Arrest young rioters and throw the book at them. Their parents, too

You may have heard this morning about the “hill bomb” skateboarding event that was busted by SFPD over the weekend. Cops arrested more than 100 people for such crimes as vandalism and resisting arrest. Cops were assaulted and spat upon by an unruly crowd, and MUNI vehicles were trashed in the ensuing riot.

I’m very happy that SFPD did their job. From all accounts, the individuals who rioted are unsocialized misfits who deserve whatever punishment the courts dole out to them. But what really annoys me are the parents of some of the kids who were arrested, and some of the kids themselves, who whined that the police were meanies who stopped them from having fun. My attitude: boo frigging hoo. Your kid riots and destroys public property; he assaults cops and spits at them; and you’re outraged at the police for trying to stop him. You know who you should be mad at? Your dumb kid—and yourself, for not instilling values of respect and lawfulness when you reared your children.

There’s little surprise that so many of these feral skateboarders and their parents hate cops. After all, they live in San Francisco, where cop-bashing is the city’s favorite sport. Every day, they hear from leftists like Supervisor Dean Preston, who complained that the cops “disupt[ed] an annual skateboarding tradition,” as if the bomb hill riot was a reunion of crocheting seniors. “Armed in riot gear,” Preston added, “they…detained many children for hours.”

“Children”? We hear the same word to describe little monsters here in Oakland from criminal apologists like Cat Brooks, Pamela Price and Carroll Fife. These are not children. They’re future felons of America: today spitting at cops and throwing bottles at them, tomorrow mugging old people, carjacking and murdering.

I’ve had it up to here with these mischaracterizations—well, lies that progressives routinely peddle. We employ cops, at great peril to themselves, to keep us safe. Our cops are the best-trained in the world. They know how to keep the peace, if they’re allowed to by the onerous Police Commissions and other politburos that govern them. In the privacy of my own heart, I sometimes wish that idiots like Dean Preston would get mugged, as a sort of poetic justice for bashing the police so hard and so often. Let him discover what the rest of us already know: We need the police, we respect the police, and we do not need the thugs that rioted and attacked the cops. Throw their asses in jail, is what I say, and when a parent steps forth to complain that her “baby” was treated unfairly by cops, reply with two simple words. No, not those two (although they would be appropriate). These: SHUT UP.

P.S. I’ll have more information for you soon, but for now, I can tell you that the Recall Pamela Price campaign has formally begun. Legal counsel has been retained, and the parts are all coming together. Stay tuned!

Steve Heimoff