Lock down those who are supposed to be free — and free those supposed to be locked up. That’s the formula being applied, and it’s leading to rising crime, suffering innocents, and murder.
Americans have been arrested for opening their hair salon, working out in a gym, and sitting alone in a lifeguard chair and reading, as officials enforce rules such as you can go to the beach but will be forcibly yanked from the ocean if you swim (huh?!). Apparently, jail-borne Wuhan coronavirus spares the puerilely persecuted but, having a better moral sense than many politicians, not those rightly punished.
Many might thus quip, anyway, pondering how governors have released 67,000 criminals — many dangerous — under the pretext of wanting to protect them and prison workers from COVID-19.
If only they thought about protecting the public, 21-year-old Colorado woman Heather Perry would still be alive today. The man accused of murdering her on May 9, Cornelius Haney (video below), was released over virus concerns less than a month before her death. You can thank Governor Jared Polis (D-Colo.) for that.
Joseph Edward Williams wasted no time, though. He allegedly murdered a 45-year-old Florida man (video below) the very day after his March 19 virus-inspired release. That said, who saw this coming? Williams had only been arrested 35 times previously, after all.
Oh, for this one you can thank Chief Judge Ronald Ficarrotta, who authorized the releases; and Hillsborough County sheriff Chad Chronister, who did the releasing — and who, demonstrating his priorities, had also arrested a pastor for holding church services.
Then there’s Hawaiian Daniel Pookela Baang. Even though his state has only 17 Wuhan virus deaths and no confirmed cases in its jails, he was released in April. Two weeks later, he was charged with stabbing 45-year-old Harvey Hannah to death (video below). Baang was also released by a judge, whose name I haven’t been able to ascertain.
The above is just a sampling, too. As Daniel Horowitz writes at Conservative Review:
The recidivism of these people is unbelievable [yes, that’s why they were in prison!]. According to the New York Post, out of the 276 shooting incidents in New York City so far this year, 19 percent of suspected or arrested gunmen having been released this year. Also, 13% of the incidents’ more than 315 victims were also out on parole. Thus, we have created a shooting war among released criminals. Ironically, they are much more likely to die from homicide than from the virus.
Overall, this year, shootings are up 21% in the city and break-ins have jumped 38%. As of just the first few weeks of the epidemic, the city released more than 1,500 criminals.
Horowitz points out, however, that it isn’t just fellow criminals but also innocents being victimized by these corona criminals, as the aforementioned examples evidence. He provides numerous other examples as well.
Hence we have more evidence of how the virus “cure” is worse than the disease. In fact, as “of 2018, at 23.2 victimizations per 1,000 persons, anyone outside a nursing home is several hundred times more likely to be victimized by a violent crime than to die of coronavirus,” Horowitz also tells us.
“With the release of so many more criminals since 2018, that risk has likely grown exponentially,” he continues. “Has anyone asked Dr. Fauci to simulate a model of these forgotten COVID-19 deaths?”
Note here that just “a few hundred deaths have been recorded out of a population of 2.2 million inmates, lower than that of the general population,” Horowitz further informs. Moreover, he points out that most of the virus-infected convicts were asymptomatic and now are, presumably, immune. This isn’t surprising since they’re generally young and healthy (the elderly are most imperiled).
In fact, many inmates themselves aren’t too worried. Just consider the video below of California convicts trying to purposely infect themselves with the Wuhan virus in the hopes of being released.
Yet despite efforts such as the above, isn’t keeping convicts “quarantined” in prison the most effective way of preventing their infection? It’s not rocket science: Test the prisoners; separate out, isolate, and treat the sick; test any new convicts before incarceration; eliminate visitation during the outbreak; and test staff every two weeks. Voila!
And outside prison walls? Criminals aren’t exactly paragons of responsibility; they won’t likely “socially distance and wash … hands as health officials direct, and use a mask — for anything other than a crime tool to protect against identification,” as American Thinker put it last month.
That leftists defy this common sense hints at an agenda, as American Thinker explained: “The far left, including the Soros front groups, Angela Davis, Chesa Boudin, and other extremists, have long advocated for getting rid of prisons and letting their denizens all out to prey upon us, under the tangled rubric of ‘social justice,’ a social justice that always finds itself devoid of [just] laws.”
The pandemic provides a perfect pretext to effect this mayhem. What’s the ultimate goal? Some would say attainment of power. After all, since people will generally sacrifice liberty for security, you can maximize the removal of liberty by first maximizing the removal of security. Yet there’s another factor, a deeper one rarely explained.
Devout leftists maintain that the “real” causes of crime are unaddressed deeper issues such as “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” And I believe that many of these social engineers are thinking on some level, “You won’t take our sage counsel and implement our progressive prescriptions? Then you’re going to have to endure these problems until you eliminate them our way.”
It also may be a pleasing type of retribution for them. Remember that no one likes having his plans thwarted, and leftists believe it’s the “deplorable” resistance throwing a monkey wrench into theirs. Intensely angry about this, the attitude likely is, “If you won’t listen, you’ll just have to suffer till you toe the line!”
Whatever the thinking, it’s just another example of why the worst crimes being visited upon the American people are the lockdowns themselves. In fact, far more dangerous than 10 Joseph Edward Williamses on the street is one Gretchen Whitmer in office.
Photo: sestovic/E+/Getty Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer,& The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
