'Intersectional' Rank Has Its Privileges

A sample conundrum from everyday life: If a Latino transsexual, a black homosexual, a disabled, homeless white woman, and a mixed-race nonbinary person arrive simultaneously at four-way stop sign, which of them has the right of way? Witness the dilemma playing out in Los Angeles, where some favored pets of the left, known to most as drug-addicted vagrants but to their many admirers as the “unhoused” or “people experiencing homelessness,” are preventing people from charging their precious electric cars. The Daily Mail recently reported that access to some EV charging stations on Los Angeles streets has been blocked by homeless people, some of whom have appointed themselves as the stations’ “attendants,” presumably charging a fee for their use.

So, what’s the environmentally conscious Angeleno to do when some malodorous bum stands between his Tesla and its needed voltage? Call the cops, you say? Yes, in a sane world, in a just world, the police would indeed keep the sidewalks clear of vagrants who claim swaths of public property for their own use. But this is Los Angeles, which, in its desire to be hospitable to these vagrants, is neither sane nor just. The Los Angeles Police Department, as eager as its members might be to restore order on the streets, is constrained by the city’s political class from taking action against the homeless, who, like those in most Democrat-governed cities, have in effect been made immune from most of the laws the rest of us must obey.

Rejected.

Los Angeles voters had an opportunity to change this, but in November’s mayoral election they chose the status quo, electing the reliably leftist Karen Bass over real estate developer Rick Caruso. Yes, Bass took office promising action on the homeless, declaring a “state of emergency” immediately after being sworn in last month, but anyone hoping for a significant reduction in the widespread blight caused by vagrants in Los Angeles will surely come to be disappointed.

There are two main reasons for this. First, as counterintuitive as it may seem, there is big money to be made in homelessness. The city of Los Angeles allocates $1.2 billion on homeless programs in the current budget, and Los Angeles County will add another $532.6 million to the pot in the 2022-2023 fiscal year. Some significant portion of this money flows through the various nonprofits ostensibly dedicated to helping the homeless. To the uninitiated, the term “nonprofit” may conjure images of selfless people laboring for the betterment of mankind while taking little for themselves, but while the organizations themselves do not technically profit from the enterprise, some of the individuals they employ make out handsomely.

A big name in the California homeless business is PATH (People Assisting The Homeless), which has a growth record that would be the envy of any for-profit company. According to PATH’s IRS 990 forms, total revenue has grown from $7.6 million in 2011 to $88.5 million for the fiscal year that ended in June 2020. Out of the 2020 figure, about 39 percent went to employee salaries. The CEO for that year, Joel Roberts, was paid $265,951, a bump of more than $15,000 from the previous year. He was recently succeeded by Jennifer Hark Dietz, who in her former post of deputy CEO had to scrape by on a mere $214,982 in 2020. The salaries of six other PATH executives ranged between $130,526 and $171,982 that year.

If the homeless problem were to be magically solved overnight, where would people like these go to earn such a comfortable living? No, there are too many people, inside and outside of government, who are too deeply invested in homelessness to see it ended. The more money made available to address a perceived problem, the greater the incentive to grow the apparatus that spends it and the more people opening their hands to accept it. This is how we arrived here.

I have lived in and around Los Angeles my entire life and spent more than 30 years with the LAPD. I can recall a time when the city’s homeless population was confined to the few square blocks of downtown known as Skid Row, where even among the homeless certain rules were observed. With the proliferation of organizations intended to help the homeless, with the infusion of the billions of dollars dedicated to that purpose, Los Angeles has attracted vagrants from across the country and beyond, offering them a lifestyle free of obligations in a year-round temperate climate. Today there an estimated 40,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, and those rules once observed in the Skid Row area have become but a memory as homeless encampments have sprung up in virtually every neighborhood in the city to go largely unhindered due to the misguided notions of “compassion” shared among the city’s politicians.

Selected.

The other reason L.A.’s homeless problem won’t be soon abated lies with Mayor Karen Bass herself and her fellow travelers in municipal government. For all her talk of an “emergency,” Bass is unlikely to take the most obvious step necessary to correct it, which would be to enforce laws long on the books but in recent years ignored with near impunity among the homeless, primarily those against theft and drug use. Yes, there are law-abiding people among the homeless but they are rare. When you see a homeless encampment on the streets of Los Angeles or any other city, the safe assumption is that every one of its occupants is a thief and a drug addict.

New PATH CEO Jennifer Park Dietz decries what she sees as the “criminalization of homelessness,” ignoring the fact that, at least in Los Angeles, one would need a diplomatic passport to enjoy more immunity from the law than a homeless person. And new mayor Karen Bass, who as a teenager built houses in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, and who rose in Democratic politics by reliably toeing the leftist line, will be the last to tilt at any of the left’s cherished shibboleths.

Caught between a restive population grown weary of the homeless and a municipal government bent on coddling them is the LAPD, whose chief, Michel Moore, recently announced his bid to be reappointed for a second five-year term. Moore is at least as much a politician as he is a police officer, probably much more so, and while serving under previous mayor Eric Garcetti he revealed his eagerness to adopt any policy that suited Garcetti’s aims.

Result.

So pliable has Moore been to his political masters that his reappointment was thought to be a shoo-in, but when the Los Angeles Times, i.e., the third branch of city government, editorialized against a hasty decision on the matter, the involved parties drew back for reassessment. I read this to mean Moore, if he hopes to be reappointed, will have to do even more kowtowing to Bass and her leftist cronies, which can only mean a more constrained police force. The city saw a slight drop in homicides in 2022, which is welcome news, but robberies and every type of property crime increased while overall arrests continued their years-long decline.

In her campaign for mayor, Karen Bass promised to “dramatically reduce street homelessness” and “end street encampments.” Her predecessor made similar promises in 2013, only to see the problem grow immeasurably worse during his tenure. Unless and until Bass instructs her cops that the homeless are subject to the law and should suffer consequences for breaking it, she will have the same experience.

Sowing the Crime Wind, Reaping the Whirlwind

Who would have thought she was doing something dangerous? The young mother was returning home from a late afternoon walk on Nov. 28, pushing her infant child in a stroller. She opened the security gate in front of her home in the upscale Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, taking no notice of the two men in the car stopped across the street. Before she could close the gate and enter her home, the two men followed her into her yard and robbed her of her backpack and diaper bag before escaping. Neither the woman nor her child was injured.

Not as fortunate was Southern California philanthropist Jaqueline Avant, 81, who in the early morning of Dec. 1 was murdered in her Beverly Hills home. Named as the suspect was Aariel Maynor, 29, a recent parolee from the California prison where he had served a four-year sentence for robbery. Maynor was arrested by LAPD officers after he shot himself in the foot during a second home invasion in the Hollywood Hills, a few miles from the Avant crime scene.

We're no angels.

And out in the equally tony neighborhoods of West Los Angeles, residents are worried over a spate of similar crimes. The map at right, taken from the LAPD’s crime mapping website, shows the robberies, burglaries, and assaults reported across some of the city’s most monied real estate over the last four weeks. In two of the more recent examples, a man was injured and robbed outside a Brentwood hotel early Monday morning, and on Saturday evening, a holiday party in Pacific Palisades was invaded by two armed men who relieved guests of jewelry, iPhones, and an Apple watch.

If the Los Angeles Times account of the Pacific Palisades robbery is to be believed (not necessarily to be taken for granted), the LAPD’s response to the incident left much to be desired. The suspects had fled before police arrived, which is unsurprising, but as of the time the story ran, no detective had collected the security video from the home or even contacted the victims. The suspects, reassured no great effort is being expended to identify and apprehend them, can be expected to hit again.

Also expected to resume their predatory ways are the 14 suspects arrested in connection with a recent series of smash-and-grab robberies in Los Angeles, all of whom were released on little or no bail. Three of the suspects, two adults and a juvenile, were arrested after a car chase into South L.A. The two adults, despite their criminal records, were released without bail.

All of which raises an important question: If police and prosecutors are impotent in addressing surging crime, what is a citizen’s best response when confronted by a robber or home invader? The LAPD, like most police agencies, advocates compliance. “If you are being robbed,” reads the Community Alert Notification, “do not resist the robbery suspects; cooperate and comply with their demands. Be a good witness.” The bulletin also advises against following the suspects. “Leave the job of catching the suspect to the police,” it says.

It's great to get paid.

For most people this is sound advice, even if the police rarely catch the culprits. Few among us are prepared, mentally or physically, to resist an armed attack, and prudence dictates abandoning your valuables rather than risking your life. Recent statistics, however, suggest some Americans may prefer not to meekly surrender to those who would victimize them. The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System recorded 187,585 inquiries for prospective gun purchasers on Black Friday alone, bringing 2021’s total to more than 687,000, slightly behind 2020’s record total.

Obtaining a weapon, though, is the easiest part of preparing for self-defense. Indeed, the presence of a gun can be harmful if one lacks the training, awareness, and mental attitude required to use it when the time comes. A gun in an untrained hand can quickly be turned against its owner. Equally important is knowledge of the laws regarding self-defense. And remember that even the most technically lawful exercise of self-defense can still subject a person to an ordeal in the justice system if the incident takes on political overtones (cf. Rittenhouse, Kyle).

Police officers are often asked when it is permissible to shoot someone in self-defense. The answer is it depends, both on the circumstances and the law in your particular state. As a general rule, deadly force can be used to defend against an attack likely to cause death or serious bodily injury. A stranger approaching while wielding a deadly weapon can in most cases be presumed to be manifesting malign intent, and one need not wait to be shot, stabbed, or clubbed before firing in self-defense.

Some may be surprised that California, with its reliably leftist politics, has a version of the “castle doctrine” on the books. California Penal Code section 198.5, enacted in 1984, grants the presumption of reasonable fear to someone using deadly force against a home intruder. Thus even an unarmed burglar can lawfully be shot by a resident, who need not later prove he was in fear for his safety. Laws in other states differ, so learn the ones where you live before arming yourself for protection. The better firearms training courses include instruction on the laws of self-defense.

No affirmative duty to be a victim.

Outside the home things are trickier and must be examined case by case. The young mother mentioned above, for example, would have been justified in drawing a gun on seeing the two robbers enter her yard, this despite the fact neither of them appeared to be armed. And if they failed to retreat at the sight of her gun, she may have been justified in shooting them. (And how much more satisfying viewing the video would be if she had?)

Keep in mind she was a lone woman with her infant child; a man, certainly one without a child in tow, might not be allowed similar latitude in the same circumstances. This is especially so in Los Angeles, where district attorney George Gascón’s sympathies lie more with criminal suspects than with crime victims.

We are daily presented with evidence that some people across the country are undeterred from their predations by the diminishing prospect of arrest and punishment, leaving to the law-abiding a choice between acquiescence and resistance. If you are among those who have armed themselves, get trained in the safe and effective use of your weapon and prepare mentally for the day you may have to defend yourself or someone else. If you’re going to be in the news, let it be as a defender, not as a victim.