HUNTER: 'Won't somebody think of the fentanyl dealers?!?'

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The reader, no doubt wearing slippers and a cardigan with his puppy at his feet in front of a crackling fire, wearily put digital pen to paper.

It seems the gentleman took umbrage with my column about the return of the death penalty in the United States. Don’t you know, the exhausted armchair activist asked, that the murder rate is down?

Well, yeah, I do. But that’s just part of the picture and completely missed the point of the column. The homicide rate in the 35 largest U.S. cities dropped 5% in 2022.

But that follows a bloody 28% increase from 2019 to 2020.

As for the Canadian murder tally, there were 126 more homicides in 2021 than in 2019.

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The column was not an endorsement of the death penalty. It was a call for common sense which we see so little of in our justice system.

And then I saw these two stories which go a long way to explaining the public’s mounting fear and fury on both sides of the border over soft-on-crime policies.  And by crime, I mean violent crime, not some kid pinched for a dime bag.

In San Francisco, public defender Peter Calloway is soiling his silks over a new law calling for the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of selling the deadly opioid fentanyl. The law was proposed by Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a recovering drug addict.

Calloway sniffed on Twitter: “Supervisor Matt Dorsey seeks to end the city’s Sanctuary City policy for ppl accused of dealing fentanyl. Keep in mind that many such ppl deal under threat of violence to them/their families.”

Dorsey added: “If you take a look at the things for which sanctuary already doesn’t apply, fentanyl dealing belongs there.”

Calloway’s naive plea for peace and love was roundly mocked by San Francisco-based businesswoman Michelle Tandler.

She tweeted: “Won’t somebody think of the Fentanyl dealers?!”

And most fed-up, crime-ravaged citizens appear to agree with her.

One sarcastically wrote: “How dare they?!?!? We must protect the fentanyl dealers at all costs! ESPECIALLY if they are here illegally. You people blow.”

And in the Big Easy, woke ADA Emily Maw, who worked for the Innocence Project New Orleans for 16 years before becoming a prosecutor got into the Mardi Gras spirit and dropped charges against 15 people caught with guns.

That included good old boy Keaton Manghave from Tennessee who went to the festivities with a machine gun. Maw’s only condition for releasing the 15 was that the guns were seized and not returned.

Ouch. Now, even her boss has said it was a bad call, declaring the woke lawyer’s moves “improper and unrepresentative of office policy” and has launched an internal review.

By the way, five people were shot in the Big Easy on Sunday at a Mardi Gras parade, including a young girl.

Like a lot of other DA offices across the U.S., New Orleans is under fire for progressive policies that have gone awry. The city is now the murder capital of the U.S., four times the homicide rate of uber-violent Chicago.

And those are the facts. People are scared, and their fears are not likely to be assuaged by politicians, activists and academics telling them they are foolish to be worried.

That was the point the reader missed. I’m in favour of many reforms in the criminal justice system.

But you simply can’t put lipstick on a pig.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun