Has political violence against private property become legal?

Months have passed since Mayor Liccardo's home was vandalized,and no one has been charged. In fact, county and city district attorneys are refusing to charge the overwhelming majority of people arrested or cited during this year's violent protests. This is true in San Jose and other cities around the country, as outlined by Mark Lisheron in his report last month for Opportunity Now. Tony Francois of the Pacific Legal Foundation responds to the issues unearthed by Lisheron's article in this exclusive commentary for Opportunity Now.

by Tony Francois

It is important to note in all of these cities the distinction between violence directed at police or arising between police and protestors when protests get a little out of hand (which seems to lead to prosecution), and harm done to private property (which seems never to lead to prosecution).

My read of the charging decisions by most of the DA's discussed in Mark Lisheron's article (and I may have read it incorrectly) is that very few if any people have been charged with crimes or misdemeanors for vandalism, looting, and assault on private citizens. This would include, in my view, any trespass committed at the homes of public officials. This pattern, if I am reading it correctly, of refusing to hold people accountable for damaging private property or engaging in looting, is a failure by both the police and the DAs offices. One of the reasons there are few prosecutions for looting is that there are few arrests made during looting sprees, despite many of them being streamed live on the internet. Perhaps it really is not possible to mobilize police to a store or neighborhood that is being looted, but that should be a higher priority. People looting stores and otherwise harming private property should know they risk arrest and prosecution. The only way to really do that is for the police to arrive while looting is underway and arrest as many as they can.

The policy decision to treat crimes against officers as worthy of prosecution--but crimes against citizens as not worthy of prosecution--amplifies the political nature of this movement. It heightens the sense of conflict between rioters on the one hand and the police on the other hand as the amorphous and faceless social evil against which the rioters frame themselves as standing.

The failure to effectively arrest and charge rioters for looting, harm to private property, and harm to private citizens (including denying them equal access to public spaces and roadways) delegitimizes everyone's interest in being free from political violence and encourages further and more widespread violence against private persons and property.

Tony Francois is a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and a longtime Californian.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity.

Photo taken by Luca Rossato.