It’s a horrible story: A woman walking her dog early in the morning was unable to avoid a crazy man who throw a bottle of urine at her and then killed her dog. The New York Times and the local city council member want to ignore the criminal part of what happened to keep the man from facing justice. Why? Because the woman was White and the man Black. As I see it, though, focusing on skin color is as evil in New York in 2022 as it was in the Jim Crow South.

The NY Times reported the ugly facts (hat tip: Twitchy):

On Aug. 3, Jessica Chrustic, 40, a professional beekeeper, was walking her dog in Prospect Park a little after 6 a.m. when she saw a man rifling through the garbage outside the Picnic House. She had seen the man before — tall, with dreadlocks wrapped in a turban, carrying a long staff and often muttering to himself or cursing — and she usually kept her distance. But this morning there was no room to avoid him.

According to Ms. Chrustic, he started yelling about immigrants taking over the park, then grabbed a bottle of what she later concluded was urine and sloshed it at her and her dog. She tried to run away, but Moose, her 80-pound golden retriever mix, was straining toward the man, trying to protect her.

The man started swinging the stick, she said. One blow hit her, not seriously. Another connected solidly with the dog’s snout. Mary Rowland, 56, a hospital manager who was walking her dog nearby, said she heard the crack of wood on bone and came running toward them, screaming at the man to get away.

Image: Mentally ill in New York City. YouTube screen grab.

It turned out that the man also struck Moose’s belly, perforating his intestine, and causing fatal injuries. Clearly, the man was dangerous, yet the New York establishment has been unwilling to go after him. Why? Race, of course. Chrustic is White; the assailant is Black. The Times’ John Leland explains this vexing issue:

Real-world ethics question: In a well-used city park, a man with a history of erratic behavior attacks a dog and its owner with a stick; five days later, the dog dies. The man is Black, the dog owner white; the adjoining neighborhood is famously progressive, often critical of the police and jail system. At the same time, crime is up in the neighborhood, with attacks by emotionally disturbed people around the city putting some residents on edge.

In a dog-loving, progressive enclave, where pushing law and order can clash with calls for social justice, what’s the right thing to do? How do you protect the public without furthering injustice against this man?

So again, the man is known to be violent, he’s killed an animal, and he assaulted a woman with a toxic substance—yet his race protects him from the criminal justice system, while her race means that she has no recourse. Again, try imagining this somewhere in Mississippi in 1950 with the races switched.

Well, what can you expect from the New York Times? It is, after all, the terminus of the “college to job” professional pipeline. Everyone who works there is steeped in academic leftism so, naturally, that’s how Times employees view such issues. However, the problem extends to the politicians, too, the people elected (presumably) to make city life livable. There are problems there too.

What the Black man did to the dog (not including splashing Chrustic with a biological substance), can be tried as a misdemeanor or even a felony. The local pol, though, isn’t interested:

Both Ms. Chrustic and Mr. Nammack [a gay man worried about community crime] separately appealed to their representative on the City Council, Shahana Hanif, for help, but they came away feeling her staff members were more concerned with the safety of the man — whom they presumed to be homeless and mentally ill — than with the threat he might pose to others.

Hanif’s spokesperson “Mx. Michael Whitesides” (I assume “mx” means “mixed up”) was clear: “We don’t believe that the N.Y.P.D. is the vehicle to bring safety to our community.” She/he/it essentially said that, if people want to maintain their progressive bona fides, they must be willing to accept violence in their community lest marginalized people end up in the criminal justice system.

On the one hand, the above narrative is appalling insofar as it reflects the values of the New York City establishment. My heart goes out to ordinary people who, for economic or family reasons are trapped in that city. On the other hand, I can’t think of any people more deserving of this pro-criminal viewpoint than the progressives who have visited so many horrors on America, from Biden on down to the crazy, dangerous people flourishing on America’s streets.