The body of a junkie ex-con who had robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint was placed in a golden coffin on a horse-drawn hearse while a nation whose cities were burning watched.
Cannon Hinnant was laid to rest quietly in a small funeral home across the street from a gas station. The mourners, some driving pickup trucks, parked out front and made their way through the puddles to hear his youth pastor eulogize the 5-year-old boy who had been shot in the head.
The deaths of George Floyd,a 46-year-old Minneapolis black ex-con strung out on drugs, and Cannon Hinnant, a 5-year-old white boy from a small city in North Carolina, are both symbols.
Floyd’s death during a struggle with police led to nationwide race riots, the destruction of statues and stores, hundreds of millions in damage, severe injuries and deaths, and a political inquisition. Hinnant’s death has been ignored outside the local and conservative media.
The out-of-context video of Floyd dying of cardiac arrest while high on Fentanyl became evidence of police racism, not just by the white officer restraining him, but across the country. And Cannon Hinnant’s murder at the hands of a black felon while riding his bike on a grassy winding street became evidence of a racist double standard and out of control crime.
The truth is that Floyd and Hinnant’s deaths were symptoms of the same crisis.
After Floyd’s death, it became fashionable to speak of crime and policing as inventions of white supremacists and symptoms of white fragility. Cannon’s small head proved fragile when he was shot, but Hinnant’s father regularly invited Darius Sessoms, his killer, for meals or a beer.
Sessoms had been in and out of prison. The common theme was drugs and guns. Year after year, he would go in for 3 months for possession, and then out again, he appeared to have stolen a gun, and then he had begun maintaining a house for drug activity.
It's a familiar story in Wilson, North Carolina, a half-black and half-white city of under 50,000 which has seen huge drug busts over the years and where the crime logs focus on drug-related crimes by men with three names and no future.
In the age of drug apps, a former president who casually mentioned using cocaine, and a partnership between leftists, libertarians, and some GOPers to decriminalize drugs, focusing on the drug angle is considered politically incorrect. And yet it’s always lurking there anyway.
No one familiar with street level crime was surprised to find drugs in Floyd’s system or Sessoms’ drug charges. This is the world inhabited by police officers who patrol the streets and answer calls, knowing each time what they’ll see before they even arrive at the scene.
The Defund Police movement is right in one regard. We’ve outsourced managing the collapse of our society to men willing to deal with the worst elements of it for $28,000 a year. We have, justly, spent a great deal of time talking about the psychological traumas of veterans, but very little dealing with the state of mind of the men and women fighting the war on our own streets.
But the Defund Police movement and its allies, including top Democrats, insist that there is no crisis. Everything from the drug war to the concept of private property was invented by old white men to keep young black men down. There is no crime problem, only an enforcement problem.
After trying out this theory for a few months, freeing thousands of criminals, refusing to arrest or imprison new criminals, and tying the hands of police, the crime rate skyrocketed. And black elected officials, from the moderates to the radicals, have come out for law enforcement. Every poll shows solid majorities of black people want the police to stay right where they are.
The drug war and its massive police presence were not invented by white racists, they were lobbied for and demanded by black communities who wanted to end the violence. That painful lesson is being relearned at a great cost in human lives. And it’s a long way from over.
After twenty years of hard work and success, too many people forgot what made us safe.
The unhappy truth is that Cannon Hinnant is dead because his killer wasn’t in jail. And George Floyd is dead and a nation is on fire because he wasn’t safely tucked away in prison.
Criminal justice reform didn’t do anyone any favors. Not the criminals or their victims.
Democrats killed Cannon Hinnant, they killed George Floyd, and they’re killing American cities.
Instead of dealing with the disaster, the Democrats continue to treat dead criminals like saints while ignoring their victims. They feed racial narratives, filling headlines with ‘white’ perpetrators and ‘black’ victims while ignoring stories like Cannon’s murder that don’t fit their racial narrative.
The media is pumping out a steady diet of black victims and white perpetrators. Even if the perpetrating usually seems to involve calling the police in a potentially dangerous situation. But the police forces, many of them run by or filled with minorities, aren’t oppressing black communities, they’re protecting them. Because there are plenty of black Cannons.
Three children are shot on average every week in Philly. The cops aren’t shooting them.
In under a decade, criminal justice reform turned the country’s biggest cities into hellholes. The Democrat media is frantically trying to keep a lid on the biggest scandal in a generation. Even while gang members are racking up a body count that we haven’t seen before in this century, the media keeps shouting that black people are being terrorized by white cops.
That must be why, in a recent Gallup poll, 81% of black people wanted more or the same amount of police. But just having the police patrol neighborhoods isn’t the answer. Arrests are meaningless unless the perpetrators are held until trial, instead of being put back on the streets. Trials have to end in serious prison time for violent offenders, gang members, and drug dealers.
Bail reform, drug decriminalization, and the rest of the criminal justice reform disaster must go.
Organized crime in America is largely controlled by gangs, some foreign and some domestic, it’s time we stopped believing the lies that they’re socially deprived oppressed youth, and started treating them like Al Qaeda, instead of a bunch of social welfare cases.
America has to go back to the hoary cliche of the drug war that liberals and libertarians hate so much. And the southern border has to be secured against the cartels and China.
George Floyd was high on fentanyl. The source of the deadly drug is often China.
If Obama hadn’t given China’s drug trade a pass while making sure Americans needed an ID to buy cough syrup, the entire Floyd case might never have happened. The more America goes after foreign drug industries, the less it needs to spend time policing Americans.
Just like Islamic terrorism, we can fight it at the source, or we can try controlling it at home.
If China were shipping IEDs to America that were killing 30,000 people a year, we would have a national response. But it’s just pushing chemicals that are killing 30,000 Americans a year.
The drug war, like the war on terror, is a two way street. Unilaterally surrendering doesn’t work.
We gave up on the war on drugs. And the People’s Republic of China is winning the war on us.
None of this is what the media wants to talk about because it strikes at the heart of the governance failures of their political party. Instead it wants to convince Americans to double down on the same policies that killed Cannon Hinnant, that killed George Floyd, and that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every single year with bullets, knives, and overdoses.
The Democrats embraced criminals, championing their voting rights, their employment rights, and their right not to be locked up for committing crimes. They need to be held accountable.
America can belong to the criminals or to the citizens.
We’ve seen what a country that belongs to the criminals looks like. In Chicago, the city is raising bridges to keep the mobs of looters out of downtown. In Portland, armed mobs besieged a federal courthouse. In New York City, the streets are empty at night. In Minneapolis, the only security comes from private security. Everywhere in the big cities there is fear and death.
The answer lies with the same old three Ps: police, prosecutors, and prisons.
It begins with the simple truth that if Sessoms hadn't been living on Archers Road, Cannon Hinnant would still be alive. The justice system exists to protect children like Cannon from criminals like Sessoms. The Democrats have reversed the equation, fighting to protect criminals from their victims. America will belong to its people again when the criminals are back in prison.
Cannon Hinnant was laid to rest quietly in a small funeral home across the street from a gas station. The mourners, some driving pickup trucks, parked out front and made their way through the puddles to hear his youth pastor eulogize the 5-year-old boy who had been shot in the head.
The deaths of George Floyd,a 46-year-old Minneapolis black ex-con strung out on drugs, and Cannon Hinnant, a 5-year-old white boy from a small city in North Carolina, are both symbols.
Floyd’s death during a struggle with police led to nationwide race riots, the destruction of statues and stores, hundreds of millions in damage, severe injuries and deaths, and a political inquisition. Hinnant’s death has been ignored outside the local and conservative media.
The out-of-context video of Floyd dying of cardiac arrest while high on Fentanyl became evidence of police racism, not just by the white officer restraining him, but across the country. And Cannon Hinnant’s murder at the hands of a black felon while riding his bike on a grassy winding street became evidence of a racist double standard and out of control crime.
The truth is that Floyd and Hinnant’s deaths were symptoms of the same crisis.
After Floyd’s death, it became fashionable to speak of crime and policing as inventions of white supremacists and symptoms of white fragility. Cannon’s small head proved fragile when he was shot, but Hinnant’s father regularly invited Darius Sessoms, his killer, for meals or a beer.
Sessoms had been in and out of prison. The common theme was drugs and guns. Year after year, he would go in for 3 months for possession, and then out again, he appeared to have stolen a gun, and then he had begun maintaining a house for drug activity.
It's a familiar story in Wilson, North Carolina, a half-black and half-white city of under 50,000 which has seen huge drug busts over the years and where the crime logs focus on drug-related crimes by men with three names and no future.
In the age of drug apps, a former president who casually mentioned using cocaine, and a partnership between leftists, libertarians, and some GOPers to decriminalize drugs, focusing on the drug angle is considered politically incorrect. And yet it’s always lurking there anyway.
No one familiar with street level crime was surprised to find drugs in Floyd’s system or Sessoms’ drug charges. This is the world inhabited by police officers who patrol the streets and answer calls, knowing each time what they’ll see before they even arrive at the scene.
The Defund Police movement is right in one regard. We’ve outsourced managing the collapse of our society to men willing to deal with the worst elements of it for $28,000 a year. We have, justly, spent a great deal of time talking about the psychological traumas of veterans, but very little dealing with the state of mind of the men and women fighting the war on our own streets.
But the Defund Police movement and its allies, including top Democrats, insist that there is no crisis. Everything from the drug war to the concept of private property was invented by old white men to keep young black men down. There is no crime problem, only an enforcement problem.
After trying out this theory for a few months, freeing thousands of criminals, refusing to arrest or imprison new criminals, and tying the hands of police, the crime rate skyrocketed. And black elected officials, from the moderates to the radicals, have come out for law enforcement. Every poll shows solid majorities of black people want the police to stay right where they are.
The drug war and its massive police presence were not invented by white racists, they were lobbied for and demanded by black communities who wanted to end the violence. That painful lesson is being relearned at a great cost in human lives. And it’s a long way from over.
After twenty years of hard work and success, too many people forgot what made us safe.
The unhappy truth is that Cannon Hinnant is dead because his killer wasn’t in jail. And George Floyd is dead and a nation is on fire because he wasn’t safely tucked away in prison.
Criminal justice reform didn’t do anyone any favors. Not the criminals or their victims.
Democrats killed Cannon Hinnant, they killed George Floyd, and they’re killing American cities.
Instead of dealing with the disaster, the Democrats continue to treat dead criminals like saints while ignoring their victims. They feed racial narratives, filling headlines with ‘white’ perpetrators and ‘black’ victims while ignoring stories like Cannon’s murder that don’t fit their racial narrative.
The media is pumping out a steady diet of black victims and white perpetrators. Even if the perpetrating usually seems to involve calling the police in a potentially dangerous situation. But the police forces, many of them run by or filled with minorities, aren’t oppressing black communities, they’re protecting them. Because there are plenty of black Cannons.
Three children are shot on average every week in Philly. The cops aren’t shooting them.
In under a decade, criminal justice reform turned the country’s biggest cities into hellholes. The Democrat media is frantically trying to keep a lid on the biggest scandal in a generation. Even while gang members are racking up a body count that we haven’t seen before in this century, the media keeps shouting that black people are being terrorized by white cops.
That must be why, in a recent Gallup poll, 81% of black people wanted more or the same amount of police. But just having the police patrol neighborhoods isn’t the answer. Arrests are meaningless unless the perpetrators are held until trial, instead of being put back on the streets. Trials have to end in serious prison time for violent offenders, gang members, and drug dealers.
Bail reform, drug decriminalization, and the rest of the criminal justice reform disaster must go.
Organized crime in America is largely controlled by gangs, some foreign and some domestic, it’s time we stopped believing the lies that they’re socially deprived oppressed youth, and started treating them like Al Qaeda, instead of a bunch of social welfare cases.
America has to go back to the hoary cliche of the drug war that liberals and libertarians hate so much. And the southern border has to be secured against the cartels and China.
George Floyd was high on fentanyl. The source of the deadly drug is often China.
If Obama hadn’t given China’s drug trade a pass while making sure Americans needed an ID to buy cough syrup, the entire Floyd case might never have happened. The more America goes after foreign drug industries, the less it needs to spend time policing Americans.
Just like Islamic terrorism, we can fight it at the source, or we can try controlling it at home.
If China were shipping IEDs to America that were killing 30,000 people a year, we would have a national response. But it’s just pushing chemicals that are killing 30,000 Americans a year.
The drug war, like the war on terror, is a two way street. Unilaterally surrendering doesn’t work.
We gave up on the war on drugs. And the People’s Republic of China is winning the war on us.
None of this is what the media wants to talk about because it strikes at the heart of the governance failures of their political party. Instead it wants to convince Americans to double down on the same policies that killed Cannon Hinnant, that killed George Floyd, and that are killing tens of thousands of Americans every single year with bullets, knives, and overdoses.
The Democrats embraced criminals, championing their voting rights, their employment rights, and their right not to be locked up for committing crimes. They need to be held accountable.
America can belong to the criminals or to the citizens.
We’ve seen what a country that belongs to the criminals looks like. In Chicago, the city is raising bridges to keep the mobs of looters out of downtown. In Portland, armed mobs besieged a federal courthouse. In New York City, the streets are empty at night. In Minneapolis, the only security comes from private security. Everywhere in the big cities there is fear and death.
The answer lies with the same old three Ps: police, prosecutors, and prisons.
It begins with the simple truth that if Sessoms hadn't been living on Archers Road, Cannon Hinnant would still be alive. The justice system exists to protect children like Cannon from criminals like Sessoms. The Democrats have reversed the equation, fighting to protect criminals from their victims. America will belong to its people again when the criminals are back in prison.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Comments
Since the War on (some) Drugs is a war against the American people and has done more to destroy our Constitutional Rights than any other government program, losing it would be a good thing. The 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th,8th, 9th, and 10th Amendments have all been gutted in service to the war on self medication. The government causes the problem then demands our freedoms and money to "fight" the problem.
ReplyDeletePlease elaborate.
DeleteHow to affirm the freedom to ingest, carry a gun,
ReplyDeletedrive? Easy; just be responsible; don’t hurt
others. Sorry, that only works for people whose
lifestyle is peaceful and legal.
Obama’s election showed America’s post-racial state.
More merit to the electorate than him. He exploited
H.L. Gates, Trayvon, Brown to demean Justice as
racist.
Undoing Obama’s damage means removing dangerous
criminals from society, whatever their gender,
race, creed, etc.
Charlie
It would be most helpful to remove him as well.
DeleteWhenever someone suggests that we as a country are too soft on crime, another person will remind us that America has the largest prison population in the world. The latter fact is supposed to be evidence that the former suggestion is not true. Quite frankly I don't know if the U.S. has a greater crime problem than other Western democracies, but I do believe we are too soft on crime. As an example, whenever I read about the arrest of a child molester, invariably it will be revealed that the individual has a previous criminal history of that same behavior. Why, as a society, are we willing accept the current level of crime, where a woman jogger risks her personal safety even when jogging in broad daylight? I can only conclude that I am in the minority in believing that we stricter enforcement, longer prison sentences, and more prisons.
ReplyDeleteSo it's been going 50 years, you have the world's highest prison population per capita, and a far more out of control drug problem than Europe where penalties are more liberal and non-existent in some cases. What's it going to take to 'win', and what does victory look like?
ReplyDeleteIt's desperately urgent that the US and all countries move to decriminalised possession of all drugs and legalisation of certain others (cannabis, coca leaves, psychedelic mushrooms probably). But then by what mechanism will conservatives selectively punish minorities and other out-groups disproportionately severely?
And what the hell are you playing at referring to the 'out-of-context video of Floyd dying' you repellent scumbag?
Your haughty (“selective punish minorities”),
Deleteand rude (“repellent scumbag”) tirade lends a grim
foreboding of your Critical Race Derangement.
The truth is that the black minority is vastly
more guilty of violent aggression in all settings.
To avoid the racist charge, society has not
protected victims of all races, including black.
Your racism is what hurts everyone. You’ve had
your say, and we judge you accordingly.
Charlie
Another great analysis! Drugs are destroying our society, and it isn't just about arresting minorities, it's about safety, health, and the traditional values that made this nation great. For those who profess otherwise: Seattle, Portland, and all the other cities burning as a result of the abandonment of those values is proof positive the alternative is deadly.
ReplyDeleteHard drugs like fentanyl, do not by themselves cause violence. Fentanyl is a sedative, not a stimulant.
ReplyDeleteProhibition artificially raises the selling price, so addicts often resort to armed robbery to finance their habit. I know this because I have been armed-robbed a few times (I have a retail store).
Addicts' judgment is adversely affected and this could trigger violence if police try to enforce prohibition. But when addicts are not stopped and can buy cheap heroin, they just nod off and don't get violent. Sometimes cocaine can directly trigger violence, but most drug-related violence is associated with alcohol.
In the 19th century, when heroin was legal in the US, there was little or no violence caused by the drug. Because there was little or no prohibition, there was little or no violence associated with heroin.
I have a BA degree in Psychology and have taken courses in drug addiction. Alcohol is actually more harmful to the body than heroin (if contaminated needles are taken into account. Often addicts have difficulty getting clean needles, and use them to inject because that gives more of a high than putting heroin into wine and drinking).
Harsh drugs are a personal medical problem. Prohibition creates a major social problem. I almost died from armed robberies and I hold prohibitionists morally responsible, along with the addicts. I'd rather live, and addicts die from overdose; than try to save addicts and kill those subjected to armed robbery.
Melania Trump recently addressed the nation during the RNC convention. She said, drug use if a medical problem and that problem should be addressed medically, not with shame (and by implication, not with shame-based prohibition).
Conservatism is not a political ideology, but is sensitivity to disgust, which may or may not be expressed politically. The political dimension is between liberty and tryanny. that is the choice we must make, to use reason and live, or emotions and have more deaths. If drugs are so dangerous people want them prohibited, drug use would automatically solve the problem by eliminating addicts through the consequences of their own actions.
Kevin; I appreciate your important distinction on
Deletehuman action. Drunk driving, robbery hurts others
and should be forbidden. Alcohol, drugs, bad diet
hurts oneself. A nanny state infantilizes people,
obscuring their own consideration of consequences.
Charlie
You can't win the war if you are fighting the wrong problem. (Sound like a government program to you?)
ReplyDeleteAddiction is a symptom of PTSD. Says Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine Eric Kandel.Dr. Lonny Shavelson found that 70% of female heroin addicts were sexually abused in childhood.Will Prohibition cure PTSD? Or prevent the sexual abuse of children?
It gets worse.
Drug Prohibition is socialism for criminals. Says Milton Friedman. Besides we learned that from Alcohol Prohibition. How lame do you have to be to not get Alcohol Prohibition? As lame as a modern day prohibitionist.
End Joe Biden's racist Drug War. BTW the Drug War was designed to be racist from the beginning. Cocainized Negr*s and Chinamen luring white women with opium. And of course Richard Nixon wanting to go after Blacks and hippies. The whole history is sordrid. Especially when you consider that Drugs don't cause addiction and self medication is a natural right. (Just try violating it - a crime explosion follows).
The drug war and its massive police presence were not invented by white racists
ReplyDeleteActually it was. Look into the history of the Harrison Narcotics Act. Much later Black people were conned into believing stricter enforcement would control drugs. It didn't. Stricter Prohibition raised gang profits by increasing prices more than the increased enforcement cost the gangs. It also increased drive by shootings because territory became more valuable. Black Market Economics. You might wasn't to learn some.
You want real over the top Drug War racism? Look up Harry Anslinger, a member of FDRs administration.
And then we had Nixon who really ramped up the war based on his need to hurt his main opponents, Blacks and hippies.
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