Heart of a City: The Newark Murders

In a Newark, NJ neighborhood recently, a trio of college bound post-teens are told to kneel down facing a brick wall and executed with bullets fired point-blank into their brains. A female companion, shot first, survived and bravely pointed out the murderers to police from a hospital critical care ward. The story was slow to get wheels but then it began to get wider circulation. Will it lose momentum just as quickly when a violence benumbed television audience begins to rationalize and dismiss it as just another case of thug life in the ‘hood.

The classical liberal answer is to decry gun violence. Nobody should doubt the sincerity and conviction of Mayor Cory Booker in trying to rid his city of people who are destroying it but he’s got to do better than to recite the customary bromides about hangun proliferation. Doesn’t New Jersey already have some of the toughest handgun laws on record? There’s no point in emulating New York’s Mayor Bloomberg who faults neighboring states for selling handguns to the thugs who, Bloomberg suggests, would not be committing violent crimes at all if the guns had not fallen so easily into their hands.

Tough gun laws, like tough drug laws, don’t work. You’ve got to change the human equation and that’s a little bit more difficult than citing convenient anti-gun slogans to please the liberal electorate.

Booker knows exactly what he’s up against but he’s painted himself into the liberal corner paved for him by Democratic stalwarts like Governor Jon Corzine. Sure, Corzine will play the great humanitarian, appearing at funerals to wring his hands and say predictable things like the murders were "cold-hearted and cowardly." Or that the murders were “beyond comprehension.” Really? Beyond comprehension? Perhaps in Corzine’s neighborhood, but not in the heart of the city Cory Booker swore to clean up.

If Corzine really wants to help Booker help the city, he might want to get real about his support of the “Sanctuary Cities for Illegals Who Commit Violent Crime.” Newark is one of the cities where cops are told by their Governor not to get involved with issues involving illegal immigrants. I’m referring to one Jose Carranza, who had been previously arrested in separate incidents for assault and for rape of a five year old. Corzine should answer for why this guy was out on the street and for why there was no attempt to notify Immigration authorities he was on the streets.

Another wizard is Essex county prosecutor Paula Dow who offers the specious argument that she didn’t direct ICE to be notified because she feared that Immigration officials would whisk Carranza off to the deportation dock. That’s about as screwy a story as you’re likely to hear. Immigration’s not going to deport an accused rapist and murderer with a prosecution pending. How stupid does Dow think people are?

It’s all some screwy politically correct shell game and people are rightly angry. Cory Booker’s a guy who wants to do the right thing but he needs help from the Honkeys on High and that means the governor. Bust chops. Kick the tires and light the fires. Tell the cops they must report illegals involved in violent crimes to immigration authorities. Is the weak drivel offered by the political pimp-daddies of political correctness worth even one hair of those murdered kids heads?