For instance, if you decide to flee from the police in your car and as a consequence a police car gets smashed up or a cop goes to the hospital. How much did the car cost new? Treble damages. How much did medical care for the injured cop cost? Treble damages. If that winds up costing into the millions TOO BAD. Stay in jail and break rocks until you pay it off.

Same thing with that protest in DC in which monuments were vandalized. How much does it cost in labor, equipment and materials to repair? Treble damages. Can’t pay? TOO BAD. Satisfy your fetish for destroying things by breaking rocks.

The ONLY thing that will stop this headlong descent into chaos is to hold the actors accountable through severe consequences.

Subotai Bahadur in reply to Peter Moss. | August 3, 2024 at 4:23 pm

I cannot disagree with the justice of what you propose, but to be honest consequences like this require a level of respect for and belief in the society and judicial system that no longer exists.

These acts of vandalism and assault almost always take place in urban areas, usually urban areas dominated by the Left and/or Academia.

To get a court order for damages, you have to have a victim who will call the police, file charges, and file or sue for restitution. In those areas, those who would make such filings are rare, especially in the wake of the possibility of official and unofficial retribution for doing so.

If a victim calls the police, you have to have police officers willing to make arrests and file everything properly. They have to be willing to do so in the face of political opposition from both their uniformed superiors who want further promotion and civilian superiors who in these areas got to their positions by catering to those doing the damages. Which means the officers’ and their family’s’ lifestyles and careers are at risk if they do so.

Say you get the perp locked up. OK, they will probably be out on bail, either recognizance or furnished by the Left and may well disappear and be a low priority of those above to find. If they do in fact show up, in such areas the prosecutor is almost surely a Leftist and will either drop charges, or plea bargain it all down to nothingness, with all records expunged.

But let us say that miribile dictu you get a court judgment for such cash restitution. And the response by the defendant is either to claim poverty and inability to pay . . . or possibly a defiant suggestion involving the court order and folding into all corners.

There is the problem that while the defendant can be incarcerated for specified terms for felonious or misdemeanor conduct; we do not have debtor’s prisons here.

It is the victim, the victim’s insurance company [and therefore the victim and all of us], or the government that will pay the damages because there is no real way to compel restitution and consequences in our society anymore. There is no longer a Social Contract [John Locke, not Rousseau].

Just for the record, I know that I sound old and cynical. I am both. I am also a retired Commissioned Peace Officer in my state who wore his badge for 28 years.

Subotai Bahadur

Paula | August 3, 2024 at 9:26 am

When things are so out of control that you allow this kind of stuff to happen, the only thing to pay is the piper.

paracelsus | August 3, 2024 at 10:04 am

“U. of California Regent Proposes Making Anti-Israel Protesters Pay for the Millions in Damage They Caused”
don’t think I can hold my breath that long

Tiki | August 3, 2024 at 10:06 am

I went to the @NatlParkService offices at the corner of Ohio Drive SW and Buckeye Drive SW and got copies of the permits requested for the day’s protests. I will post links and JPEGs of the documents in the thread here.

https://x.com/AsraNomani/status/1819506249882292679

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/373563/hamas-is-comin-following-the-money-at-c-and-3rd-streets-nw/