In a scenario straight out of a bad movie, police in Washington, D.C., have decided to set up checkpoints in certain neighborhoods, effectively sealing them off, and kick out strangers via ID checks.

So maybe I misinterpreted the words from the "Star-Spangled Banner" but I rather doubt it. What part of the phrase "land of the free" led to this latest insanity in D.C.? According to documents obtained by The Examiner:

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate "Neighborhood Safety Zones." At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have "legitimate reason" to be there will be sent away or face arrest.

I guess anyone who was missing out on the opportunity to be pawed, prodded, yelled at, and then sent to a bench to get redressed at the airport can now get their "fix" of authoritarianism on the way home from work! Further, according to the linked article:

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her "All Hands on Deck" weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

I realize that, as a staunch believer in the possibility of a "stateless" society based upon unimpeded liberty and the unrestrained free market I’m in the minority, but is it really that hard to understand that one cannot obtain more peace by instituting more violence? If tightening the grip on the inhabitants is destined to provide more security and more safety, prisons would be peaceful centers of higher learning versus scary hell-holes from which no one emerges unscarred for life.

One might argue, were he uninformed, that it is only because the people in prison are violent that prison itself is violent. Let us squelch that ignorance with a few facts, from a piece of mine from some time ago. To wit:

• The overwhelming majority of people in prison for drugs are also non-violent offenders. According to official statistics from the NYS Dept. of Correctional Services (DOCS), nearly 80% of drug offenders in prison have never been convicted of a violent felony; about half have never even been arrested for one. (Reference: Myths and Facts About the Rockefeller Drug Laws)

• Drug offenses account for a higher percentage of people in federal prison than weapons, extortion, homicide, robbery and burglary combined. For 2006 53.7% were drug offenders, 14.2% were weapons offenders, 5.4% were robbery offenders, 3.8% were burglary offenders, 4.2% were extortion offenders, and 3.1% were homicide offenders. (Reference: Federal Bureau of Prisons: Quick Facts 2006)

I’ve written regarding violence and the State before, but this recent action by D.C.’s police chief is cause for a legitimate Twilight-Zone-Music-playing moment. Against the backdrop of the facts I note above, we have the highest-ranking police officer in one of the most violent places in the U.S. deciding that the next most logical step to make people safer is to institute ID checkpoints and neighborhood-wide lockdowns. Again, increasing violence cannot reduce violence, no matter the supposed purpose of that violence.

No less an eminent thinker than Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute, noted in his seminal essay, "If Men Were Angels" that:

…everything that makes life without a state undesirable makes life with a state even more undesirable. The idea that the anti-social tendencies that afflict people in every society can be cured or even ameliorated by giving a few persons great discretionary power over all the others is, upon serious reflection, seen to be a wildly mistaken notion. Perhaps it is needless to add that the structural checks and balances on which Madison relied to restrain the government’s abuses have proven to be increasingly unavailing and, bearing in mind the expansive claims and actions under the present U.S. regime, are now almost wholly superseded by a form of executive caesarism in which the departments of government that were designed to check and balance each other have instead coalesced in a mutually supportive design to plunder the people and reduce them to absolute domination by the state. [Emphasis mine.]

The violence in D.C. is not a result of the wrong people being able to enter neighborhoods. It is because the means by which a peaceful, secure society is obtained has been taken away. Flatly, the only people armed in D.C. are cops and robbers! It was not my intention to get off on a rant about gun control, but nevertheless this excellent essay on the subject provides the context:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.… When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Indeed. If the powers-that-be in D.C. want to rid the neighborhoods of violent predators, they should allow the people the ability to defend themselves. Short of that, no one will ever be safe, no matter how many checkpoints the police erect.