A city that sows lawlessness will reap chaos. That’s a rule that played out tragically in Chinatown this month.
Last Saturday, landlord Brian Chin was charged with felony assault for allegedly beating a homeless man outside of his building.
Chin, a community activist (and Harvard fellow) who has been lauded for his efforts to fight against the drug use and vagrancy that has taken over the neighborhood, claimed that the homeless man, who has not been identified, was harassing passersby earlier.
Chin confronted the man, who reportedly broke a chair and then swung a nail-tipped plank at him.
In response, Chin allegedly punched the man in the head and face six times, landing him in the hospital on a ventilator.
Such horrible outcomes are what the city risks by letting so many tortured souls roam the streets — and leaving desperate civilians to fend for themselves.
In a functional city, the correct response to a vagrant menacing others is to call the police, who can contact mental-health services or otherwise resolve the situation.
But New York City has become deeply dysfunctional.
Residents no longer trust that the police, whose hands have been tied, will be able to do much.
One of Chin’s neighbors put it succinctly: “Everything ‘Broken Windows’ solved has been undone — it’s like the Wild West now.”
Even if cops make an arrest, a progressive, crime-friendly prosecutor may refuse to press charges or a lenient, liberal judge could release the perp back on the street within hours.
And the city’s mental-health services are a joke: Just look at the countless cases of emotionally disturbed people who have been cut loose with little or no treatment and gone on to assault or kill random strangers.
Indeed, back in 2022 one of Chin’s own tenants, 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee, was followed into her apartment and brutally stabbed more than 40 times by Assamad Nash, a homeless career criminal who’d been arrested and released multiple times after allegedly assaulting another woman in 2021.
He was free to kill Lee because the city doesn’t do its job.
And when New Yorkers can no longer depend on the city to protect them, some will take action on their own — which can easily turn out badly.
Until New York’s political culture wakes up on these issues, expect more awful cases like this one.
