Public Order is Gone in California

A Canadian woman visiting Los Angeles got a first hand look at the everyday violence happening in the nation’s largest “woke” city earlier this month.  Carl Samson of NextShark reports that Jennifer Chen was sitting alone waiting for a friend in her car in a parking lot near Beverly Hills at 4:25 p.m. on September 15,  when a middle aged white man walked up and slugged her in the face while saying “f***ing Asians.”   Chen chased him down and when confronted, he denied hitting her.  Parking lot video had captured the incident but under current California law the assault is misdemeanor battery, carrying little of no consequences.   Down the road a couple of miles, CBS News reports that a neighborhood in the beachside community of Venice has become home to a large homeless encampment where drug addicts, gunshots, screaming and threats of violence have become common.

One family, living across the street from the encampment has video of a homeless man at their front door telling a young mother “I will kill your husband.”   Like most places in California petty thieves, drug addicts and derelicts can pitch tents anywhere they want  without concern about being arrested or even bothered by the local police.  The threatened family told reporters, “We’ve talked to city officials.  We’ve talked to sanitation.  We’ve talked to LAPD.  We’ve talked to the sheriff’s department.  We’ve talked to everyone, and everyone has their hands tied and everyone refers us to someone else.”   The median home price in Venice is $1.6 million.

But there are some folks who are doing well in the Golden State….drug traffickers.  USA Today reports that last month Riverside County detectives seized 46.2 pounds of carfentanil, 8.8 pounds of cocaine and 2.2 pounds of heroin.   Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid that is typically used as a tranquilizing agent for elephants and other large mammals. When administered to humans, the drug is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than fentanyl, according to the DEA. The agency also said two milligrams of fentanyl is enough to kill someone.   One can only guess how much of this poison is getting past law enforcement at being marketed on the streets.  Fatal drug overdoses, by the way, are exceeding records set in the 1960s.

Professors Wilson and Kelling were correct in 1984 and remain correct today.  In communities were the government refuses to enforce public order offenses, more serious crime follows.