During the mass formation psychosis that the country went through after the death of George Floyd, woke Democrat politicians, in an effort to save their own skin from the angry mob, promoted the “defund the police” movement. Some crazies went so far as to abolish the police altogether. Then, there were the true mental patients of the Left who emphasized the need to replace police officers with “community safety” workers. Back when I was a young strapping lad, they called them social workers.
These community safety workers would go into a dangerous situation, unarmed, and act like someone who can interrupt violent situations while they are unarmed among violent gang members. Outside of the Guardian Angels in New York City’s subway system, I never heard of unarmed people jumping in to break up violent situations. “Okay, Darryl. You got me in a headlock and you’re beating my face in with your other hand. I can’t really breathe too well right about now, but how about you starting thinking about de-escala…” Down he went.
No social workers, no matter how great the gift of gab, are going to stop violent criminals the way police are trained and equipped to do in most cases. Progressive leftists just have to find this stuff out on their own. Many violent gang members only understand a violent response. Yeah, it’s sad, but that’s the hand most police have to deal with on a daily basis.
In Baltimore, there is an organization called the “Safe Streets Program” that thought the idea of non-armed civilians interrupting violent criminals was the cat’s meow. They gained a lot of attention when they joined this effort. The organization sends out former gang members into city territories that are run by violent street gangs to hammer out non-violent solutions to conflicts. Again, back in my day, we called it conflict resolution.
Imagine the group’s surprise when they found out that sending someone in carrying nothing but a pen and a clipboard to find solutions between violent gangs wasn’t exactly the most effective strategy. Unfortunately, this week one of the Safe Streets workers in Baltimore was shot to death along with several others on Baltimore’s East side.
From the Baltimore Sun:
A quadruple shooting in East Baltimore on Wednesday night left three people dead, including a Safe Streets worker, and one person injured, police said. Three others were injured in separate shootings in West and South Baltimore.
At about 7:25 p.m., Eastern District patrol officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the 2400 block of E. Monument St. Once there, officers located four men suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.
A 28-year-old man was pronounced dead on the scene. Medics transported three other victims to area hospitals, where a 24-year-old man and another man were also pronounced dead.
The fourth victim, a 27-year-old man, is expected to survive.
This poor community safety worker died because rather than agree that there are some bad cops who need to be dealt with and the overwhelming majority of law enforcement are professionals who do their job to protect communities and are not the bad guys, the progressive knuckleheads running the city thought it would be safer to replace them with people who would try to reason with gang members.
It’s clear that Baltimore is another city run by progressive Democrats for decades where the leadership is incapable of figuring out how the end the violence in their jurisdictions.
And just to let you know that I’m not against something like the Safe Streets program, I understand that there are some neighborhoods where they have been very effective in lowering the number of shootings and homicides. But I think it would be much more effective if they were escorted by police who could wait half a block away and let the social workers do their thing. Their presence in the neighborhood would almost automatically cool things down a couple of degrees, enough for the community safety workers to gain the gang members’ attention, and maybe they would listen.
Progressive Democrats create policies that breed neighborhoods of crime, poverty, and desperation. This murder of the Safe Streets program worker should remind the people running the city into the ground that gang violence in their communities sometimes requires a legitimate, legal response with violent force. Yes, violence can be used for good. I would say police using violence to stop street gang thugs from shooting up a neighborhood is a proper use of violent force. Who is more important to city leaders, the innocent people who live in these neighborhoods, or the violent criminals that make their lives a living hell?
What’s going on in Baltimore is happening in other towns like Chicago, Philadelphia and many other blue cities run by Democrats for decades who don’t have a clue how to end the violence. Is it because they don’t want the image of coming down on minority gang members? Is it a racial thing? There are only two other options: incompetence and malfeasance.
