Send in more troops
What's more dangerous: the streets of Baghdad or Los Angeles? No contest, says Bob Weir, a retired NYPD sergeant now living in Texas who contributes to the American Thinker blog.

"A recent ABC News special report had me wondering what country I'm living in. When I heard the opening remarks: 'Homicides have risen dramatically as street gangs continue to terrorize the public,' and 'People are refusing to leave their homes for fear of attack by roving gangs,' I had to listen closely for the location referred to because I expected it to be a report from Iraq, Latin America, or Afghanistan. Sadly, it is too often a domestic situation that rivals and even supersedes the criminal machinations of the aforementioned venues."

Not only does L.A. need a lot more cops, says Weir, but also a tough mayor like Rudy Giuliani to back them.

"According to the FBI, membership in just one ... notorious L.A. group, known as the 18th Street gang, is about 15,000, while the total gang membership is about 100,000. With a police force totaling about 10,000, it's simple to draw the conclusion that we need to hire more cops. That often becomes the cry of police chiefs and mayors when the slaughter in the streets starts dominating the headlines.

"NYC has about 40,000 cops, yet crime is on the rise. They have more cops than many countries have soldiers in their combined military forces. It's not the number of police that matters, it's how effective they're allowed to be. The crime in NYC went down when cops knew that Mayor Giuliani was supportive of them. Perhaps L.A. Mayor Hahn intends to emulate his former East Coast counterpart."

Weir has no patience for those who are concerned about police brutality.

"Most people have unrealistic expectations of the police. They want them to look and behave like a bunch of boy scouts, and pacifists, but at the same time expect them to be tough enough to handle the grimiest, sleaziest, most violent prone Neanderthals that ever walked the Earth. While they're chasing and/or rolling around the ground with some desperado that wouldn't think twice about killing them, the cops have to be extra careful not to offend anyone's sensibilities, because they might end up on the evening news as a precursor to a courtroom in which they become the defendants.

"I can hear the liberals screaming already: 'The police must not use unnecessary force.' No kidding? The problem is that the cop very often has less than a second to make a decision on what is 'necessary,' while his inquisitors will have weeks or months to determine the validity of his actions.

"It's interesting that those complaints always come from people who have never faced off against a desperate criminal who had no intention of being arrested again without a fight. When a cop risks his or her life to put that kind of savage in a cage, he or she has very possibly saved your life -- because tomorrow that savage would have been stalking you."

Speaking of liberal howling, Bush critics are loudly charging that the administration is ensuring more urban violence by slashing funding for youth programs. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, for the upcoming budget year "the Bush administration has proposed reducing its national block-grant programs for combating youth violence by 40 percent, from $307 million to $180 million."

Summer of hate?
Tech Central Station columnist Michael Totten says the Bay Area's peace-and-love legacy is drowning in a wave of hatred over the war between the Israelis and Palestinians. He says virulent anti-Semitism is now disturbingly fashionable on the Berkeley campus.

"Over the past two and a half years Berkeley, California, has added radical Middle Eastern politics to its chic campus culture. The result isn't pretty. A city that prides itself on tolerance and diversity is fast-becoming an epicenter of hate.

"A recent article called The Berkeley Intifada in the East Bay Express is an eye-opener for those who think Berkeley is still what it was. Violently anti-Semitic vandalism and graffiti is making a comeback. 'It's the Jews, stupid,' was scratched into a 9/11 memorial. The glass door to Berkeley's Hillel building was shattered by a hurled cinderblock. Just in case the message wasn't clear, someone wrote 'FUCK JEWS' on the wall nearby. Swastikas were spray-painted on a campus building accompanied by a bilingual old world eliminationist death warrant: 'Die, Juden.'"

Totten argues that political correctness has mutated into a monstrosity.

"Most of the students who promote a free Palestine don't hate Jews, whatever they think of Israeli counter-terrorism. But they put up with hate in the ranks all the same. Even the more radical and racist Palestinian activists are 'allies' in the campus cause du jour ...

"It's bad enough that the torchbearers of Political Correctness compromised their honorable anti-racist principles with expediency and hypocrisy. But what's left of Political Correctness is worse even than that ... Ethnic and religious minorities are allowed to behave like skinheads. It looks as though the activist set expects hatemongering anti-social behavior from Muslim immigrants just as they expect a dog to pee on the rug. It's the 'soft bigotry of low expectations' with a racial twist ...

"Political Correctness is finished. What started out as intolerance of hate has become hatred's enabler."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Read more of "Right Hook," Salon's weekly roundup of conservative commentary and analysis here.

Recent Stories