It’s time for cause to meet effect.
It’s time for the blood in the streets to meet the blood on the hands.
It’s time for Rochester’s state legislators and judges to see their handiwork.
Each year they trundle off to Albany, or sit protected on their high bench in their black robes, and wreak havoc in the lives of good people and bring pain to a beloved city, all the while pretending there is no connection between their doings and other people’s deaths.
It’s time for that to end.
So here’s what I propose: That each state legislator report with police to the scene of every homicide in his or her district; that those legislators then travel with police to make the next-of-kin notifications in those homicides; and that every time the mayor and chief hold a press conference to discuss crime and public safety that the entire Rochester delegation be required to be with them, to face the questions of the press and the people.
Further, each state legislator should each month spend a Friday or Saturday night in the trauma bay at either Strong Memorial or Rochester General to see the frantic effort to save life and repair damage done by unchecked violence.
It’s time for the rubber to meet the road, and for these puny people to see the results of their failed policies.
Certainly, politicians don’t cause violence, that’s the result of social and moral decay, but they absolutely fail to protect the community from it.
The policies of the Democrat majorities in the New York State Senate and Assembly, in partnership with the Democrat governor, specifically empower criminals and endanger victims. They remove society’s ability to protect itself by eliminating the requirement to post bail, by eliminating criminal consequences for minors, by releasing inmates early from prison, and virtually eliminating any prospect of their parole being revoked.
When you preach that criminals are victims of an oppressive society, that they are not responsible for their actions, that they have been wronged and denied “services,” you excuse and thereby invite criminal conduct. When you side with criminals over victims, as the Democratic Party continually does, you create both more criminals and more victims.
And all of that is done in a Democrat political culture that vilifies and defunds police and lurks constantly to destroy any officer who crosses a line or looks bad on video.
It’s time for the fantasy to meet reality.
It’s time for the people who empower criminals in Albany to stand beside an officer on Clinton Avenue and see what those criminals do. The legislators need to hear the wails of mothers running toward the police tape strung around their son’s crumpled body. They need to learn the iron smell of blood and watch the officers walk and bend as they place evidence marker after evidence marker across the litter of spent shells thrown around an innocent neighborhood by a parolee their laws released.
When the 15-year-old is shot dead in a stolen car driven by a 16-year-old who didn’t show up for the appearance ticket he got the last time he stole a car, the people who voted for bail reform and Raise the Age need to see that boy’s body and be there when his mother learns of his loss. They need to see what they have done.
They need to know. They need to inform their legislating with something more than just progressive claptrap learned in the ivory towers. If they’re trying to break society down, they need to know what that looks like, if only to add detail to their nightmares.
The senators and assemblymembers need to hear angry neighbors demanding protection, they need to hear the pleas of frightened parents, and they need to make a public accounting of what they’ve done. When the chief or the sheriff or the captain talk about the criminal-justice reforms in front of the cameras, they can step aside and let the subject-matter experts, the people who voted for those reforms, explain them. When another parolee kills another neighbor, when another suspect released without bail takes another life, when a delinquent protected by Raise the Age steals another car, perhaps the Great Bronson could step forward at the mayor’s press conference and try to explain himself and his party.
The politicians love being on the news when it’s a free political ad, when there’s an oversized check or a golden shovel or a giant pair of scissors, but when it’s a dead body or a broken life, or some other consequence of their malfeasance, they’re pretty scarce.
It’s time to change that. It’s time to stop letting them hide.
And the judges? Maybe we ought to change one aspect of the process for releasing people without bail: If a judge decides to turn someone loose without bail, have the release point be the sidewalk in front of that judge’s house.
Not the fake house in the city, but the real house in Fairport.