I don’t want to get into trouble here with deeply religious people, but there has to be a limit to how intrusive their evangelism can be in public. Yesterday, there was a lady with a very loud microphone preaching about Jesus and saving our souls and so on. She was standing on Broadway near City Center, and I swear you could hear her from 2 blocks away. She had a very unpleasant, grating voice made even worse by the distortion of the amplification. I was surprised the police didn’t stop her, even though there were several nearby.
It made me realize that, in this current national conversation about crime, it’s not just violent crimes people are upset about. If it were, the fact that violent crime is down across the country would suggest that people are less worried about it. But they’re not; if anything, they’re more upset. So it can’t be just “crime” in and of itself; it’s got to be something more than crime that still has people believing that Democrats are soft on it.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. If robbery, assault, murder, carjacking, etc. are all down in Oakland, as B. Lee alleges based on OPD statistics, when why are so many people still concerned about crime here? The lady with the loudspeaker gave me my answer. She may not have been breaking any major laws (actually, there are noise ordinances she was violating—more on this later), but what she was doing was—to use an old phrase—disturbing the peace.
It’s an ancient concept, rooted in English common law, where it’s also known as “breach of the peace.” The actual law dates back to 1361 and the “Justice of the Peace Act.” Britain’s colonies, including the American colonies, picked up on it and formulated their own versions. Here in California, our Penal Code, Section 415, defines one aspect of disturbing the peace as “whenever a person willfully disturbs another with loud and unreasonable noise.” The punishment can be 90 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $400. Obviously, not too many Californians are arrested for disturbing the peace, which the lady evangelist was doing. Had it been up to me, I would have asked the lady to turn off her amplifier and, if she refused, I’d have arrested her. But it’s not up to me, so I had to suffer her exhortations, as did everyone else. It wasn’t just the noise that annoyed me—I’ve gotten used to jackhammers, backwards beepers and so on; they’re the price we pay for living in the city. No, it was the lady’s impertinence and arrogance that she alone knows the correct way to live, and that she has the right to scream it on a city street where people in office buildings are trying to work and residents in nearby apartments may be trying to rest. How dare that lady assume she had the right?
And this, I think, gets to the root of why people are upset about crime, even though the numbers may be down. Crime is just the tip of the iceberg of an entitlement psychology that has spread across the land. Too many people think that, because America is supposedly a democracy, they have the right to do whatever they want, anytime and anywhere, and if you don’t like it, you can go fuck yourself. This is why they have sideshows, and parades of dirt bikers who pull wheelies on busy streets, and ignoramuses who drive in neighborhoods in the middle of the night blaring their music at 130 decibels. All these behaviors are disturbing the peace, and none would have been tolerated in human society for all of history (even had the technology been invented), until now. What has changed is this culture of entitlement which progressives have imposed on us, according to which “equity” means no one’s moral views or behaviors are superior to anyone else’s. The result is exactly what one would expect: an out-of-control culture that really and truly exasperates a lot of decent people.
Donald Trump, whom I despise, has realized this is a wedge issue; it’s why he makes such a big deal about “crime.” I have to say, I think he’s on to something. We do have rude troublemakers in this country, and in this city. They have realized they can get away with just about anything, because for a long time progressive politicians like Pamela Price, Carroll Fife and Sheng Thao have signaled them that they can. Many of these hooligans are young; they’re experimenting with just how far they can go in being obnoxious, and all too often the answer from their elders is, “As far as you want.” It’s not their fault that they take this to heart. It’s the fault of their elders, especially the politicians, who have become the first generation in human history to raise their young with a total absence of scruples or morality, or of the simplest appreciation of the rights of others.
Look, I know there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians in America and they have a lot of power. But sooner or later, Democrats and civil libertarians—including Gov. Newsom—are going to have to call them out as the threat they are, explicitly and by name. The blowback will be fierce, historic. But it has to be done.
Steve Heimoff