'No Justice, No Sleep': Protesting Against Gang Violence

[Geee]

Powerline

This week, demonstrators took to the streets of Anacostia, an area in Southeast Washington, D.C. where I was born, to protest the taking of black lives. But they weren’t protesting police misconduct. They were protesting the killing by gang members of an eleven year old boy and the lax policing of their neighborhood. 

The boy, Davon McNeal a budding football star, was gunned down as he was leaving a Fourth of July cookout organized by his mother, an anti-violence advocate. The suspects are members of “the Crashout Gang.” Guns blazing, they were chasing people believed to be members of a rival gang. A stray bullet killed young McNeal, one of eleven people fatally shot in Washington, D.C. in the first week of July.

According to the Washington Post, the protesters want more, not less policing in their neighborhood. One mother told the Post:

Police need more presence here. They need to step it up. They’re sitting in their cars. Walk around. Where are all the police people on bicycles?

The protesters dismissed out of hand the lunatic idea of defunding the police. Said one, “of course not, that’s totally, totally wrong.” 

So is a court system that doesn’t keep criminals off the street. One of the gang members arrested for the killing of McNeal had been arrested in April and charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. However, a judge, Todd E. Edelman, released him from prison in May, over strong objections from the U.S. Attorneys Office, when D.C.’s prison population was reduced in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The gangster was required to wear a GPS tracking device. Of course, he cut off the device after the shooting.