Dante’s real danger isn’t the NYPD

Mayor Bill de Blasio has spoken of conversations with his son, Dante, about the “dangers he may face” from the police.

Like so many other assertions connected with the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, it is a fiction — and a dangerous one. Truth is, a young man of Dante de Blasio’s age faces far more danger from violent men his age than he does from cops.

Zach Emanuel found this out the hard way. Zach’s father is Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago. Like Dante, he’s 17.

Last Friday, he was assaulted and mugged just a block from his home on Chicago’s north side — by two other teenage men. They roughed him up and stole his phone. Fortunately, he wasn’t seriously harmed.

Zach isn’t African-American. But the reality is the dangers we speak of are even more pronounced for a young black man.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley notes that homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men. FBI numbers suggest that if you are Dante de Blasio, you are 10 times more likely than Zach Emanuel to be murdered.

Normally, we wouldn’t bring the mayor’s son into arguments. But it was the mayor’s choice to use his son to advance a false narrative — one that, by the way, contributes to the distrust among cops that de Blasio was trying to deal with at his desperate press conference Monday.

There, the mayor said some of the right things about the importance of respecting the police. For young black men living in marginal communities, too often the problem is not the police but the lack of them.

I remember an article in the WSJ from thirty years ago. An LA-based black woman, recent college graduate, originally from Oakland, went to buy life insurance, and was shocked at the differences in rates between a white coworker and herself.

She didn't believe the insurance companies "actuarial tables" excuse, and assumed it was racism.

Then she drove to Oakland to visit her mother. A bullet or two struck her car when she turned onto her mother's street, and the bullets weren't from any cops.

She came close to experiencing first hand, the power of statistics.

Bill DeBlasio, like Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, has no reason to worry about being reelected, since New York is a solidly Democratic city.

But at least Rahm Emanuel has had the sense not to stir up anger against his police force on the way to his assured reelection(s).

Democrats need to find enemies to fight against. In Washington, Democrats like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer can become heroes by fighting against Republicans. And Democratic governors like Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo can become heroes by bankrupting their states with strict environmental laws that cause businesses to leave their states.

However, those options aren’t available to Bill DeBlasio in virtually Republican-free New York City, where no opportunities for fracking present themselves that the Mayor can declare illegal. And now he can’t even attack his police force.

So what’s left for a liberal Democratic Mayor to fight against? The terrible New York City public school system? No, because doing so would antagonize the teachers’ unions, a major part of deBlasio’s political base. High New York City unemployment? No, because more jobs would require lower business taxes, lower minimum wages, and fewer illegal Hispanic immigrants taking away New York City jobs — all anathema to New York City’s anti-business liberals, its unions, and its Hispanics.

So, Mayor DiBlasio has become a victim of his own liberal policies. He can’t do anything constructive, and now he can’t indulge in his favorite destructive activity of attacking his police force. The only thing left for him to do is spend his time debating whether horse-drawn carriages should still be allowed in Central Park. While in the meantime, his city degenerates towards becoming a giant even worse replica of Detroit with wild dogs running through its streets.

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