June 29, 2024 - 8:00pm

Recent violent protests outside Adas Torah, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighbourhood of Los Angeles, have sparked significant debate about the role of public safety in California. Following these events, LA Mayor Karen Bass announced that the city is exploring a mask ban, a move which has ignited further controversy given the history of mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But this situation also underscores a broader issue: the failure to prosecute criminal behaviour among certain groups can lead to sweeping infringements on civil liberties for the entire population.

The events outside Adas Torah involved hard-Left and pro-Palestine protestors, whose actions escalated into mob violence. Given the track record of similar protests turning violent, it seems unlikely that any of the protestors condemned by politicians for “hate” will be prosecuted. Almost all charges involving Columbia University protestors, who occupied a building on campus, were dropped. Similarly, charges against nearly 80 people in Texas, lauded by some on the Right for its “tough on crime” stance regarding pro-Palestine encampments, were also dropped.

Americans saw a similar catch-and-release approach to Antifa demonstrations that turned violent in Portland in 2020 and 2021. Nearly half of the federal cases against Portland rioters have been dismissed, highlighting a pattern of minimal consequences for destructive actions.

This pattern of failing to hold individuals accountable for their actions has broader implications. Among the most serious is that there is a growing culture of impunity among hard-Left activists, who have good reason to believe that they will not be punished for even the most egregious of offences — for example, descending on a house of worship to protest a conflict thousands of miles away.

But there’s another dynamic at work. Progressive activists and DAs have backed cities and law enforcement into a corner through years of equating criminal prosecution with injustice and racism. The need to address antisemitic attacks like the one in LA puts officials in a bind. Do nothing and they appear to be condoning hate crime; prosecute and they appear to be furthering structural racism and the “prison industrial complex”.

With the proposed mask ban, Los Angeles seems to be falling back on an old trick: deal with a problem presented by a small but violent few by knocking away a civil liberty — in this case, wearing a facial mask — from the entire, mostly peaceful citizenry.

Ironically, a parallel strategy was employed to institute the mask mandates just a few years ago. Rather than encouraging at-risk populations, like the elderly and immunocompromised, to take steps to safeguard their own health, governments chose to restrict or suspend the rights of every single member of society.

As with the Covid mask mandate (and nearly all other Covid-related restrictions), there is no evidence to show that a mask ban will have any effect on racially-motivated violence, whether in LA or anywhere else. With Covid, Americans witnessed their government experts flip-flopping in real time on the question of the virtues of mask wearing, moving in weeks from “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS” to airlines threatening that passengers who didn’t want to wear masks might end up on the no-fly list.

With the proposed mask ban, we might be treated to the same experience of the government dealing with a problem it can’t or won’t solve by thrashing around a particular policy.