21 Comments

Come now, Michael, don't you know that these people who were minding their own business are the real threat to society and not the corporate and politically backed BLM terrorists?

It's really amazing that mobs of criminals can burn, loot, and murder without being arrested, but if you're sitting in a park without a mask (there's absolutely no LAW on the books about wearing one), that's an arrestable offense.

This kind of reality has a very short future.

The backlash is coming and it will not be kind.

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It makes sense that most violators are POC. Following rules is white culture. (Before I get piled on, this is an attempt at sarcasm.)

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One of the many contradictions of corporate leftism is that they are (supposedly) the most concerned about "mass incarceration" and "police abuse", but then they are also in practice the most committed to the nanny state regime that makes those things inevitable.

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solid write up, and reporting. You stopped well short of injecting bias into the piece. Thank you.

As another poster asked, am curious how reporting like this will show if Newark policing ends up being replicated elsewhere by jurisdiction and population demographics. Eg did the Wilmington DE - which is kinda similar to Newark - end up deploying the same tactics to invent 'crimes.'

I'd be really curious if this was individual 'police initiative' or was driven down from their bosses.

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The very real risk of unreasonable and draconian orders and enforcement is the loss of trust and faith in authorities in times of public health emergencies. Instead of building public buy in to efforts to fight the pandemic, Newark's petty dictatorial citations likely left people resentful and feeling like it was all about bullying power trips. What does sitting by yourself in front of your home listening to music, or walking around the block with your wife without a mask, have to do with disease prevention? Not one damn thing. And from a public health point of view, wouldn't have been better for officers to remain in their car - distanced from the citizens - and tell people they need to put the mask on? In so many places it became about exerting power, rather than disease prevention.

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I'm curious, was this kind of thing happening in other states as well, or did New Jersey stand out from the crowd?

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Bottom Line: We can't all just make up our own laws.

You can be sure nobody will do six months in prison for inadvertently breaking one of the laws/rules. If people intentionally did it, well, that's called civil disobedience. Go to jail, then write an essay about it. Like Thoreau.

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Nice article, Mr. Tracey. I suppose the Newark folks tolerated the lockdown harassment like the rest of us: the jackassery their elected officals being relative to neighboring jackasses. I just learned about mayor Baraka, but my knowledge of other recent NJ/NY state and local leadership are Murphy, Christy, Booker, Melendez, Cuomo, Spitzer, de Blasio, Bloomberg, Schumer, and Gillibrand. Not exactly bastions of truth and liberty. You get what you vote for.

From what I read, Newark implemented police reform about five years ago and have seen crime drop off signifcantly. They didn’t have a police-involved shooting in 2020, experienced historic lows in homicides the two years, and had a decrease in violent crime for several years leading up to 2020. Good for them. But even with that improvement, their crime numbers are still pretty terrible and projections indicate 2021 is trending ~45% worse already.

Interestingly, the drop-off in crime also corresponded to the recent economic boom and record low minority unemployment. I didn’t dig in enough to see how Newark benefited from that. Was it the economy or the police reform that benefited them the most? We’ll probably find out soon. Newark will likely be an interesting bellwether of sorts:

With only ~11% white (not hispanic or latino) and ~28% poverty rate, they will likely be hit hard economically by the double whammy of illegal immigration and globalization that Democrats (and to be fair Republicans before Trump) are all for. I suppose folks getting payed unemployment “bonuses” to stay home might be considered a triple whammy as crime season (aka Summer) picks up.

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It's hard to remember the rules sometimes, but I learned that it's OK to be in a large group, mask optional if you're protesting the cause BLM.

Stay safe and double mask out there people. Remember, Covid is a real thing. #fourteendaystoflattenthecurve

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And not a single one for having an illegal air freshener!

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