There was a time when slugging a cop would get you bumps on your head — along with maybe three-to-five at Dannemora state prison, up on the Canadian border.
But times change.
These days, when you mob-attack two cops in the Crossroads of the World you go through the system like dirt through a duck — and presto, you’re back on the street and boosting goods from an outer-borough department store.
There are (at least) two lessons here:
- Not all change is progress, and;
- Sometimes change — read: “reform” — needs to be rolled back.
When a border-busting teen-aged thug charged with felony assault on police officers walks free without bail, only to reappear just weeks later as part of an organized shoplifting crew, something truly is bent.
Introducing Venezuelan Darwin Andres Gomez-Izquiel, 19, who was arrested Tuesday at a Queens Macy’s. Police say he was one of three or four alleged boosters caught stuffing clothes into a duffle bag.
Nothing remarkable about that, right? Shoplifting is Gotham’s favorite sport these days.
Here’s what’s different: Gomez-Izquiel also was charged in January’s Times Square cop attack.
He walked after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s underlings declined to request bail — think George Soros’ big bucks at work — and was thought to have hopped a bus for sunny California.
Obviously not.
Bragg finally indicted Gomez-Izquiel and several others in the cop assault — public criticism can be an amazing motivator — and further court proceedings are set for Friday.
Whether Gomez-Izquiel, or anybody, will ever do serious time — that is, enough to deter future cop-fighters — is a crap-shoot.
The criminal-justice “reforms” passed by New York’s progressive Legislature have tipped the scales against prosecutors all across the Empire State.
And that, of course, assumes that Bragg is up for serious prosecution.
He’s the fellow who all-but promised no jail time for anybody unless much blood spatter is involved.
But there is no doubt that people like Gomez-Izquiel are a plague on a community straining its resources to the limit to provide for President Biden’s wave of alleged asylum-seekers.
There are at least 140,000 in the city at present, and probably many more than that.
For sure, most aren’t beating up cops or boosting department stores — and thank goodness for that small favor.
But their very presence represents a massive failure of federal immigration policy, and of the law itself, and it should surprise no one that overt lawlessness is trickling down to cities all across America.
Not that New York needs any help in that regard, thank you very much.
Whether migrant crime — increasingly organized and obviously dangerous — will turn the debate toward common-sense public safety policies is an open question.
Probably not: Gov. Hochul wants to close prisons; the Legislature won’t hear of “reform” roll-back and the City Council is busy hobbling cops.
But if not — well, hunker down: Here comes “That ’70s Show: Part 2.”
It won’t be a comedy.
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