Charles Foehner, the senior citizen Kew Gardens resident who shot and killed his would-be mugger early Wednesday morning, will face weapons charges and nothing more serious.
Queens DA Melinda Katz contemplated homicide charges, but after reviewing video footage showing assailant Cody Gonzalez menacing Foehner, she realized that no sober-minded Queens jury would ever convict a neighbor in such an obvious case of self-defense.
Which is how it should be. Nobody should go on trial for murder or manslaughter for protecting themselves from a violent attacker. The right of self-defense — the final, fateful line of protection of life — must be respected.
What isn’t as it should be is a moral and legal climate where security has eroded to the point where residents live in such fear that they are compelled to rely on themselves to stay safe.
Yet this is what progressive misrule has brought us.
In the name of justice, New York City, under the previous mayor, Bill de Blasio, caved on the matter of stop-question-and-frisk.
This venerable and constitutional police practice was to a significant extent responsible for driving down Gotham’s murder rate by 90% in the Giuliani-Bloomberg years, largely because it encouraged wanna-be gangsters to keep their guns at home, rather than risk getting caught.
Yet de Blasio caved to the pro-crime lobby and its tendentious reading of the stats, agreed to end SQF and put the NYPD under a federal monitor that oversees minute details of police procedure.
Coupled with relaxed prosecution of illegal-gun-possession laws, which ostensibly mandate heavy mandatory jail sentences, there are fewer and fewer reasons for would-be tough guys not to make handguns part of their “everyday carry.”
According to his family, Cody Gonzalez was mentally ill and ought to have been in treatment.
They don’t blame his killer, because they know their relative was out of control.
New York could have used Kendra’s Law to force Gonzalez into psychiatric treatment, but bogus advocacy for the rights of the seriously mentally ill has left many of them wandering the streets, posing harm to themselves and others.
Progressives have created a vicious cycle: They do everything they can to limit proactive policing, reduce prosecution for serious crimes, work to empty the jails and prisons and then, when crime goes up, they complain that it’s because the NYPD is eating up all the resources that could go to expanded social services.
To that point, it’s useful to note that the city spends about 8% of its annual budget on policing, while Los Angeles spends 23% and Chicago a staggering 35% on public safety.
The NYPD is a relatively lean organization.
New York’s City Council just passed a law giving itself the power to set up a review board to circumvent judges and “safely” release people from Rikers into “community-based programs.”
Praising the legislation, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams made the eye-watering claim that “it’s abundantly clear that Rikers is undermining public safety for New York City.”
How’s that? According to Speaker Adams, jail itself — not the people who have been put there because of their depredations — “undermines” public safety.
But assigning prisoners to community-based programs — in the same communities where they pursued the antisocial activities that landed them on Rikers — will somehow enhance public safety.
If the logic eludes you, relax. It’s dogma; it’s not supposed to make sense. You’re just expected to nod along as the impressive-sounding syllables pile up meaninglessly.
The result of all this insanity is a form of controlled anarchy where the citizens are told, basically, that nobody cares what happens to them.
If you are beaten up or mugged, your complaint will be minimized.
If your assailant is caught, his charges will be reduced.
If he goes before a judge, he will probably get a non-carceral outcome.
When he then robs someone else . . . eh, whatever.
Charles Foehner should not have been carrying an unlicensed handgun, and he ought to be prosecuted for this crime. He should go to jail.
But let’s not pretend that progressives didn’t create the conditions where otherwise law-abiding citizens feel so victimized by an emboldened criminal class that they conclude their only choice is take safety into their own hands.
Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind and author of “The Last Days of New York.”
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