The progressive idea of justice somehow keeps getting dumber

One of the first things my fiancé and I did after purchasing our first home was install a security system. This included a Ring-style doorbell camera that alerts us when people approach our front door and automatically starts recording video and audio. The resulting clips are saved in a mobile app and can be exported with ease.  

Imagine my surprise when I learned this week that wanting to monitor my home is racist! 

A new article in tech magazine WIRED says they don’t recommend Ring cameras because they supposedly make it easier “for both private citizens and law enforcement agencies to target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion or country of origin.” 

How does WIRED think policing works, exactly? In any investigation, witnesses are asked to provide a description of a suspect. Yes, that includes race and other easily identifiable traits that may help narrow down the search, such as height, weight, visible tattoos or unique clothing. If anything, having surveillance footage of a suspect would lead to less racial profiling because homeowners and police have more information to go off of than just “African-American male.” Never mind the fact that the first home security system was reportedly invented by a black woman who wanted extra protection while her husband was away; WIRED argued in 2021 that she unknowingly contributed to the anti-black surveillance state. 

According to Simone Browne, professor of Black Studies in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, “The historical formation of surveillance is not outside the historical formation of slavery.”

WIRED also rejects Ring cameras because “homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.” They might have a point if Ring cameras were equipped with Bond-style hidden guns that fired upon any unlucky soul who landed on your doorstep. But on what planet is it vigilantism to provide assistance to a police investigation that would ultimately result in an alleged perp getting his or her day in court? That’s called being a good citizen. 

At this point, the left might as well tell us to stop locking our doors. After all, some brilliant scholars have already made the case that the Second Amendment and the concept of self-defense are rooted in white supremacy and racial bias. You basically have to allow crimes to be committed against you or else you’re a horrible, no-good racist. Just look at what happened to Daniel Penny, who was praised by his fellow passengers on the New York subway for subduing a threatening vagrant, yet faces fifteen years in prison.

WIRED’s insistence that doorbell cameras are racist is especially sickening in light of the fact that they might be key in helping to solve a particularly heinous crime that took place in Washington, DC, last week. A thirty-one-year-old Lyft driver, Nasrat Ahmad Yar, who served as an interpreter for US forces during the war in Afghanistan, was killed during a suspected carjacking on July 3. 

Ahmad Yar, a married father of four, moved to the US shortly after the fall of Kabul as he was considered a target of the Taliban. He originally settled in Philadelphia, but relocated his family to the DC area after he was robbed at gunpoint. He lived here less than a year before he was gunned down. How sad that someone who managed to survive the unimaginable violence in his own country would ultimately die due to a senseless crime in the one he sacrificed so much to help. 

Luckily, police have a lead thanks to one of those pesky home surveillance systems. Four teenagers were spotted running away from the scene of the crime, with one chastising his friend for firing the gun. “He was reaching, bro,” the assumed gunman replied. 

But luckily for those four, DC has been rather hospitable to teen murderers of late. Starting in 2016, thanks to the prodding of Alabama native Charles Allen, the DC city council passed a series of criminal justice reform measures that allow early release for the most violent offenders, so long as they were twenty-five or younger at the time of sentencing. Judges are not allowed to consider the nature of the crime committed when assessing whether these miscreants are eligible for early release — and life sentences without parole are not permitted for minors. A twenty-five-year-old who rapes and murders someone could conceivably get out of prison after just fifteen years under DC’s laws. (The DC council passed a targeted emergency bill in an effort to curb rising violent crime Tuesday.) Meanwhile, council chairman Phil Mendelson says cops are to blame for young people believing they can “get away with murder” in the nation’s capital because of the low homicide solve rate. DC police are indeed understaffed — but is it any wonder they might not be super motivated to solve crimes when they don’t receive political or prosecutorial support and had their budget cut by millions in 2021? 

Other major US cities are taking similar approaches to the justice system. 50 Cent, the Get Rich or Die Tryin’ rapper who was shot nine times in a drive-by shooting, said Los Angeles “is finished” after the city eliminated bail for anyone charged with a misdemeanor or non-violent felony. California Democrats are also pushing a bill that requires judges to consider the race of a perpetrator before handing down a sentence. Assembly Bill 852 “would require courts, whenever they have discretion to determine a sentence, to consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations” with the intent of “rectifying racial bias.”

This proposed law might sound awfully brazen, but it’s completely in line with how the left views crime. Black and brown people who commit crimes at disproportionately higher rates than their white counterparts are merely suffering from systemic racism that dates back to slavery. They are not responsible for their actions as the system is rigged against them. They are the true victims to the left, regardless of if their actions harm others. 

Crime prevention and rehabilitation are obviously worthy goals in any criminal justice system. We should try to understand why people commit crimes and consider if some criminals are able to be reintegrated safely into society. But the left has completely lost the plot by making those the only considerations in their idea of justice. Justice also needs to factor the actual victims of crime into the equation. They deserve to see the people who have wronged them be punished for their crimes — and potential victims have the right to be protected from those who pose a danger to society. Neither of those concepts has to, or should, factor race into the equation.