Crime’s gotten so bad in Hartford, Conn., that residents have formed armed patrols to keep one area safe — and the town’s woke officialdom is pooh-poohing the people trying to defend themselves.
A “Self-Defense Brigade,” made up of about 40 legally armed citizens and formed at the request of local religious leader Archbishop Dexter Burke, protects the streets of Hartford’s predominantly black North End.
After February saw two men murdered near his church, Burke finally had enough.
And rightly so: Hartford, a town of about 121,000, saw 36 murders in 2023 and 40 in 2022 — that last being a near two-decade high.
In per capita terms, 36 murders there is like New York notching 2,456 homicides.
No wonder people are stepping up to protect their community.
And doing so responsibly, wearing body cameras on their patrols and using drones to supplement the neighborhood watch.
But the mayor, Arunan Arulampalam, thinks they’re the problem, whining: “Our community has seen so much pain and trauma, and what we need is for those who love this city to do the hard work of healing that pain, not walk around our streets with guns trying to take the law into their own hands.”
What blather — and it’s of a piece with the thinking that’s created Hartford’s trauma: Connecticut has implemented disastrous ideas similar New York’s obscene criminal-justice “reforms” — like a “Raise the Age” law and restrictions on bail.
Is it any surprise homicides are devastating Hartford?
Or that black citizens, who make up just 10% of Connecticut’s population but account for more than half its gun homicide victims, are standing up to secure their own neighborhood?
Mayor Arulampalam can complain all he wants, but the fact that the public he allegedly serves feels this threatened is on him.
He’s the mayor, for God’s sake!
Our own Mayor Adams understands that public safety is on him; remember that as progressive Arulampalam clones like state Sen. Zellnor Myrie seek to oust him next year.
New Yorkers (and everyone else living under progressives’ thumb) need to ask themselves: If we don’t reject pro-crime progressives and all their work, how far away can our own self-defense brigades be?