Old State House |
“The more things change,” the French say, “the more they remain the same”: “Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.”
That is true of all one-party states. It is also true in
Connecticut’s urban areas where, over a long period of time, the political opposition
has been effectively suppressed.
On the crime and murder front in Hartford, Connecticut, the
state’s Capital, both the murder rate and the nature of the murders, have
changed since the last Republican mayor of the city, Ann Uccello, surrendered
her post to Democrats a little more than a half century ago. A succession of
Democrat mayors and Democrat town councils dramatically illustrates the old
French bromide.
For a half century, murders have become more frequent in the
Capital city, and it is not likely that U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s war on
“ghost guns” will greatly affect the murder rate in Hartford.
Republicans last held the mayoralty of Bridgeport, the
state’s most populous city, in 1991. There the murder rate is also soaring,
this despite Connecticut’s aggressive attempts to regulate the gun industry.
Most of the larger cities in Connecticut have been Democrat
preserves for decades. The Democrat politicians change, but Democrat policies
in the cities remain ever the same. Indeed, most large cities in Connecticut
are Democrat Party satrapies.
Beginning at the beginning, we know that criminal retention
and swift but just prosecution deter crime – not police investigations and
apprehensions. The notion that arrests deter crime is, even criminals know, a
public fiction useful only to criminals and politicians.
“The crime rate in Hartford,” according to Neighborhood Scout, “is considerably higher than the national
average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest…
Relative to Connecticut, Hartford has a crime rate that is higher than 89% of
the state’s cities and towns of all sizes… From our analysis, we discovered
that violent crime in Hartford occurs at a rate higher than in most communities
of all population sizes in America. The chance that a person will become a
victim of a violent crime in Hartford; such as armed robbery, aggravated
assault, rape or murder; is 1 in
208. This equates to a rate of 5 per one thousand inhabitants.”
Within every crime,
there are victims and predators. Statistics, while important to statisticians
and politicians on the campaign trail, muffle real crimes in tendentious data.
Figures are less important than blood on the street and, in the case of crimes,
the individual trees are more important than the poorly perceived forest.
The easiest way to
reduce crime rates – not crime
itself – is through the non-prosecution of crime. And the legalization of crime
is a boon only to politicians and prison wardens who rejoice at the prospect of
fewer criminals entering prison.
A crime rate may be
reduced because the court system is down, as occurred during the late pandemic,
or because police department personnel have been sharply reduced, or because prosecutors
decline to prosecute cases.
A new Connecticut
law that withdraws partial immunity from police and permits suits in which the
personal assets of arresting officers may be seized in legal proceedings has
unsurprisingly reduced police recruitment – whether or not the law is applied
in specific instances. The unintended consequences of the law – particularly a
reduction of officers in high crime areas of the state, mostly cities – affect
most often those who most need increased police protection.
The victims of urban
crimes tend to flee cities, if possible, and migrate to areas of the state
where shootouts among young criminals are less frequent, but they are not
alone. Those who protect the most vulnerable among us also flee when circumstances
warrant flight. What police officer in the state would not rather work in
Greenwich or New Canaan rather than crime infested Hartford, particularly when
Connecticut law provides that the personal assets of individual police officers
may be seized if they make an arrest that will not pass muster with those who
have created the new law, always on the prowl, rightly so, for infrequent
instances of police misconduct?
Repeat offender Chan
Williams-Bey, 27, was released on $2.1 million in bonds and had 24 pending
criminal and motor vehicle cases in multiple judicial jurisdictions when he
allegedly mowed down two people at a Hartford gas station. This has “angered”
Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin. “Why was the alleged shooter – who has multiple
pending cases with violent offenses -- out on the street?” asked the mayor.
“This is an avoidable tragedy, and this situation cries out for systemic
reforms.”
The “alleged” murder
was not a tragedy but a murder. Perhaps systemic reform might begin with
politicians and news reporters naming things correctly.
A Middletown police
officer was brutally assaulted recently with a claw hammer before she was able
to subdue her attacker with her firearm. The attacker, according to a Hartford
paper, “has an extensive
criminal history with multiple convictions for carrying a deadly weapon,
harassment and robbery, and has been convicted of previous assaults on
officers…”
Urban criminals, sad
to say, have read the times correctly. They know that proposed gun bans and
convictions in Connecticut long delayed or muted by a perverse refusal to apply
recondite punishments is, in their cases, a crap-shoot they can win.
And that is a tragedy.
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