Bloods on Their Hands

Like many other areas of the country and the world, Long Island has its share of gang problems. If rival gangs only killed one another, then that would be one thing. But violence between rival gangs is seldom confined to members of the rival gangs.

One such rivalry up here involves two separate factions of the Bloods gang. There is a certain geographic territory which is contested turf between the Braveheart Bloods and the Wyandanch Bloods. Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County Police Commissioner, is now attempting to obtain a civil injunction which would prohibit 37 particular members of the Bloods gangs from congregating in that defined geographic territory.

The New York Civil Liberties Union (which, as the name implies, is the ACLU's New York franchise), now seeks to intervene with an amicus brief in the case. But because each of the 37 gangsters is, at this time, going pro se (i.e., without an attorney), the NYCLU is effectively their attorney.

I understand where the NYCLU/ACLU is coming from on this one. I really do. It is, after all, a significant imposition on one's freedom if one is restricted from associating with one's associates.

But I also understand that the gang members such as the Bloods have zero respect for the law and for the Constitution which the NYCLU/ACLU invokes to protect the so-called "rights" of the Bloods. It was that very disconnect which, many moons ago, caused me sufficient agita and disgust to allow my ACLU membership to lapse, never to be re-upped again, when the ACLU evinced a greater concern for the Nazis in Skokie than for the integrity of American values.

The NYCLU doesn't seem to get it that the Bloods and similar gangs are, in fact, actually dangerous, not only to one another, but to the public at large. Law-abiding citizens cannot safely walk down the street when the Bloods congregate together. The drugs the Bloods purvey corrupt the neighborhoods, and induce formerly law-abiding youngsters to enter into a pattern of crime, violence, and, in too many cases, death. That great abstract notion of individual rights is all well and good, but when the Bloods congregate in Wyandanch, then nobody, least of all the law-abiding citizenry, has any individual rights.

It is ironic that the NYCLU officials are so quick to carry signs reading "Safe Schools," but are doing everything in their power to prevent Commissioner Dormer from making the streets of Wyandanch safe (if such is possible anymore).

And it is certainly not lost on this observer that the lead defendant (because he leads in the alphabetical order if not the pecking order) in the case, Dormer v. Alexander, is a Blood named Jihad Alexander. That given name tells me about 85% of what I need to know about the type of thugs the Suffolk County Police are dealing with.

And so, I'm with Commissioner Dormer 100% on this one. My only misgiving is that the relief sought from the court is to enjoin Jihad Alexander and his fellow Blood thugs from congregating in a particular area of the Town of Babylon. In my own mind, they should be excluded from the entire State of New York (with the possible exceptions of Dannemora, Attica, Rikers Island or Sing-Sing).