By Johannes P.
Offices of the New York Police Department are reportedly on a “virtual work stoppage” because they “feel betrayed by [Mayor Bill DeBlasio] and fear for their own safety,” reports the New York Post. As a result, “traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent. Police are now “turning a blind eye to some minor crimes and making arrests only ‘when they have to’ since the execution-style shootings of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.” It isn’t immediately clear . . .
what sort of laws are not being enforced thanks to this protest by New York’s finest. If this means the police are simply declining to enforce New York’s byzantine legal apparatus that exists primarily to increase the power and wealth of municipal government at the expense of the general citizenry (of which Eric Garner apparently ran afoul by engaging in random acts of entrepreneurship), I say: more power to them. There’s no sense in wasting blood, sweat, and tears acting as the shock troops for an ungrateful mayor who heads what is an autocratic city-state in all but name. And, frankly, the citizens of the the Big Apple might actually breathe a little easier if this strike action is limited to that sort of non-enforcement.
The NYPD’s industrial action, however, illustrates a basic problem with New York’s civil society. When the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms is taken away, they become even more vulnerable to the whims, petty jealousies, and political intrigues of the government.
If the NYPD decides that their tiff with Mayor Bill warrants a complete walkout (of the sort that happened in Boston ninety years ago,) and decide that enforcing the law against violent crimes (i.e., the sorts for which we actually need a professional police force), what will happen to the people whose right to defend their lives, families, and homes has been legally crippled by the desire of New York politicians for political power? Will that affect voters’ willingness to trade a little essential liberty for an imagined security?