Trump’s win was a call for law and order after the Dems’ constant demonization of the police By Heather Mac Donald
“Maybe this will end in another week,” sighed the cashier at a CVS store on the Upper East Side, seven days after President Trump’s inauguration. A young male, clutching a black plastic garbage bag, had just darted out the door.”Maybe this will end in another week,” sighed the cashier at a CVS store on the Upper East Side, seven days after President Trump’s inauguration. A young male, clutching a black plastic garbage bag, had just darted out the door.
The thief had wandered the premises unchallenged, despite being a member of the predominant shoplifting demographic and openly carrying a receptacle for his heist. After his rushed escape, no one called the police. The employees knew the precinct’s officers weren’t likely to come — and nothing would happen if they did.
I, meanwhile, had had to summon a clerk to gain access to the store’s calcium pills, locked behind plexiglass shields.
So much for the invidious racial profiling that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden routinely accused the country of engaging in.
The cashier nodded wearily toward a rack of batteries in the front of the store — a target of this latest heist — oddly not behind lock and key.
The clerk’s long gray corkscrew curls, beard and heavy Puerto Rican accent did not mark him as a stereotypical Donald Trump voter. Yet here he was, assuming that his reference to “another week” was clear and that I would share his hope for a political sea change.
“People ask me: ‘How can you back him?’ ” he said, still not feeling the need to name Trump. “But he has to do something. The people voted for him.”
The Democrats created this Trump supporter. Their demonization of the police became more shrill after the George Floyd race riots. Big-city police chiefs refused to arrest for — and progressive prosecutors refused to indict — a range of crimes, all in the name of avoiding disparate impact.
The criminal element soon learned that it could plunder without consequence. Across the country, smash and grab robberies became rampant; retail establishments were stripped bare; city blocks filled with vacant store fronts. The allegedly “marginalized” groups the Democrats claim as their special possession — bodega workers, chain-store clerks, delivery men, Uber drivers — witnessed the anarchy every day and bore its brunt.
As for the “lives” the Democrats’ depolicing and deprosecution were supposed to protect, thousands more black victims were slain in the post-George Floyd surge of drive-by shootings. Those black lives did not matter to the Black Lives Matter activists because the assailants were of the wrong race.
President Trump’s executive orders, rolled out with the relentless momentum of a military campaign, have changed the world in a mere 14 days. But while the effort to eradicate the race hustle from the federal bureaucracy, academia, science associations and corporate HR departments will face challenges, satisfying the new Trump voter will be more difficult still.
It is local officials who have unleashed the urban chaos. They are even less amenable to presidential direction than the bureaucratic Deep State. Trump cannot order district attorneys in New York or elsewhere to prosecute low-level crimes or to seek long sentences for repeat offenders. He cannot require that city police forces pay attention to public disorder.
Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi can direct US attorneys to prosecute violent federal crimes without regard to race politics. But most property crime does not fall under federal jurisdiction — certainly not the routine shoplifting that has emptied and closed urban drugstores.
The future FBI director, Kash Patel, vowed during the campaign to send thousands of employees in the FBI’s Washington, DC, headquarters to “chase down criminals” across the country. But FBI agents are not going to go after turnstile jumpers and impulse-driven vandals.
Deporting illegal alien criminals will help. It is the native criminal demographic, however, that is responsible for most street crime.
‘New sheriff in town’
And yet — the still-evolving Trump effect may improve even the micro realities of urban life.
No one in the federal government spoke up for the rights of the law-abiding and hardworking over the last four years. No one expressed sympathy with store owners and employees who watched helplessly as vagrants ransacked their workplaces with impunity.
Trump, by contrast, viscerally understands the importance of public order. At a campaign rally in July, he vowed to “get all the graffiti off the marble” in Washington, DC; he has complained elsewhere about the capital city’s filth and decay. His disgust for looting has gotten him in trouble with the mainstream media.
Merely by articulating the importance of law and order, by defending the sanctity of property, Trump may put progressive officials on the defensive.
And he has another card up his sleeve. His electoral platform promised to investigate left-wing prosecutors for race-based enforcement — that is, for enacting non-prosecution policies to avoid having a disparate impact on black criminals. Figuring out such a challenge’s legal posture would be complicated. Local DAs will invoke their inherent discretion in deciding which cases to prosecute (ironically, Trump himself has claimed executive discretion in not enforcing the congressional ban on TikTok). And giving the federal government such power over local prosecutorial decisions could backfire when political power changes hands.
Still, there is a core persuasiveness to the claim that taking race into account in law-enforcement decisions violates the 14th Amendment. Border czar Tom Homan has broached an equally novel initiative: prosecuting officials in sanctuary jurisdictions for interfering with federal law enforcement. It is worth further exploring the legal basis for challenging the racial non-enforcement of the law. At the very least, Trump should shame district attorneys for violating their oath that justice is colorblind.
As the CVS cashier revealed, expectations for the new presidency are running high. Trump will not clean up New York even after week three, but four years of continuously articulated support for law and order could be transformative.
A commuter reports that four days after the swearing-in, everyone on his DC bus paid their fare and not just the usual fare-paying demographic. “The word is out: There’s a new sheriff in town,” the rider speculated.
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