California stands as the state with the highest inverse ratio between natural beauty and political viewpoint. To balance out the stunning national parks, golden beaches, and gorgeous weather, California’s increasingly radical political class have gleefully ushered in a new era of feces-covered streets surrendered to lawless homeless encampments, littered with used needles, and overrun with criminal activity. In the past few years alone, the notion of criminality has been diluted beyond recognition, leaving the law-abiding citizens of California at the mercy of those who delight in flouting the few rules which remain.
Unfortunately for the already exhausted state, COVID-19 has heralded the next stage of “progressive” insanity with the effective legalization of crime. Under the false guise of “preventing the spread of coronavirus,” many prisoners have been released from captivity and are free to resume their criminal activities of choice. Whether through ignorance, malevolence, or naivety, California is happily leaving our police departments with the impossible task of enforcing the law in a now lawless state.
One such example is the decision to reset bail amounts to $0 for “people accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.” While some celebrated this decision, referencing the overused and utterly naive assumption that releasing every accused offender will have no consequences, those of us who live in reality will recognize that this action misses two monumental points. The first is that, without the ability to remove criminals from our streets, police officers are left helpless in their already difficult battle against crime. The second is that, with no immediate consequences for criminal activity, it’s ridiculous to believe that the frequency of such actions will remain stable.
Like so many “progressive” policies, it relies on the bastardization of our fundamental moral compass. Perpetrators are treated as victims, creating an open season on the true victims now left defenseless. The unavoidable outcome of such idiocy is that the innocent are harmed by the guilty, with the police powerless to effectively intervene.
Just this week, the Escondido Police Department faced this obvious problem. On Monday, they reported that an “adult male transient” was recovering in hospital after being stabbed in the neck. The suspect, Timothy Alvarado, was detained by police minutes after the attack, and has been booked for attempted homicide. What makes this terrible crime relevant to this COVID-19 policy is that Alvarado was a direct beneficiary of the disastrous decision to decriminalize “non-violent” crime.
Ten days after Alvarado was released from jail after serving his sentence for a burglary conviction on April 3rd, “the Judicial Council of California directed all the Superior Courts in California to implement an emergency bail schedule as the result of COVID-19.” Alvarado then proceeded to embark on a crime spree which included multiple auto thefts, multiple possessions of a stolen vehicle, felony evading, driving on the wrong side of the road during a pursuit, and multiple acts of resisting arrest.
Despite the hard work of the Escondido Police Department, they were forced by these absurd “emergency measures” to repeatedly release Alvarado with nothing but a citation. When the punishment for crime is the mild inconvenience of temporary detainment, why would any violent criminal change their behavior? The answer is they wouldn’t, and a man is fighting for his life in hospital as a result.
For Alvarado, justice can only now be achieved after an attempted murder. If the California legislature and judiciary believe that innocent blood must be spilled before we allow police officers to enforce the law, then we are truly on the brink of anarchy. When that day comes, the victims won’t be criminals like Alvarado. They’ll be law-abiding citizens like you and me who have been left defenseless by a state government that has lost all sense of moral perspective.