A gallery-owner in America’s biggest s—thole city has gone viral this week. The San Francisco gallery owner was recorded spraying water from a hose at a homeless person lying on the sidewalk outside his premises. Shannon Collier Gwin was subsequently arrested and charged with battery.
The man is certainly not proud of his actions, saying that he just “completely broke” after the woman who had been living in the entryway of his gallery for some days started overturning trash cans, screaming at him and spitting on him. Since the footage of Gwin’s response went viral his gallery has been further vandalized.
Of course Gwin probably shouldn’t have snapped. But you know, everyone has a breaking point, and the more that law enforcement abandon a city the closer people come to that breaking point.
In fact I often wondered why it doesn’t happen more. Not just in San Francisco but in lawless cities across the country. Including this one.
Just this week in New York, two days in a row, I saw people shoplifting with absolutely no repercussion.
At a sportwear store in Columbus Circle I saw a homeless-looking man walking around collecting things from the racks and piling them up in his arms. Out of interest I followed him. Sure enough he was planning on walking out with the goods. Fortunately on that occasion there was a security guard. Like the shoplifter the guard was black, but the would-be thief started screaming at the security guard that he was “disrespecting” him by saying he had to put the goods back. I would guess to a near 100% certainty that if the guard had not been black then race would have entered the discussion and the thief would have been able to walk out with whatever he wanted.
As it was, he was eventually persuaded to put the goods down and walk out. “He comes in most weeks” one of the store staff told me. “Why don’t you call the police” I asked. “There’s no point” came the reply. “The main concern is to protect the staff.”
The next day I was in a CVS on Lex and a man walked out with a huge luggage bag full of things he had shoveled into it off the shelves. On this occasion there was no security in the shop and the whole thing only became clear because the two Asian women who were working on the tills started shouting after him as he left the store. “Why you steal?” one kept shouting. He just walked straight out with no concern.
I asked the staff-member about this. Why don’t they call the police, I asked. “There’s no point” she said. “He comes in often.” Why does he get away with it, I asked. They shrugged. Again, so long as nobody is hurt it seems that the city’s drug stores are effectively an open, free buffet at which the city’s homeless and others can help themselves. “He’ll sell the things around the corner for perhaps a dollar” one of the shop-workers told me.
Well here is the thing that people are forgetting in New York just as they long ago forgot it in San Francisco: none of this is normal. Most first-world countries and cities do not simply allow law-breaking like this. In Paris, Berlin, Rome or London you are not allowed to simply go into a store, fill your bags up and walk out. If someone is caught trying to shoplift in any of these cities they are detained by the shop’s security staff. Those staff then call the police and the police come and arrest the person. That is how a normal society works. Law-breaking is not simply allowed.
But that is what is happening in our city, just as it is happening in San Francisco.
And of course there are plenty of excuses that people make. Some say that the people doing the stealing are poor, benighted people, often homeless, often mentally ill. And some or all of that may be true. But still no reasonable society permits law-breaking by certain groups in the society. Others — especially on the political left — portray this sort of thing as essentially victimless crime. They say that stores like a sports clothing store or a CVS is a large national or multinational company. They point out that all of these daily losses can just be covered by insurance.
Like all such excuses this is completely reprehensible. Large companies are not there to provide welfare. They are there to make a profit. When they make losses and especially when they have higher and higher insurance payments these costs are inevitably passed onto customers. It already costs enough to have a store in NYC. They already have their online competitors to deal with. Inevitably many such companies will decide that the losses aren’t worth it and shut at least some of their shops.
Either way it is the law-abiding public who end up paying the costs of this free-for-all. I don’t know that hosing people down is the answer. But I’m surprised more people don’t do it, or something like it. Because once the law disappears it’s a free for all. And not in the way that our city’s law-breakers will like.
Jacinda and the lockdown backlash
Farewell then Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister who has announced that she is stepping down from office. In an emotional statement she cited burnout and said that there just wasn’t anything left in her fuel tank.
Ardern is an interesting type of left-wing politician. She is all about emoting, showing how caring she is and much more. Yet when it came to COVID lockdowns no government in the world was more authoritarian than New Zealand’s.
Jacinda always wanted to show how deeply she cared. But when it came to the crunch she was cruel beyond belief to the people of her country. On one occasion the whole country locked down because of one single COVID case being identified.
The public were about to express their own concern about this by turfing her out of office. How selfish of her to rob them of that pleasure.
