WE DON’T FIGHT CRIME IN THIS COUNTRY,
WE EXPLOIT IT!
by Cash Michaels
First, let me condemn, in the strongest terms, the heinous August 22nd murder on the Charlotte light-rail of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. Obviously I, like many of you, did not know this young woman who had her whole life of promise before her, only to have it senselessly and viciously taken from her in a cruel act of violence. But clearly, she did not deserve to die in this manner.
No human being does.
Based on the surveillance video we’ve all seen by now, there seems to be little doubt who the suspected perpetuator is - a 34-year-old black homeless man with a long criminal and mental illness history named Decarlos Brown, Jr.
We have laws in our cities, states and nation that should ably and appropriately address extraordinary, unprovoked acts of alleged criminality like this, and if the facts in court line up with the video (and I have little doubt that they will), then Mr. Brown should face whatever a jury of his peers decide is the appropriate punishment.
Just make sure there are some black folks on that jury, OK? As bad as this crime is, Decarlos Brown, Jr. is still entitled to a fair trial by a jury of his peers.
Or does that bother some of you, that regardless of how heinous the crime, we have (or are supposed to have, at least) a system of justice that impartially and fairly decides punishment in our society? And we do so in order to keep our natural instincts for revenge and bloodlust at bay.
We also do so to keep our respective tribalisms in check as well. Trust me, when prosecutors are caught working overtime to ensure that all-white juries, instead of truly representative juries of the community, are empaneled, we know that revenge, bloodlust…and yes, racism, have already infested the process long before the judge can raise the gavel, let alone look at it.
So for the record, I want Mr. Brown to get a fair and impartial trial, but make NO mistake, if a representative jury makes a fair and just determination of the facts in this case, and finds him guilty as charged, then again, I pray that he is punished to the fullest extent of the law.
And I mean…the fullest! That’s justice in this case!
That’s the way it’s supposed to be in our society, how the criminal justice system is supposed to work.
But, as we’ve all also seen, when you throw a little politics in the mix, it becomes anything but justice.
It becomes the most fraudulent kind of “justice” there is. Political justice! I know it when I see it, hear it, and smell it.
Growing up in New York City back during the high crime days of the 1970s and 80s, believe me, I had my fill of hearing constantly about rapes, robberies, murders, you name it.
My city was out of control.
In fact, when I was a kid in Brooklyn, I was a victim of crime.
Walking home from the store one dark, early night in November 1975. All of a sudden, two guys standing behind a tree stopped me, pointed two guns at me, demanded my money and ordered me to walk to the end of a dark alley, warning me to “Don’t look back.”
I swear, it was the scariest five minutes of my life. I thought for sure I was going to be the lead story on Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” that night.
“FAT BLACK KID MUGGED AND BLOWN AWAY IN BROOKLYN. FILM AT ELEVEN!”
I walked slowly to the back of the dark alley as instructed, not knowing what would happen next, and when I got back there, I deliberately stayed there for a few minutes to make sure the coast was clear, not wanting to get shot.
When I finally arrived at home, I naturally told my Mom, who was always concerned for my safety. Naturally, she was upset. And I called my neighborhood friends to make sure that none of them went out and inadvertently ran into my two muggers as well.
Didn’t call the police though, because back in the day in my neighborhood, they were known for doing nothing, and they did it well!
I’ll never forget that night, because I was shaken, but strangely, not stirred.
The next day I recall being in some class at Brooklyn College, my mind a thousand miles away, and suddenly, for no reason, I raised my hand, and asked to go to the men’s room.
Trust me, my bladder was fine.
` But when I got there, I went into a stall, closed the door ...and began crying uncontrollably.
The experience of having two guns pulled on me the night before, and not knowing whether I would live or die as I literally counted the seconds, suddenly caught up with me.
So yes, not only have I lived in a high crime city, but I’ve been one of its helpless victims. I’m no "liberal" softie on the subject. I don’t believe in coddling criminals one inch!
No sir!
But what was just as bad as any crime in the Big Apple back then were the two-bit politicians giving over-the-top lip service on to how to stop it. Not because they really cared, but to ensure their political futures. Believe me, it got to be really sickening after a while.
Well, it’s getting really sickening now, but this time, the main proponent is taking a page right out of 1970-80s New York City, because back then, he was just a “prominent” business bigwig trying to influence New York politics.
Now he's president of the Divided States, Donald Trump.
You’ll recall that it was the late 1970s when “law abiding citizen” Trump - you know, when he fancied himself the ultimate millionaire playboy and was ace boon buddies with child predator/sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but never, ever, EVER, engaged in anything illegal with the animal he claims he never sent or signed a birthday card to or for - demanded the teenage suspects in a capital case be executed long before a trial occurred when he took out a full page ad in the New York Times against the Central Park Five - five young boys of color who were accused of, and also forced to falsely admit to, the brutal rape and beating of a white female jogger in Central Park.
If it wasn’t for DNA evidence proving that none of them had anything to do with the heinous crime, all five would have been political lynching victims of a savage, white upper-crust bloodlust that Trump proudly championed.
And even when Trump was proven wrong, he refused to back down off his false claims, maintaining that because these were four black and one Puerto Rican kids who were accused, they still must have done something unsavory.
So now that he’s president, and has apparently seen the videotape of Decarlos Brown, Jr. in the alleged act of slaying a helpless Iryna Zarutska, he’s again calling for a suspect to be executed before a trial and finding of fact, and indeed Trump’s highly-politicized U.S. Justice Dept. has entered the case with Charlotte authorities, and has announced that it will, in fact, seek the death penalty.
As I have already said, if Brown is legally proven to have violated Ms. Zarutska’s state and federal rights in allegedly taking her life, then I don’t have a problem with the ultimate punishment, except….
You and I both know that Ms. Zarutska’s murder on August 22nd wasn’t the only brutal slaying in the United States on that day, or since. But this one serves Trump and the Republican Party’s partisan political purposes, and that in and of itself should be a crime.
“North Carolina, and every State, needs LAW AND ORDER, and only Republicans will deliver it!,” Trump trumpeted recently on Truth Social, adding, “…the victim's "blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail."
So let me get this straight. When the time comes to pick a jury, are only MAGA Republicans eligible, or can taxpaying Democrats be considered too, because Trump sure is polluting the jury pool with these dumb remarks?
Loving the sound of his damn lie, Trump employed it again after the recent truly tragic murder of his close friend, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA last week, even after he was informed by his authorities who the suspect that had been captured actually was - the deranged, politically unaffiliated son of two conservative Republican Mormons, both of whom turned him in to authorities..
For the record - the young suspect is a lot of strange things for sure, but being a registered, voting Democrat is NOT one of them!
While most responsible leaders, like the Republican governor of Utah and the four previous presidents of the United States, used this tragic, unthinkable occasion to attempt to turn the rhetorical temperature of this nation down, and unify us under the banner that senselessly killing one another just because we disagree should have NO place in our democracy, Trump falsely exploited the assassination of Charlie Kirk to further divide the country and rub partisan salt in our collective wound.
To be clear, this commentary is NOT about Kirk's conservative politics. For me, that's for another time. It's about human beings being brutally murdered in high profile cases, and politicians falling all over themselves to make political hay out of it!
And when Trump falsely blamed the “radical leftist Democrats” for the murder of Charlie Kirk, and turned out to be wrong, it surprised NO one, because by now, we’ve come to expect that kind of lowlife, gutter partisan politics from him, no matter how tragic the circumstances.
What was his blunt response on “Fox and Friends” when asked about his responsibility as president to try and bring the country back together after a tragic and controversial crime?
“I couldn’t care less!”
When the “leader” of your nation will publicly lie like the wind about a horrific crime that divides us, and then essentially says “So what?,” what real hope do we really have to bury the hatchet and come together?
This is what Trump calls “winning,” by the way. Seriously!
Now, in the aftermath of Kirk's tragic murder, we have everyone from Vice President J.D. Vance to the wretched Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to Attorney General Pam Bondi vowing to target and punish "leftists" for “hate speech” because some crackpots allegedly "celebrated" Charlie Kirk's death.
If there are morons out there happy that another human being and married father of two was basically executed in cold blood, then yes, they should be rhetorically castigated and ostracized, but not targeted by the federal government in some kind of partisan witch-hunt.
All these Trump Administration officials are doing is exploiting the Kirk assassination to show their base that they're willing to violate free speech rights to avenge their fallen hero.
Appearing to be in total control. That's what's politically important to them now, and that’s NOT good.
FACT - crime happens in Democrat-run cities and Republican-run cities. And that’s because human beings of all stripes live in these places, regardless of politics. Republicans would have you believe that Democrats are soft on crime and more criminally inclined. And yet, when something bad happens to a Democrat and a Republican or conservative is held responsible, they keep so very quiet about it.
FACT - the criminal justice system needs more resources for officers patrolling our streets, for prosecutors and more judges. And certainly, our mental health care system needs more resources to handle the increasing numbers of mentally ill patients and former patients who are moved out of care and put on the streets without support.
Last April, the Trump Administration literally defunded the police, by canceling $820 million in federal grants that supported more than 550 organizations across the nation involved with reducing crime and promoting public safety.
Many of those grants brought law enforcement and community leaders together to find solutions to violent crime.
NONE of the above facts are political. They’re common sense, and when our state legislature (which just happens to be Republican-led) doesn’t do its job to provide more resources to both our criminal justice and mental health care systems by finally passing a budget, you inevitably get what happened in Charlotte.
I’m not going to play the game of saying that what happened to Ms. Zarutska was the Republican-led NC General Assembly’s fault, but it’s damn insulting to hear state and federal lawmakers blame Democrats in Charlotte, and then, from the other side of their mouths, do nothing to provide needed resources to run the criminal and mental health care systems properly.
Also, if this were another mass shooting, many of these Republican politicians would be tripping all over themselves defending the right to bare arms, and instead, insist that the cause of gun violence was a mental illness problem, not an unrestricted access to firearms.
Well from what I read, Decarlos Brown Jr., who allegedly used a knife, had mental illness problems up the whazoo. His own mother sadly tells the story of how the system failed him, but I’m not hearing Trump or very many Republican lawmakers talking better mental health funding and services. Why?
Fortunately we have Charlotte Democratic Mayor Vy Lyles, running for reelection without any serious opposition. In an open letter shortly after the horrific slaying, Mayor Lyles wrote it was a “tragic failure by the courts and magistrates,” adding, "Our police officers arrest people only to have them quickly released, which undermines our ability to protect our community and ensure safety.”
"Tragic incidents like these should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes,” Lyles continued. "We will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health.”
Voice of reason, that Mayor Lyles. Too bad I can’t vote for her where I live.
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail," intuitively adds Durham Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton.
Can’t vote for Brother Middleton either, but I can give him a hearty “right on!”
Of course, the Republicans are trying to turn this brutal murder into political fodder against Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, who is currently running well against a GOP joke known as Michael Whatley (yeah, the former co-chair on the RNC, and NCGOP).
The Republicans are trying to pin the crime on Cooper's Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice , which he appointed in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd. That task force’s job was to examine some of the problems plaguing our criminal justice system so that they can be addressed, if not fixed.
Well, NONE of the task force’s recommendations were ever ratified or implemented by the NC General Assembly, and it never had any power to enact or enforce any laws on its own, so once again, Republicans are trying to stretch guilt by association to make cheap political points.
On the death of an innocent young woman, no less.
Shamefully, we don’t fight crime in this country, we exploit it!
That’s why this massive BS about Trump sending in the National Guard, ICE and the FBI to “police” Democratic-run cities like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and now Memphis, is really quite frightening.
He wants folks to get behind sending federal troops to manhandle Democratic black-run cities so he can chalk up more cheap political points, build on this “Dept. of War” nonsense, and prove to his deranged base that he is their ultimate protector. That’s why Trump sycophant, Republican House Speaker Mike “Minnie Mouse” Johnson, wants folks in those cities to bend over and take it.
A convicted felon and sexual abuser is our “law and order protector.” Can you beat that?
I pray that our criminal justice system, on both the state and federal levels, handles the Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk murder cases properly, and fairly. We should not allow ourselves to become revenge-seekers and political blood-lusters like Trump and the Republicans.
We should be clear enough to properly mete out justice, to ensure that the punishment for capital crimes is determined by the facts and the law, NOT our base passions or political/racial prejudices.
That should be our national mantra, no matter what violence disturbs our sensibilities, and tries to claim a permanent place in our hearts, or society.
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