The death of young CEO Pava LaPere in Baltimore was a hideous crime. She was tricked into opening the locked door of her apartment complex for a man she had never met. She was trying to be kind but in this case the person receiving that kindness was a convicted rapist who had raped and attempted to murder another woman just three days earlier. LaPere got on an elevator with the man she let in. He left the building about 40 minutes later. Her body was found on the roof of the building three days later. She had been beaten with a brick and strangled. She was a smart and kind person who’d been stalked and murdered by a genuine monster.

There’s obviously a lesson here but it’s one that, in a better world, no one would have to learn. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with this world and with major cities where there are violent and deranged people walking the streets.

Early Monday morning 32-year-old Ryan Carson was waiting for a bus in NYC with his girlfriend. They had just come for a wedding and were heading home around 4 am when the streets were mostly empty. Carson was an activist who supported safe-injection sites to reduce the number of overdose deaths in the city. To be clear, that’s not something I support but it’s obviously a view that appeals to a certain kind of left-wing idealist. Politics aside, NYC is not a place that is always kind to idealists.

…a man started kicking what appeared to be trash on the street, surveillance video showed. The man could be heard cursing and threatening Carson saying, “I’m going to kill you right now.”

Carson could be heard on the video trying to de-escalate the situation as the man approached him.

“Chill, chill, chill,” Carson said.

The man, appearing to hold a knife in his right hand, took a swing at Carson’s face and when Carson tried to run away and tripped over the bus bench, the suspect stabbed Carson multiple times, the video appeared to show.

This video shows the scene but not the moment of the attack.

Leftist NYC activist stabbed to death on the street. Very disturbing footage. pic.twitter.com/ZHBycUacDK

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) October 3, 2023

Andy Ngo says Carson’s girlfriend is another left-wing activst. She has a history as a BLM protester who believes “all cops are bastards” usually shortened to “ACAB.” She’s someone who would never look to the police for help.

"The police do not protect you. ACAB. BLM."

Ryan Carson's girlfriend Claudia V. Morales is a cop-hating BLM activist. She was at a BLM riot in Boston in 2020, blaming police for violence when they tried to arrest rioters. pic.twitter.com/Gj6n4mHkw2

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 4, 2023

We don’t know who the attacker is yet or what motivated this. Maybe he’s a street person with a drug problem, i.e. the kind of person Ryan Carson wanted to help. Whoever he is, he’s clearly deranged and needs to be in prison, not walking around on the streets. Will this turn out to be his first such attack?

Days earlier there was another murder in Philadelphia. The victim this time was a progressive journalist named Josh Kruger. Kruger had spent time on the streets himself as a homeless person but he pulled his life together and worked for the city doing messaging for the mayor and for the department dealing with the homeless. Then he moved on to writing about these problems.

One of the things he was outspoken about was that crime in Philadelphia was heading down and approaching pre-pandemic levels, which is true this year but only after hitting highs in previous years. Kruger’s view was that concern about crime was overblown and he openly mocked the idea on Twitter/X.

Today, I learned there is apparently a "crippling crime wave destroying all cities" according to Stephen Miller, which includes presumably Philly. My house is not on fire and chaos is not reigning in the street. I saw a man get a parking ticket yesterday. My trash got picked up.

— Josh Kruger (@JoshKrugerPHL) February 17, 2023

Early Monday morning, Kruger was murdered in his apartment.

The police, responding to reports of gunshots, arrived to find Mr. Kruger in the street, Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told The Inquirer. The police believed that an intruder had entered his home and shot him and that Mr. Kruger then went outside seeking help before collapsing.

There were no signs of forced entry, Commissioner Vanore told The Inquirer. “Either the door was open, or the offender knew how to get the door open. We just don’t know yet.”

He had been shot seven times. Police have since announced they have a person of interest in the case but we don’t know any more about who that is or what motivated this crime. So it’s still possible this was some kind of targeted attack. Maybe the killer had a personal issue with Kruger. Or maybe someone just followed him home and tried to rob him. We don’t know yet but hopefully we will eventually.

All of these deaths are tragic and senseless. But I think they do tell a sad kind of story about the world we’re actually living in right now. It’s not the world any of us wish it was. It’s certainly not a place where we can afford to mock the idea of public safety as overblown, or dismiss all police as irrelevant bastards or even just open the door for someone we don’t know. Public safety is not a political football it’s a real issue which can result in innocent people being injured or killed. There are real world trade offs for embracing some of these ideas.

That doesn’t mean we can’t keep arguing about the best ways to fix the problems. But I think it does mean we can’t wander blindly down a dark alley of idealistic policy goals (Defund the police! Abolish prisons! Etc.) without a very clear idea of what that will mean for regular people just trying to get along without winding up a crime statistic.

Update: From Fox News’ story on Ryan Carson.

More than 150 people turned out for a vigil Monday night in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, where Carson was murdered.

No arrest has been made. An unofficial wanted poster showing a close-up of the suspect wearing a black “Champion” sweatshirt is circulating online…

Acadia Cutschall, 32, who attended Pratt with Carson, called him her “best friend.”

“I was present once when he literally talked a guy out of mugging him,” Cutschall told the local newspaper. “He gave him some money.”